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The \u201cForrest Gump\u201d of Sparkling Wine<\/strong><\/p>\n When life serves you lousy champagne, make your own bubbly<\/em>\u00a0is Frank Schilling\u2019s philosophy. When sampling sparkling wines to serve at his Cayman Islands restaurant, Mykonos, Schilling simply wasn\u2019t satisfied with anything on the market. So he made his own. The sparkling\u00a0ros\u00e9<\/em>, called Aphrodise, is made from the\u00a0Xinomavro grape\u00a0grown in northern Greece and Macedonia.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A noble, popular wine grape in that region of the world,\u00a0Xinomavro\u00a0is rarely used in sparkling wines; Aphrodise is the first bubbly version to be produced on a large scale. Characterized by very small bubbles, they\u2019ve found that people who normally don\u2019t like\u00a0ros\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0or champagne do enjoy Aphrodise.<\/em>\u00a0\u201cIt’s imminently drinkable,\u201d says Schilling.\u00a0\u201cYou can literally guzzle it and you feel great as you’re drinking,\u00a0and you feel pretty darn good after.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A serial entrepreneur, Schilling has hardly had what you\u2019d describe as a linear career path. After making a fortune in domain names early in the Internet age, he became a\u00a0restaurateur\u00a0on a whim, and now, he\u2019s a vintner. \u201cI always say we’re the Forrest Gump of the champagne business because we’re literally bumbling into everything we do,\u201d he said, laughing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Grand Cayman\u2019s Seven Mile Beach<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n They began tasting different varietals and stumbled onto the dark red\u00a0Xinomavro grape and found that some vintners had started experimenting with a blonder version perfect for sparkling wine. They tweaked it \u2013 it was a bit too sweet \u2013 and came up with what is now Aphrodise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ibiza & Las Vegas<\/strong><\/p>\n Most important: people liked it. \u201cWe started to share it and people were like,\u00a0\u2018This is so good,\u2019\u201d Schilling said. \u201cAnd that’s how we kind of bumbled into the business.\u201d He sent 90 bottles to friends for a birthday party in Ibiza; the recipients insisted they\u2019d never use more than 10 bottles. \u201cThese grown men in their 40s and 50s\u00a0started drinking this stuff, and\u00a0in a day and a half it was all gone, and we knew we had a winner. It’s an absolutely true story.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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\u2019ve now signed a partnership deal. \u201cSo\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0kind of\u00a0these serendipitous,\u00a0sort of accidental champagne curators,\u201d Schilling says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After more than 20 years in the domain-name game, Schilling hungered for a change of focus. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mykonos<\/strong><\/p>\n 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 \u2013 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 \u201cgiant glass box\u201d along the main drag.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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. \u201cI wanted to create a venue that was a destination and a gathering place. And we did, we built something very residential, truly beautiful.\u201d Finishes are sophisticated, and the space can accommodate a large crowd, which is not that common in the Cayman Islands.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/rcourihay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Aphrodise1-200x300.jpg\")
While building out his restaurant Mykonos, a large 320-seat venue on Grand Cayman\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n