Repeat after me:

I will never feel bad about how much money I’m willing to spend on a bottle of wine ever, ever again.

Good, hopefully you said it like you meant it. I get so aggravated telling people it’s OK to tell me that you only want to spend $9 or $15 or whatever! I want to ask them, “Who did this to you, who hurt you like this?” or give them a hug.

Listen, anybody that works in a wine shop ain’t exactly a Mondavi. Sure, we may get to taste the Holy Grails, but what do you think we buy? Obscure(read: under $15) country wines, French, Spanish, and Italian mainly. The only fat cats in this business are much farther down on the supply end of the food chain. And, for the most part, wine shop employees DO NOT MAKE COMMISSION. It’s not like a waiter getting tipped on the final tab.

So when I approach someone, it’s to put them at ease, let them know I’m there if they need something. To see people get immediately anxious, perturbed, or edgy, over a simple greeting, exasperates me. I want to find the shitty old wine snob that scared them and verbally kick his ass. Which I could, I’m sure, 99.9% of the time.

See, there’s something the average consumer doesn’t know about the wine business. Come closer. I know it seems glamorous, all la di da, and very fancy. All the tastings, parties, luncheons, blah, blah, blah. But. And this is a very big butt. A lot of the people in this business are so unbelievably BORING that you would laugh at yourself for caring, for even one second, what they think about you. I’m serious. Really.

So the next time someone tries to look down their nose at you because it’s Tuesday and you just want some help getting a bottle that’s better than what you could find playing Russian Roulette at the grocery store and you only want to spend $10…

Tell ‘em to get: A) a life B) a hobby C) with it D) laid.

It even makes sense greedily — Young Johnny just got into wine, buys a $10 bottle per week for 52 weeks, that’s $520. It’s also a chance to help him figure out what he likes/doesn’t like and improve his hit or miss ratio. The guy with the Porsche keyring that just wants to liberate one of the 6 bottles of Turley Zin you were allocated? That’s only $50. You’ve never seen him before.

You can tell a lot about a wine shop by noticing for whom they go out of their way. Same in a restaurant. Did you know that Charlie Trotter NEVER sends out a comped item to a special/celebrity/VIP table without sending a little something to the surrounding tables as well? Now that’s class. Because what’s the use in making one person feel special if it makes 5 other people feel shitty?

COMMENT:
AUTHOR:
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IP: 138.88.15.251
URL: http://cheapwine.blogspot.com
DATE: 02/05/2005 07:14:34 PM
I kind of messed up my trackback. I am still figuing this stuff out, and I can’t seem to delete my original. But I reference The Wine Offensive in my post, I just copied the wrong excerpt from my post ….