My name is Bruce Abbott

I started my wine career journey many years ago when I joined Crown Wine as a sales clerk, it represented the biggest watershed moment of my wine career. That is when I was introduced to Mr. Chip Cassidy. He was not only the company’s chief wine buyer but also a professor at Florida International University. I was never assigned to either of his two personal stores but was an extremely grateful employee to benefit from his knowledge and expertise.  

As an employee, I was eventually able to attend a semester of one of his Hospitality courses at FIU. These were all 400 and 500 level courses meant for Hospitality majors. He was truly a wonderful man that inspired me to further my wine career. I owe everything that I’ve accomplished over the years to his tutoring.

After about ten months at that store, I was promoted to manager and moved to what would be my first store with that title. Neither of these stores had the inventory University Drive did, but we were still able to get some fine labels and developed a good clientele base of our own. My first store was in a Publix strip mall where store #8 has an outbuilding in the parking lot. Located in West Broward on University drive in the town of Plantation. We had a fantastic clientele base and were one of the larger stores that specialized in some wonderful wine Labels.