Rosanne Dunkelberger
It is inevitable in a one-degree-of-separation town like Tallahassee, that if you’ve lived here long enough, you will cross paths with the same people.
So it was for Gus Corbella and Amanda Morrison.
He’s a Senior Director at Greenberg Traurig who’s been lobbying in the capital city for almost 30 years. She’s been in the local hospitality scene for 20 years, responsible for creating some of Tallahassee’s most exciting and fun eating and entertainment experiences.
“We’ve been friends for a long, long time and always kind of ran across each other at places and at events that we both enjoy,” Gus said. “We obviously love wine, love good food, love live music and concerts.”
Amanda continues the story: “We would see each other at weird indie shows in Atlanta or in Jacksonville.”
When Gus was the board chair of Opening Nights, a monthslong series of live performances, Amanda owned Social Events and Catering and her business was in charge of the artist concessions.
When life shut down during COVID-19, Gus was recently divorced and had found studying to be a sommelier a positive activity during what could be a depressing time.
Although she had been part of several businesses, “none of our concepts really focused on wine. And I got super interested and he was doing the same and it’s like, ‘Well, let’s study wine together.’”
“We were always friends. We had friends in common,” she said. “And then over the pandemic, wine kind of became both of our touchstones. It was definitely the wine that brought us together.”
There were coffee dates to talk about wine and Opening Nights, then lunches, “then it was finally like, ‘Let’s just get drinks because we obviously enjoy each other’s company,’” Amanda said.
“We just got this like really long period of quietness, which was kind of lovely. It was one of the more beautiful things to come out of a pandemic,” she said.
“The rest of the world wasn’t involved and didn’t know,” she added. “And it just got to be this … getting to know each other better thing.”
The couple eloped to be married at the New York Public Library in May 2022, but there was a pandemic-related hiccup. “I had arranged for this beautiful quartet of these gorgeous Korean cello and violin players to play our wedding song on the steps of, the library,” Gus recalled. “And I get a phone call two days before that two of them have come down with COVID.”
Rather than a reception, the Corbellas invited six couple friends — several in The Process — to join them in Paris and Champagne. “We rented a château in Champagne and did wine tasting. And it was wonderful,” Amanda said.
In the year before the nuptials, the couple created a different sort of partnership — a wine shop/restaurant/event space in the shadow of the Capitol called Poco Vino.
The business is located right next door to their landlord, the Florida Retail Federation, after the association decided to offer their extra space to a retail business, rather than as office space.
“We do wine by the glass. We serve lunch Monday through Friday … with wine service. We call it European lunch. It just means we drink at lunch,” Amanda said. “And then we do cheese boards and a little light bites/tapas kind of style menu in the evenings.”
While not exactly in The Process, Amanda’s expertise is definitely Process-adjacent, offering up space for fundraisers, hosting strategy skull sessions, and, perhaps most importantly, giving those in the thick of things a chance to sit back and relax.
“People know they can hide in the back corner and, and have a quiet place to meet or just escape,” she said. “People are going to be like, ‘I just want to come and like breathe the clean air of the plants and this room.’ And have a mental break.”
Having your spouse work midway between the office and the Capitol is a boon to marital togetherness, too.
“It’s wonderful to be so close to my wife and, at the end of the day, only have to walk five floors down and 112 steps to see her,” Gus said. “We get to have lunch together most days or (when) going back and forth to the Capitol, to be able to pop my head in and go, ‘How’s your day going, honey?’”
