What have we here?

Well, kiddles, it's been a while! Citywine Merchant is still under construction and still wrangling away with various authorities, so we are looking at late July for a "soft" opening and early July for us employees to get in there and rummage around. From what I've seen the spot looks amazing, and I'm excited to see what it looks like when it's all done.

Today's brief topic: How not to sell/ buy wine

Adventures at "Bates Motel" wine store (name changed to protect the not so innocent). "Bates Motel" is a relatively upscale wine store where the wines are advertised by price point, the Yellowtail is prominently featured, and you can wander around and hear things like this:

Emp: "Do you like Pinot Grigio? What associations do you have with that?"
Cust: "Uhm...none really. I like white wine though."
Emp: "How about Sauvingnon Blanc? What comes to mind when I say that?"
Cust: [inaudible]

me: (clutching my friend's arm in disgust) "Dude! If a customer doesn't know Pinot Grigio--a type of wine so well known rappers give it a shout outs "Big cups of Pinot Grigio/ Take it easy, though"--then she sure as HELL doesn't know Sauvingnon Blanc (a much lesser known, more delicate and "acquired taste" grape)!!"

Emp: (basically pushing any old thing that looks pretty and is probably ready to keel over, since it's a 2005 or something) "Well, this is a blah, blah, blah, just buy it and get the heck out so we can continue gossiping about the SLA".

Also--may be letting the grape out of the vat here, but I told Rob something I had read in one of my many books- Wine Spectator ratings are helpful...up to a point. WS doesn't like to give a 75 or a 60, so in essence the scale is 85-100. So when you see a bottle of wine that is proudly sporting a "Wine Spectator 87 points!!!" label...that's a D-. Now, for 6.99 you can easily give your Philistine friends a D- bottle, especially after you gave them your B+ bottle, but seriously "Bates Motel", cut it out with the "85 Points!" BS.

Rob was thrilled to learn this tidbit, which you readers may take with a grain of salt, but it makes a great party tidbit. You're welcome.

He settled on what we call a "jug" (a magnum) of wine (he wanted Carlo Rossi!!) for about 10$, a 2008 CabSauv (eh...he was happy though). His only requirements: "dry" and "cheap". I laughed and told him that generally, red wines are by definition "dry", other than, say, Beaujolais Nouveaux, and he glowered and told me to go on with my bad self.

"give me a bowl of wine! In this, I drown all our differences!" --old Shakey, I think