Cal Merritt

Cal Merritt grew up in Gainesville but hasn’t stayed put since. He’s the kind of person who has a favorite fishing spot in three different counties, knows which Florida beaches are worth the drive in November, and has strong opinions about which gas stations have the best coffee between here and the Panhandle. He came to wine sideways — through a six-year hard seltzer phase he’s only slightly embarrassed about, and a craft beer obsession that peaked around 2019. Someone handed him a canned blueberry wine at a farmers market outside Hawthorne and he hasn’t fully gone back. His girlfriend Cara races motocross — competitively enough that he’s spent more weekends than he expected in the middle of nowhere Florida, which has turned out to be some of his best material. He rides too, though he’ll tell you he’s strictly amateur about it. When he’s not on the water or losing at ping pong, he’s halfway through a short story he’ll probably never finish, or in the back of an empty theater watching something with subtitles. He writes about Florida the way people who actually live here experience it — not the theme park version.