For buyers and cellars, he's toast.

• Position: People

Back in college in the early '80s, Chrish Peel was studying wine while his pals were guzzling Budweiser. "I was kind of in the closet," quips the owner of Carolina Wine Co. in Raleigh. He doesn't remember what got him interested. Growing up in Williamston, where his dad practiced law, nobody he knew drank the kinds of wine he was reading about. Thunderbird maybe, but not Burgundy or Bordeaux.

His junior year, spent at Oxford University in England, sealed his fascination with the fruit of the vine. "England is really the center of the world wine trade." Plus, at Oxford, wine drinking wasn't considered effete, the way it was then at UNC Chapel Hill. "Wine can be icky and elitist, but it doesn't have to be."

Peel, 39, has turned his once-hidden hobby into a thriving business. In October, Food and Wine magazine named Carolina Wine one of the 18 best wine shops in the country. Much of its business is mail-order, and a third of its sales come from outside North Carolina. (Only five states prohibit mail-order purchases of wine.)

His shop specializes in wines from small European vineyards, including what Peel says is the nation's largest selection of Austrian whites. Focusing on European wines lets him offer better prices, he says, because they're not marketed and hyped in the popular press the way American wines are. He expected sales of $5 million in 2002.

Before peddling wine, Peel tried two other careers. After graduating from...