Oh, hellooooooo!

No, I haven’t posted since Sunday. And yes, I was working. Well, helping my husband with a set. Those who no longer bring home bacon have obligations to help when they can. And while I love what being gainfully unemployed has done for my complexion, nothing is more gratifying than manual labor.

I have attended a few tastings recently, notes on their way….lots of them. All distributors have their big tastings around this time as a pre-funk for the holiday season. It was strange, attending. I didn’t have any agendas this time. As a buyer, you usually only have time to taste new vintages, things that fill holes in inventory, recommendations from your salesperson, and maybe, maybe you have time for a few bottles more. This time I got to taste what I wanted to taste.

But I also stepped outside myself and paid more attention to what was going on around me. When I was a buyer, I hated coming to tastings on my days off. I remembered why. I can’t stand buyers, half of them anyway, more jaded than excited to be there. These are usually the old dogs who’ve been at it for so long who are you to tell them anything? A few of my pet peeves:

• Block the spit bucket long enough and I will go for a three pointer. See, some of us don’t swallow all the wine. We like our livers, we drove, or we have to go back to work. So we spit. So move your ass.
• Secondly, don’t hog the pourer. I will elbow you. Stand to the side if you want to dominate the conversation. Just let me taste the freakin wine!
• We all know things. That’s why we’re here. I came to listen to the winemaker, not you Horschack. I’m not impressed that you’ve studied your map of France, we all know wine. Hey! That’s why we were invited. These people flew a long way to be here. Shut up and let them talk.
• Just tasting the “big” wine on the table is classless. I know it is rare to be able to taste some winery’s limited release single vineyard Cabernet. But instead of walking up to the table and grunting for it, try one of their other wines first. It’s a courtesy. You’ll be lucky if you’re allocated 3 bottles anyway.
• Give your customer a little credit, geesh. This is what bothers me most of all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Nah, I can’t sell that. Just gimme the Cab” in response to something like, ohhh, let’s just say Tablas Creek’s new single varietal bottling of Mourvedre. Too bad, dude, that wine was the best one on the table. And you deprived your customers of it because……???? Because it wasn’t common enough. Way to keep everyone down. But just keep doing what you’ve always done. It’ll probably keep working. As long as you don’t expose anyone to anything new.

I’m Sicilian and Irish, I could sell poo-on-a-stick to Jeffrey Steingarten and get him to write 500 words about it (wanna bet?). So when I believe in a wine, it’s easy to sell because I feel passionately about it, and that translates. Where’s the passion with some of these guys? “Nah, I can’t sell that. Just give me more of the same.” I used to tell my staff, if you can’t be excited about what you’re doing here, get the fuck out. And that’s the source of my anger towards these old dogs, not them as people but them as gatekeepers. Because they aren’t just a dick on their own time; it’s on yours, too–as a customer.