Author: Sabrina D’Alba

The Spark

“We were always the sponsor at someone else’s event,” Tammy told me. “You cannot call the shots when you are a sponsor. I thought, why not do it ourselves.” She laughs when she says it, though the point lands. “Ignorance is bliss. If you do not know that you cannot do it, you are going to make it happen.”

Thirteen years later, that impulse has grown into SAVOR, a full-scale food and wine festival that started on Clearwater Beach and now lives on St. Pete’s waterfront. The move followed the city’s rise, and her own. “I moved to St. Pete in 1994. You could shoot a cannon downtown and hit nobody,” she said. “The renaissance over two decades has been incredible, inspirational, beautiful.”

A Women-Led Operation With a Neighborly Feel

Tammy is frank about the field she works in. “It is very rare in the food and wine world that it is woman-owned,” she said. “That was important for me, to help create a culture of women helping other women.” Her agency teams today are almost entirely women, from strategy to the on-the-ground crew. The vibe is deliberate. “We only work with the nice people,” she said. “It is a family. We bring the band back together every year, and we keep adding more.”

That ethos shapes who participates and how guests experience the weekend. Pricing sets expectations, and hospitality carries them through. “We try to create a dinner party for four thousand guests who are like-minded and want a great time,” Tammy said. “The crowd is professional, mostly women, very clean energy. Nobody gets out of control.”

From Radio to the Festival Stage

Tammy’s media background is not just a line in her bio. It informs how SAVOR tells stories. “I was in radio in the eighties. Artists came through our station all the time. Being around that kind of creativity taught me to love different, to be open to people and cultures,” she said. She brings that lens to chefs who spend most days behind the pass. “Chefs get stuck in the back of the house. We want to pull them forward, give them the spotlight, show their personality, show where the ideas come from.”

This year, that shows up in a bigger public stage and a chef competition guests can actually watch. “Our chefs asked for a larger audience. So the competition happens during the event now, with celebrity and media judges on stage at noon,” she said. “It becomes education and entertainment at once.”

St. Pete, On Purpose

Tammy speaks about the city like a local who has watched it change in real time. Waterfront museums, the Edge, murals, music, neighborhoods you can walk, places that feel safe and clean. “Arts, eats, and beats,” she said, referencing SAVOR’s mantra. The idea is to celebrate what the city already does well, then gather it in one place so guests can try it in an afternoon. “We want you to savor the food, savor the art, savor the experience. Dress in a way that makes you feel like a piece of art. Express yourself while our chefs express themselves.”

Big Brands, Local Flavor

SAVOR works with national labels because large events require partners with reach. It also leaves room for Florida producers and smaller outfits. “We are very picky. Not everybody is right for the event, and we cannot house everyone. We have to be safe, we have to fit inside the footprint, and we want the experience to feel good,” she said. Inside the tents you will find recognizable names next to local projects, plus spirits and non-alcoholic activations. “It is all about pairings,” Tammy said. “Afternoon, brunch energy, bubbles, then food that plays well with it, mocktails that work too.”

She loves when guests leave with practical language for what they enjoy. “Knowledge is power,” she said. “Ask for a lighter style, ask for less oak, ask for something good for brunch. We want people to feel dangerous in a good way, like they can shop with confidence for a dinner party.”

Mentorship and the Human Side

The mentoring thread runs throughout her story. “It is young women and more seasoned women, helping each other, answering questions, seeing things from different angles,” she said. The festival is also a place to discover talent. She tells me about a chef who once cooked for Ludacris, about a pastry chef planning cocktail-inspired cupcakes, about a cheesemonger moving to town who can lead pairing sessions next year. “We get ideas from our guests, from media partners, from people in the crowd who know someone doing something great. It is a group effort.”

A Survivor’s Clarity

Tammy’s philanthropy is not a side project. It informs how she runs everything. She founded Glam-A-THON more than twenty years ago after her own breast cancer diagnosis. “I went through six surgeries. Moffitt saved my life. I wanted to help women directly, so we fund mental health, nutrition, lifestyle therapies. We donate to people, not research,” she said. “Knowledge is power. If you know something is wrong, you can fix it.”

That perspective ties to a sustainability push at SAVOR this year. “We are working with the Sierra Club on a food audit and composting, using materials that return to the earth faster. The idea is to have a great weekend, then leave the place better.”

What Never Changes

Events scale. Footprints expand. Stages get taller. Tammy keeps returning to the same core. “We will always raise the bar for next year,” she said. “But the family feeling stays. The kindness stays. The focus on making chefs and makers feel seen stays.” She smiles again at the original impulse. “If you do not know that you cannot do it, you will make it happen.”

SAVOR St. Pete returns to Vinoy Park on November 1-2, 2025. Guests can explore chef demos, tasting tents, and a full weekend of food and wine experiences along the waterfront. Tickets and VIP passes are available at https://savortheburg.com.

Find more local tastings and wine events happening around St. Pete on our This Week in Wine page.

When Zach Pace moved to St. Petersburg in 2023, he brought with him extensive experience in fine dining, wine education, and Michelin-star hospitality.

After studying economics at Tulane, Pace left the desk job path behind for a career in wine. He earned his WSET Level 4 Diploma and became one of the first certified WSET educators in the U.S. Over the years, he added credentials as a Certified Wine Educator, French Wine Scholar, and International Sommelier Guild Level 3 graduate. He spent more than a decade teaching at the San Francisco Wine School and leading operations at top Bay Area restaurants, including Lazy Bear, the two-Michelin-starred San Francisco destination recently ranked among North America’s best.

That background shaped his philosophy: sourcing rare bottles, leaning into back vintages, and treating every pairing as a story worth telling. “Make it a story,” he said. “Even if the guest doesn’t remember every single detail, they walk away thinking it was not just great food and ambiance, but that they’re richer for the experience.”

A Personal Cellar

Over the summer, he and Tomushev hiked the Dolomites, drinking Kerner and Müller-Thurgau in Alto Adige. Back home, their attention turned to lesser-known Piemontese whites such as Timorasso, Nascetta, and Erbaluce, a theme that wasn’t intentional but, as he put it, “kind of been awesome.” In his cellar, a 1998 Château Musar from Lebanon stands apart, a bottle tied to memories of meeting the late winemaker years ago in San Francisco. “The wine ages so splendidly,” he said. “I opened a bottle a few months ago with friends, and it’s still hanging on, with another decade left in it.”

For Pace, wine is about more than taste. It is about history, patience, and transformation. That philosophy carries from noctivore’s communal table to the shelves and seats of Volta, the hybrid wine market and bar he’s building downtown. In a city where true grocery and fine wine retail don’t yet exist, Volta represents the kind of change its name promises, and the kind of future he has come here to build.

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Sabrina D’Alba is a writer and editor based in St. Petersburg, Florida. She explores how people connect through wine, place, and community, telling stories that capture the spirit of Tampa Bay’s growing wine scene.

Jayme Kosar has been named Best Sommelier in Creative Loafing’s Best of the Bay 2025 awards, adding another accolade to her long career in wine and hospitality.

This year’s finalists also included Adam Paul of The Black Pearl and Chris Ciarcia of Sauvignon Wine Locker, both respected figures in Tampa Bay’s wine community. Read more about this year’s Best Sommelier nominees in our nominee spotlight.

Kosar opened the original Ybor City Wine Bar in 2012 with a vision Tampa hadn’t yet seen: 200 wines by the glass. “Back then, there really wasn’t much of a wine scene here,” she recalls. “I wanted to expand the culture of wine in Tampa Bay.” That vision has since grown into Society Wine Bar, a franchise with locations in Ybor, Apollo Beach, and Naples, with plans to continue expanding across Florida.

A Certified Sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers, Kosar also holds more than a dozen wine certifications and teaches advanced programs for the United States Sommelier Association. Harvest visits and vineyard tours are a key part of her curriculum. “When you know exactly how the wine gets in the glass, that’s a real somm to me,” she says.

This is not her first Best of the Bay recognition. Kosar has previously won in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2024. The 2020 award was especially meaningful, earned during the height of COVID closures: “That was a big win because it was such a difficult time. Restaurants were closed, the industry was struggling. I dedicated that award to everyone—front of house, back of house, the whole hospitality community.”

She also notes that Best of the Bay often puts her alongside sommeliers she has taught or mentored: “Sometimes I’m up against sommeliers I’ve trained, sommeliers who have worked for me—and that’s been a great nod to them.”

For Kosar, wine is about passion and connection: “I can suggest and be the best somm in the world; but if you don’t like the wine, it matters not. It’s your palate, your party.”

As Society Wine Bar continues to grow, Kosar remains committed to her original vision of expanding the culture of wine through education and accessibility.

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Links: ownawinebar.com

Two women, six sommeliers, and a vision to make wine approachable in St. Pete’s Grand Central District.

Inspiration & Beginnings

Savoir on Central began as a dream between two women who met through Leadership St. Pete in 2019. Sharon Mahoney was deep into her WSET Diploma studies, while Christina Noordstar was fresh from two decades in restaurant franchising and brand development.

“I was inspired by Sharon—we’d been talking for years about a concept like this because she’s so well studied,” Christina said. “To build a place together—it was dreamy. And now we’re sitting in the dream.”

For Sharon, the vision had been forming for years. She knew she wanted to make wine approachable, but the right space never came along—until Christina called her to see the Central Avenue location. “We walked in—with the high ceilings and everything else—and I was like, I see chandeliers… I see marble… I see black and white.”

From Concept to Community

The old space was hardly glamorous. Formerly a cannabis beverage shop, it was painted floor-to-ceiling turquoise, complete with rainbows and raffia bamboo.

But Sharon and Christina saw past it. “We saw the classroom that could be created with this long, lean bar… and the intimacy possible with the spacing,” Christina explained.

That mix of vision and persistence became the foundation for Savoir: a place designed not only for drinking wine, but for conversation and education.

A Team of Sommeliers

Unlike most wine bars, Savoir was built around a full sommelier team—six in total, each bringing their own specialty. Sharon had known most of them for years through studies, events, or shared friends.

“You build your network, and you keep it close,” Sharon said. “Renee and Rochelle were part of the original conversations. Rochelle is the OG of wine in St. Pete—she had the first wine bar, A Taste for Wine. And Robert came through a distributor—he walked in and I was like, yeah, you’re hired.”

Christina added: “Sharon exudes care—and everyone feels it. Everyone is happy to work with her. It’s hard to leave here… it doesn’t feel like work.”

The lineup now includes Italian specialists, natural wine voices, and Maggie, who brought her following from ABC Fine Wine & Spirits. And then there’s Rico, an award-winning cheesemaker from New York, who now builds food pairings for the classes.

“He’s so passionate,” Sharon laughed. “He even wanted to flambé dessert and I had to say, nope, no flambéing in this building.”

The Wine Club

At the heart of Savoir is its monthly wine club, designed to make exploration approachable and engaging. Memberships are available in five tiers, ranging from one to three bottles, with pickup parties held the second Tuesday of every month.

“Wine club pickup is always a celebration,” Christina said. “Every month feels like its own little release party.”

Members enjoy discounts on bottles, classes, and food, plus early access to special events that often sell out quickly. The wines themselves are handpicked by the sommelier team around a monthly theme.

“This month we featured Aligoté from Burgundy—the ‘other’ white grape,” Sharon said. “We love introducing wines that sommeliers are excited about but many people may not know yet.”

Unlike many clubs that ship the same bottles to everyone, Savoir’s is flexible. Sommeliers work with members to tailor selections—whether that means only reds, only whites, or even sweet wines.

Wine Education, Elevated

Wine education is the driving force behind Savoir. Sharon’s teaching style is rooted in storytelling and accessibility.

“Everybody learns differently,” she said. “It needs to be fun. I once even fell asleep in a class with a Master Somm—not because I was tired, but because it was so dry. I want people to discover wine for themselves.”

Christina added: “We wanted to build a space that’s elevated but approachable—whether you’re a beginner or a super connoisseur. We’re built for the entire spectrum.”

Sharon’s global perspective filters into every class. “French was my first language—I’ve picked grapes in Bordeaux, stepped in puddles, been bitten by bugs. Every vineyard has a story… and great wine starts in the vineyard.”

Why Central Avenue

The choice of location was no accident. Christina and her husband have owned the building for over 15 years, watching Grand Central evolve into one of the city’s most dynamic districts.

“The building is 100 years old, originally owned by a woman, E.B. Howard, who lived upstairs and ran a salon for working women in the 1920s,” Christina said. “We want to honor that history while building something modern. The time is now for Grand Central.”

Sharon added: “Grand Central respects architecture and has its own vibe. Plus, it’s one of the only parts of Central that shuts down blocks for events like Halloween on Central—it’s a true community.”

Final Sip

Savoir on Central is more than a wine bar. It’s a space where sommeliers, community, and wine education come together—led by two women who chased their dream and brought it to life.

As Sharon put it: “We invite everybody to come for a glass—and stay for a class.”

👉 For more on the WSET path, see my feature on taking the Level 1 course in Tampa.

Andy Mezzari on Wine, BayVino, and Life Between Verona and Florida

Editor’s note: I’ve tried the Pinot Grigio from Friuli Andy mentioned and loved it so much that I’m doing a separate feature on it.