The “Forrest Gump” of Sparkling Wine
When life serves you lousy champagne, make your own bubbly is Frank Schilling’s philosophy. When sampling sparkling wines to serve at his Cayman Islands restaurant, Mykonos, Schilling simply wasn’t satisfied with anything on the market. So he made his own. The sparkling rosé, called Aphrodise, is made from the Xinomavro grape grown in northern Greece and Macedonia.
A noble, popular wine grape in that region of the world, Xinomavro is rarely used in sparkling wines; Aphrodise is the first bubbly version to be produced on a large scale. Characterized by very small bubbles, they’ve found that people who normally don’t like rosé or champagne do enjoy Aphrodise. “It’s imminently drinkable,” says Schilling. “You can literally guzzle it and you feel great as you’re drinking, and you feel pretty darn good after.”
A serial entrepreneur, Schilling has hardly had what you’d describe as a linear career path. After making a fortune in domain names early in the Internet age, he became a restaurateur on a whim, and now, he’s a vintner. “I always say we’re the Forrest Gump of the champagne business because we’re literally bumbling into everything we do,” he said, laughing.
Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach
While building out his restaurant Mykonos, a large 320-seat venue on Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach, during the height of the pandemic, Schilling realized that it would be a struggle to find a single source to supply the quantity of sparkling wine required for all those mimosas at brunch. When they finally did find a source, it was expensive and of poor quality.
They began tasting different varietals and stumbled onto the dark red Xinomavro grape and found that some vintners had started experimenting with a blonder version perfect for sparkling wine. They tweaked it – it was a bit too sweet – and came up with what is now Aphrodise.
Ibiza & Las Vegas
Most important: people liked it. “We started to share it and people were like, ‘This is so good,’” Schilling said. “And that’s how we kind of bumbled into the business.” He sent 90 bottles to friends for a birthday party in Ibiza; the recipients insisted they’d never use more than 10 bottles. “These grown men in their 40s and 50s started drinking this stuff, and in a day and a half it was all gone, and we knew we had a winner. It’s an absolutely true story.”
Next, Schilling debuted the wine at a wedding-industry trade show in Las Vegas, to introduce the product. People lined up, 100 deep, all day long for samples. A well-known wedding planner with a booth nearby invited the Aphrodise team to work with them, and they’ve now signed a partnership deal. “So we’re kind of these serendipitous, sort of accidental champagne curators,” Schilling says.
After more than 20 years in the domain-name game, Schilling hungered for a change of focus. “I have a creative instinct and I’d always wanted to create a consumer product. I didn’t really think I’d ever get into the liquor business.”
Mykonos
He also never expected to own a restaurant. On his daily walks during the Covid lockdown, a vacant building on a prominent corner drew his attention. He thought it was perfect for a restaurant – in fact, a dining spot already in the works there had been scuttled by the pandemic, and the building was available, so Schilling bought it along with some neighboring properties and cobbled it into a “giant glass box” along the main drag.
He named it Mykonos because of his experiences there, at places at are convivial and celebratory, but are enjoyed by local families as well as tourists. “I wanted to create a venue that was a destination and a gathering place. And we did, we built something very residential, truly beautiful.” Finishes are sophisticated, and the space can accommodate a large crowd, which is not that common in the Cayman Islands.
120-acre Malibu property
Schilling has started many different businesses over the years. “I’ve tried lots of things. Not everything worked, but many things did,” he said. Among his many business interests is a 120-acre parcel of land in Malibu that he intends to sell via auction.
“I bought it years and years ago and I’m not doing anything with it,” Schilling explained. It’s along the stretch of Pacific Coast Highway over Encinal Bluffs. “It’s beautiful land, but out of all the projects that I want to do, building the ‘Iron Man’ house in California is not one of them anymore. I’m kind of East Coast-centric now.”