After a life working behind bars and in restaurants (and feeling like I was pretty damn great at it), two years in wine retail just about killed me. Well, more accurately I just about killed.

Never had I seen people so uptight about something so unbelievably trivial as those that pepper the wine business. I fucking hated it. The games I had to play (I couldn’t), the Passo-Aggro dialect I couldn’t understand, the posturing and glaring insecurities amongst the alleged wine cognoscenti, and worst of all…the damage that it’s all done to consumers. Customers who cling to bits of information like little life preservers amidst the waves of marketing bullshit.

I am a populist. I tried to sell wine like a populist, and it worked. But I still had to deal with those annoying trophy hunters, and elitists–and the machine that creates them, all of whom give wine a bad name.

In a world where no wine label can be trusted, at a time when Americans crave honest information, one man and his Jeep fight 12 bottles at a time for truth, juiciness, and an easier way:

Going the Extra Mile for Wine
in this issue of the Seattle Weekly