Michael Roberts has been a leader in the Tampa wine market for almost twenty years.  Born and raised in rural northern Michigan, Roberts applies a practical and sensible approach to the appreciation of wine.  Since 1987 he’s been the manager of Vintage Wine Cellars, a family-owned neighborhood store in South Tampa.  In that capacity he quickly became a local expert on the subject of wine.  Roberts has traveled extensively throughout the world to wonderful vineyard destinations in Europe, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.  His comfortable attitude and infectious sense of humor make him one of the premier speakers on the subject in the Bay Area.  Roberts has been teaching classes on wine and its pleasure and enjoyment since the mid-1990s and hosts many seminars and open house wine tasting events at his South Tampa store every month.  In July 2005, Roberts led his inaugural wine tour of Portland, Oregon and the Willamette Valley.  “I believe that to understand wine is to understand people and places: the anthropology and geography of this ancient form of agriculture, alchemy and pleasure,” says Michael.  For Roberts, it doesn’t get any more exciting than that.