The whole megillah

Steve Jobs is evil. Steve Jobs is brilliant. Steve Jobs is megalomaniac. Sick of hearing about Steve Jobs? Me too. However, he is the shining example of "user experience" for consumer products. Apples feel and act differently. The sounds they make, the package they come in, the store you walk into, the support you receive. He has defined exactly what your experience will be in regards to his sacred fruit, and for that, he is a genius. We need to approach wine in the exact. same. way.

There is a disconnect between what's in the bottle, what's on the bottle,and how we get the bottle into your hand. Using Apple as a guide, we should be rethinking how we deliver that user experience. A more distilled approach may be that we need to give affirmation of the correct purchase.

Since a bottle of wine is a decidedly smaller investment than a computer (usually), and more acutely judged, the experience needs to strike hard and fast. Every tiny decision that goes into the ultimate purchase and consumption can shape the experience of that wine.

Bad name? Difficult to pronounce? That wine will need to overcome these obstacles not only to find itself a home, but to get a repeat buyer. Wines you can't pronounce or remember will give you less bragging ability. Don't think this is important? Any day now I'm expecting Apple owners to start going door to door with cheap short sleeve dress shirts asking if I've heard the good word. Part of consumer satisfaction is the ability of the owner of the product to revel in the brilliance of their selection. Bad names make this difficult. Why do names like Jordan and Silver Oak resonate?

Fit and Finish is thrown around when describing Apple as well. This translates exactly to the bottle appearance. Not just the label, but the details, foil, closure, size and shape of the bottle, color of the glass, these all speak to emotional satisfaction just like brushed nickel and soft white light does. We've all beaten the topic of labels to death, but I will say this without hyperbole- The most important single decision you can make, marketing-wise is the label, and winery owners' hubris derails this faster than anything.

The way the wine is sold has an impact. Communicating an interesting story all the way down the supply chain can have a huge impact. The end consumer being able to tell the story of a winery is absolutely irreplaceable. This is part of that invaluable emotional connection.

The wine needs to fulfill all of the promises made. Promises as to what's in the bottle are made at every micro-decision deep within the brain. The package, the story, the name. they are all part of that expectation. This is not as simple as a checklist, but rather an emotional and mental bridge connecting all of the extraneous factors and the way the wine tastes.

When all is said and done, and true satisfaction is met, the consumer will want to affirm their decision by repeating as much about their experience as possible. This is evangelizing. See Guy Kawasaki for more about evangelizing a product. And this, this enthusiasm, this consumer selling for you, this proselytizing , this is what Apple does. If they just built great computers or OS, they'd be Linux, but because they control the User Experience they are Apple.

2 years! 2 years.

April 1, is the 2 year anniversary of official start of ampelography. I'm less nostalgic than introspective about the date. Interestingly enough, I'm just now beginning to be understand what my job is. That's an awfully strange proclamation to hear myself make, but I'll lay out some nuggets of what I've learned in the last 730 days, and maybe you'll agree.

• If you have good marketing, good people, good wine, and the correct prices, distributors can only fail you
• Wine is visceral, understand this
• Distributors are always highly protective of their worst salespeople, if they weren't, they'd be long gone
• wine country will always make you late, plan to take longer to get where you need to be.
  
• The faster a distributor pays, the slower they place orders and the faster they place orders, the slower they pay. I don't know why.
• Some distributors appreciate the support, some resent it. If they don't appreciate the support, you have no swing with them whatsoever, don't even waste your time.
  
• Some wineries are just assholes
• If you can't inject your personality into the proceedings, what the hell good are you?
  
• There are 2 kinds of people in this world, wine people and sales people, surround yourself with the former, identify the latter. Salespeople will never be irrelevant, but they'll derail a wine person without acknowledgement.
• On Premise builds brands, the wrong off premise can destroy them. If you wheel and deal with retail, it will catch up with you.
• If your distributor replies to 20% of your emails, it's because they like you
• The hierarchy is as follows: Winemaker, Owner, National Sales, Broker, Sales rep. Brokers just aren't important to buyers.
• If every time you see someone, you bring them something interesting, new and a great story they'll always welcome you and your wines.
• Want to impress a chef with your wine knowledge? Talk to them about food.
  
• Be a foodie.
• You will have allies, they may take time to identify, but they're integral to your success and will sell for you when you're not there. Never take them for granted.
• I'd rather be someone's first workwith than the 100th.
• Always stop for lunch.
  
• No matter how tempting it may be, don't throw your distributor under the bus.
  
• If you write enough blog posts, one day you may actually meet people that read them.

Thank you to everyone that has supported ampelography so far. At the end of the day, I like to think that great wine is a noble pursuit, and since I don't make it, the least I can do is try to identify and introduce it to the right people.

PT Barnum and his "declassified" Scarecrow

Ever walk into a retailer and have them extoll tales of the double secret declassified grapes that Cult Napa producer basically gave away? It's one of the most cliched scenarios, retailers make bank off this idea, and the reality is, you're getting duped. It's not necessarily the retailer that's doing the duping though. It could be the producer, it could be the distributor. No matter, the truth is, you just cant get Screaming Eagle for $30.

There are 2 ways for the winery to get grapes, they can grow it or they can buy it. Most of the great wines are vineyard specific, or at least a small collection of vineyards specific. None of the top producers use all of their grapes. Not because there's not a market or because they need cash, but because the grapes simply don't make the cut. No matter how good a vineyard may be, there will always be some sub par grapes. Rather than throw these away, they are often sold off on the open market, sometimes as grapes, sometimes as juice, sometimes as finished wine. Typically, there's not enough of any one of these producers left to do anything substantial, production wise, so they need to be blended with other sources. This is the great secondary market, and it produces some very solid wines. For a $20 Napa Cab, or a $15 Monterey Chardonnay it's worth every penny.

Once in a great great while, an esteemed producer will declassify their grapes because their harvest was inferior. They will either put these into one of their own proprietary wines, or sell these off to a separate label. It's these wines that are rumored to be "whisper whisper whisper, Napa Cab" that usually sells for $100. It actually doesn't really matter if it is. This isn't TJ Maxx, the wines are getting discounted because the label is ripped, or last year's item. They are discounted because they are inferior. That means they're not up to their standard, so no, it's not Screaming Eagle. Your harvest is everything, when it sucks, it sucks. You just can't fix it. I'm not saying the wines are undrinkable. Maybe, in the right hands, the wines can be quite good. Then you throw in the rumor/ hype factor. By the time the information gets to you, how accurate is the story? The bottom line is, you get what you pay for most of the time. Don't get super excited that a retailer tells you about the amazing deal they scored by a declassified something or other. Just remember it got declassified for a reason.

Let your customers in

I'm so sick of hearing about your social media, blah, blah blah. We're all on Facebook now, and frankly, many of us have moved on after the awkward reconnection with high school friends we barely remember. What are you supposed to do with Facebook if you don't do farmville? Twittter? Yeah, I do that to, but keeping up with all of the goings on over there can be somewhere between counterproductive and obsessive. For those of you that have found the balance for twitter in your lives, including my brothers (@endcycle, @bradmahler), you are more man than I (or perhaps just less neurotic). And LinkedIn, well, that's just really no fun. Apparently, you're not supposed to have a sense of humor and be in business.

So what's a guy to do? Here's my solution, and I think I have some evidence it works. I decided a while back that social network is like public speaking (I guess, in some form, it actually is public speaking).With public speaking, you sort of just have to go for it. I speak to crowds rather frequently, and I'm just not the polished public speaker type, but I have to let my personality come through. If I didn't I'd end up in a fidgety fetal position. So I let it fly, because that's the only way I deal. In the end, I get comments like "impassioned", "funny", and sometimes "weird". That's ok, that's who I am, and at least I'm being honest. Facebook should actually be the same way. I am a highly opinionated individual, releasing those opinions and experiences on facebook have proven to be a good thing. I don't want to get too narcissistic, but, that's sort of what it's there for. I have 2 places for facebooking, my personal page, and my business page (facebook.com/ampelography). I basically use my business page to talk about wine, and personal for everything else. I try to keep both light and witty, with my personality imposed on both. Here's what I've discovered: this has helped the people around me (customers & consumers) to get to know me a little better. And it's really me and my personality. If, as a salesperson, you're trying to make that personal connection, what's easier than letting your acquaintances read about your adventures and opinions about crappy movies? It turns out that even though not everyone feels compelled to post (it is like public speaking), many read, and they read daily. For business, it can be very good that your customers, even though they may not actually interact with you or your posts, have registered opinions and thoughts about things you've said or done. When you walk in that door to sell them something, it's not that it's been months since you've seen them in their mind, they're already caught up.

So how do i know they're reading? what's the impact? Well, in November I grew a beard. It was my "downtime beard" and before market work season returned (mid-Jan) I shaved it off. For the last 3 weeks I've been criss-crossing my market, seeing many of my customers for the first time in 2011. What did I hear more than anything? "oh, you shaved your beard". I didn't know they knew I had a beard, but there were a few photos i was tagged in over the holidays with beard. In their mind, the online reality and the actual reality were now the same. The most important thing is as these customers/ friends have gotten to know me better, they like me more (or are at least more polite),and they buy more wine from me.

The freedom to say "I don't know"

I was just reading a "manifesto" from a winery (which in itself may be a bit narcissistic, but hey, they're winemakers). In it, they discuss how they harvest their grapes earlier than most, with resulting alc% around 13%. Unlike many consumers, I have a fair amount of exposure to these sorts of wines. One of my very favorites to evangelize is Nalle out of Dry Creek. Nalle has a similar approach, and their wines are amazing. Their pinots are burgundy. I don't mean because of the color, or because of the acidity, many wineries acheive this, but because of the prominence of the creaminess on the palate. So I know what they are talking about, and I'm into it. But this goes against conventional California wisdom. We usually rave about hang time, and letting acids set. Those acids go hand in hand with alcohol, which we all rail against. Then's there the whole lignification argument.

Further confusing this is the impassioned exposure I've had to many producers that make nearly 16% Syrahs that are amazing. Not Shiraz-like, but rather tertiary with olives, and bacon, and coffee, and campfire,and menthol,and all of the secondary flavors and aromas that don't come from sweet over extracted wines. Oh, and did I mention that you can't tell the alcohol is knee melting? So how can both realities exist? How can wines and grapes be maximized by 2 completely divergent harvesting philosophies? The answer is "I just don't know". I am a winemaking geek, but I've never made wine, nor do I ever intend to make wine. I think the different approaches are fascinating, and both approaches, along with dozens of others, fascinate me. I don't pretend to believe one over the other. If there was enough of a groundswell of agreement about the correct way, we'd all be drinking the same wines. Doug Nalle makes wines he likes, as should every winemaker.

I often talk about how we are naturally inclined to try to find rules and easy understanding of complex systems. This is human nature. I've abandoned hope for figuring out the right way to do things (winemaking), I like them both, and many in between. So at this point, I still believe in Chupacabra, The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. You know what? That's ok, because I'm not a Cryptozoologist either.

Believe in your book

We are the middlemen (or women) of the wine industry. We are the "tiers". We add cost to the consumers' bottles. We are human though, we need something to motivate us. We do not do this solely to make money. Actually, there are plenty of people that do this solely to make money, but they drive company cars and rarely read wine blogs. For the rest of us, we can feel unfulfilled. We want to feel affinity for something, someone, at least I do.

We are the part of the process that no one really likes (generally). We want to feel that connection with a greater purpose. For me, and most of my colleagues, it's about the "Book", the "Portfolio", the "Collection", whatever you call it, it is the groups of wines you sell. It's about taking that sample bottle out of the bag and blowing your customer away, and then doing it 3 to 5 more times each time you see them. The need to hear "wow", it's insatiable. Yet, few of us have ever had the fortune of building or contributing to a portfolio. I can tell you, it's the most satisfying thing I do professionally. Turning someone on to a producers that I "discovered". In truth, i didn't discover anyone, but I got to some before anyone else did. I recognized they had something special and had good timing. This is fulfilling. It also helps to fill this vacuum of doing something important. We identify with our group of producers, and they can define us.

My inspiration for this post was originally to criticize one of my critics. I gave a particular wine a pretty hard time recently, and someone that sells this wine took it pretty personally. I was going to rail against them for not being able to step back and have the proper perspective. The reality is that, neither do I. I am intoxicated (no pun intended) by the wineries I represent. I can no longer be a critical thinker about my group. I'm not blind, but now I have prejudice about my producers (in a good way). Looking at your portfolio without impunity is emotionally important, and in the end, makes us better sales reps. If you give in to the need to love a product conceptually, and this is how you earn your keep, this is the fulfillment. This passion will be contagious among your clientele, and in turn, through the consumer base. This will give you satisfaction, and it will help you sleep at night.

The Prisoner-(my) Final Word

Rarely have I written a post so polarizing as this one. I received a ton of feedback, both in the comments, and in person.

Since this is my blog, I get the final word (I hope?). Here are my wrap up comments hoping to provide a little epilogue to the mini controversy.

1. This post was meant to be lesson for small wineries, first and foremost.
2. In hindsight, I realized that The Prisoner probably did start out as a very small boutique winery, that grew very large through the very marketing methods detailed in this post
3. Big does not necessarily equal bad. Although there is a strong correlation between the two.
4. My snarky comments probably fueled speculation that this was a passive aggressive knock on this wine. It sort of was, however, the focus shouldn't be on my comments about the winery, more so about the fact that this is truly brilliant marketing.
5. I do despise this wine and wines of this style, I believe that "crowd pleasing" is a cop out for dumb, sweet wines. I appreciate the fact that they have made the world safe for non-mono varietal wines, but I also think that they are leading people right down the road of the bad overpriced Napa cabs we've all grown to loathe.
6. It's easy to be a critic. I applaud anyone who creates. Only the most influential could ever be a victim to my smarmy backhanded critiques, so if they catch my ire, they have already funded their retirement, and it comes with the territory of being a leader.
7. I am not jealous. I just disagree with the style-don't confuse the two. Jealousy is a lazy knock.
8. I don't disparage anyone that sells this wine. They have all done well for themselves with it, and in the world of quality wine, selling out really isn't fair. We rarely have a chance to select our own portfolio, and only a fool would say no to this sort of income.
9. People are wildly defensive about the wines they sell-I also decided that I would be equally defensive about one of my producers-affinity for your selections is an important part of this business, and a topic I will delve further into next week.

Thanks for reading!

Your dissenting opinion may be the key to engagement

Are you an affable, dependable, smiling well-groomed, honest and conscientious salesperson? That's good, but it's just not enough. You may be missing out on engagement. In this new era of social media, we are always discussing engagement. In those circles, engagement is the back and forth dialogue with the people that read your blog, twitter feed etc. The term has certainly been co-opted by the new mediums, but what does it mean in a one-on-one sales call?

Engagement is simple but very telling. It is a conversation. It can be small talk all the way up to real conversations about sales. Being that we are in the wine industry, we are surrounded by educated, intelligent, opinion spewing machines we call wine geeks. Wine geeks want to know how you feel about certain things, film, music art often will flow through conversations and a little friendly ribbing can be acceptable. When it comes to wine, however, many salespeople will be diplomats and start answering questions like they're on the witness stand. They are slightly uncomfortable with having a candid conversation and issuing a real opinion. Why do some salespeople close up the opinion shop when asked? Simple-Bad Training!

Many sales training professionals advise us to be aloof, vanilla, never controversial. This works great when you're taking an order for The Cheesecake Factory, but when you go to Joe's Underground Geek Wine Emporium, you better have an opinion to back up your TJ Maxxx tie. Your credibility as a sales rep will be made or broken depending on your opinions about all wine geek things. If you have an opinion, you'd better share it and back it up. If you don't have an opinion, you should probably ask for a different route.
This is engagement. This is the real back and forth between wine professionals besides the rote: weather kids, economy conversations. And with many accounts, its in these margins where you will succeed or fail.

Yeah, I get it, the Prisoner has escaped.

November is the time of year when limited release products are often unveiled. This is not a coincidence. This is when consumers buying expensive wine seems commonplace. Great hype often surrounds the trumpeted and rare opportunity to buy velvet lined boxes of something. One of the great scams/ marketing genius moves of all time was released just last week: The Prisoner.
*As a side note, I have many friends and colleagues that buy and sell this wine with great success, and I know many consumers that have enjoyed it over the years, this is simply a commentary not on the wine, but how powerful marketing can be.

The concept is simple: The wine is a Napa Blend primarily of Zinfandel, all purchased fruit. There is Cab and Charbono in the blend as well. The wine is released, a la Beaujolais Nouveau on a set date, November 1, to great pomp and circumstance. This seemingly limited wine is pre-sold like you just won't be able to get it. The label is quite attractive, and the entire package feels special. It gets a Napa Valley appellation and it's $35. Here's the thing: they make 70,000 cases of this one wine. What does that mean in relative terms? 70,000 cases makes them bigger than 95% of the bonded wineries in California, just from one wine. Strictly from a production standpoint, this is a very un-rare wine. So how does a winery that produces so many cases, maintain the aura of being special and rare? Marketing.
Rule #1: The label matters. This hand drawn label looks like it belongs in the ranks of the wines of Sine Qua Non.
Rule #2: Mystery. The proprietary name,along with idea of a mysterious blend is intriguing
Rule #3 Score. This wine has received some nice press by placing James Laube's palate right in their cross hairs. A little American Oak and Cab to spice up their Zin, and Laube all of a sudden likes this more than most Sonoma Zins (wonder why?). Oh, that would typically get you about 92 points
Rule #4 Price. $35 seems like a lot of money for a Zin based blend. Comparative pricing puts it about the sames as Ridge single vineyard bottlings. But this isn't a wine for serious Zin people. It's a wine for people that think that a blend is something to shop for. Therefore, this is expensive, but not too expensive. This is really the sweet spot for less serious wine drinkers trying to step up.
Rule #5-Perceived scarcity-Can I just one more time say 70,000 cases!!! They have told the people that want to buy their wine what they want them to believe, that this is a limited availability wine. This is Disney and their DVD vault all over again.
Rule #6-Place is important. As long as it says Napa.

The marketing minds behind this wine have done an incredible job of selling through this wine, much to the delight of many, many people. If you happen to produce an actual limited amount of wine and are having a tough time selling through your production, there is much to learn from this example. I would not recommend trying to replicate this model as it is built on a bit of hype over reality. That's always a tough strategy for long term growth, but an excellent way to entice some sucker into backing a truckload of money up your driveway.

Looking for affirmation from critics can be infuriating

Last Friday, the new erobertparker issue was released. I quickly scanned through it,as this part of my job. I had ups and downs throughout the issue. Some reviews I agreed with, some I disagreed with, and some just confused me. But I actually had an epiphany reading through these. Frankly, I may be slow to figure this out, the reason why we're all over critics-because they don't automatically affirm what we think we know.
When we scan the reviews in Spectator, or Parker, we already have a predisposed opinion about many wines. Of these wines, we have taken the time to determine how we feel about them, sometimes our bias is thrown because we have skin in the game i.e.: money or income. Sometimes it's simply because we have developed an affinity for a producer. When we see a review that doesn't go along with what we think they should be, it's tremendously frustrating.
Think about when one of the wines you love gets a great review. You all of a sudden feel redeemed. You feel like you picked out this diamond in the rough before anyone could discover. It's like you're frickin' Magellan. Feels awesome. What about when you taste a wines that you've never had before that one of the rags had dropped a 94 on? You're hypercritical, unless of course it winds up in your portfolio and you get to sell it.
Ultimately, we're all human. Try not to let your bias (you do have one whether you know it or not) get in the way. The reality is a review is just one person's attempted unbiased opinion (James Laube aside). In most cases, if this was a jury, you wouldn't make the cut, you have too much prejudice about the matter. If you really want to bag on the critics, take the truly biased ones to task first.

Isn't there some sort of line about judging not lest ye be judged? Yeah, this applies.

Our wine knowledge is turning into a wiki

As wine professionals, we are all faced with the vast and impossible task of self educating ourselves. There is certainly a segment of the wine population that goes through a formalized trajectory, but this is most often associated with production and science. As a sommelier, or a sales person, we must figure out the most direct path to learn as much as possible. With the absence of a common curriculum, we usually wander and meander through wine education. We form "tribes" of tasting groups and after work, we get together to chat about wine industry gossip and some earnest discussion about arcane facts. This is our classroom.
There are certainly important figures within the wine world that have tried desperately to provide a wine course, most notably, Kevin Zraly. These people are owed a debt of gratitude, but one person, or a group of people, have been largely ineffective in teaching the masses the upper level courses of wine knowledge. The deeper you go, the scarcer the organized education becomes. I've bemoaned how, as an industry, we test well but don't teach so well.
What we have done as a group, is become our own greatest sources of information. The floating conventional wisdom of our wine tribe is ever changing, and rarely verified. This resembles the concept of a wiki. Now, we use wikipedia quite a bit, but what I am referring to is sort of the common thoughts we all gather from each other. We are all educating each other, constantly comparing notes, and ideally, constantly editing our own knowledge bases.

The thundering herd, all racing to the middle

As a wine sales professional, how do you measure your success? By not catching anyone's ire? By flying under the radar? By comfortably showing up to your accounts every day, chitchatting about the weather, punching in at 10:30 and out by 4:30. It may seem good enough, but it's not.If this sounds like you, you are an order taker.

*Broad generalization alert*
I am noticing more and more, sales reps using each other as the barometer of success. They are running the race like it's a marathon, just trying to stay with the pace. When they start losing placements, the buyers become "idiots". They aren't sampling every day, and when they do, it's obviously items that are on goal and have no rhyme or reason for that account. Incidentally-it's a lot easier to fulfill goals when they sample everyday, and sprinkle them into their usual presentations, this way it won't look suspicious. If they follow the lead of the pack, then not only will they never be in control of their business, they cease to be assets and become neutral, or a liability to their accounts. This business isn't a marathon, every placement is a sprint. It's not difficult to be excellent.

There always have been plenty of salespeople out there driving their company cars with their antiquated palm pilots. Mostly, they aren't really very happy about their role in this mortal coil. You don't need to follow them to the middle. You are selling wine! I can't overemphasize how cool this is. It's not easy, but if you can stay motivated, and your own toughest critic, you can excel. I mean, you already know what the standard is, and you should be able to easily exceed it.

If you're in wine sales, the calendar just caught up with you

We're here! OND! For those uninitiated, OND is-October, November and December . A time during which, we have been led to believe, all of the wine is sold for the entire year. This is obviously not true, I railed against this thinking last year. That said, OND is still very important. A disproportionate amount of wine is sold during this 3 month stretch. Couple that with the fact that you can't get a solid presentation scheduled during November and December-This is the last month of the year to influence any purchases for the next 3+ months.

Pressure? Nah. It's not as daunting as it sounds. as a salesperson, there are a few things you can do to make this last window of opportunity pay off:

• Be on call 24/7-If your account calls you, even after hours, answer it. I'm all about the work/ life separation. October is the only month of the year where I say duty calls.
• Do favors-Maybe this means standing and pouring at multiple charity events. Do it, this is the time when your buyer will call in those favors. It may not translate into acute purchases, but it's also an awfully good way to lose business you have just by annoying your buyer when they need you.
• Be creative and observant-If they aren't already in place, help your buyers develop original strategies, whether this is displays, events or just purchases.
• Do every in store/ restaurant event you can- Your buyers will appreciate the help and it's good way to get the higher traffic tastings in the next 2 months, by paying your dues in the last moderately busy month.
• Sit down with your buyers to determine if you should modify your account call times for the last 2 months. Peak hours will change, and if you're sensitive to their needs, they will enjoy doing increased business with you.
• Don't press-Buyers sense desperation, and will always blow you off if you sound desperate. Remember, their job is not to do you favors, but to do favors for their own bottom line.
• Finally-Hustle, find your groove.
  

When good wine seems bad, or, nibbling at some potential hocus pocus

Last week was a typical week weather wise here in the mid-west. One day it's sunny and clear, the next, cold and rainy. Temperatures were all over the map. I was mired in a series of 4 trade tastings in a row. One of my colleagues had noted that some people believe wines taste different on different days based on whether or not its a flower or root day. I had heard this, in fact, the buyers from Tesco (Large British Grocers) famously, only taste on whatever the right type of day it is. This led to a discussion about atmospheric conditions affecting the way wines show. I had never knowingly experienced this phenomenon, but it sounded like maybe it's not impossible. We then went to set up the tasting for that day. Nearly 100 bottles were opened. We discovered through the course of the day, nearly a dozen were flat out corked-considering a pretty good smattering of stelvin and vinoloks, this was a lot by any industry standard. Couple that with the fact that most were higher end wines from relatively modern winemaking facilities-this was a very significant outlier. I had just done 2 tasting in the days before, with about half as many wines, and only 2 corked bottle in the 2 days combined. The next day, again, about 50 wines, none corked. Now, I'm all about the Infinite Monkey Theorem, but this seemed more than coincidental. The bad day, was raining cold and obviously a low pressure day barometrically speaking. In addition to the corked bottles, I kept finding wines that I really know well, to be showing really tight and unforgiving. Next day, everything was fine, and it was a beautiful day.

I need to go on record as saying that I am a cynic. I would have likely dismissed all of this and you wouldn't be reading about it if I hadn't seen something like this first hand. The power of suggestion can be a powerful thing though. On the othe rhand, we've all seen wines we know and love, acting not quite the they did when we first fell in love with them. My question for you is: What do you think? Every experienced anything like this? Flower or Root? Barometric pressure? Humidity? Moon Phase? What is it? And to really make you think, is that variable actually affecting the wine or our finely tuned palate?

The inevitable trade show

In most markets, September and October are widely recognized as trade tasting months. Distributors jockey for the exact date they want months in advance, try to book as many tables as possible and charge outrageous table fees. In most cases, this is a tremendous waste of time and energy. If you are a large distributor, this is an inevitablity. You don't sample enough wines during the rest of the year, so in order for your customers to get to know your product, you need to rent a hall, and serve mottled cubes of co-jack cheese.

For the rest of us, a trade show may be optional. I know that this betrays conventional wisdom, but it's true. You could actually just sink your budget from a trade show into increasing your day to day inventory and sampling budget. You would get no complaints from your suppliers, and their money is also better spent investing in your sampling programs and incentives for the sales team. If you can't shake the guilt/ obligation feeling of needing to host a trade show here are a few very important guidelines:

• Don't waste anyone's time-Whether this is your customer or your supplier. Make sure there is a good reason for them to be attending your show.
  
• Pick a good location-Sometimes the oddest venue is the most memorable.
• Great and interesting food-no brainer
• Be original in everything
  
• Blow them away with your selection-Open a few ridiculous bottles
  
• Create a buzz-If you do the above things well, this will follow
• Understand why your are hosting an event-For P.R.! If you are a small distributor, you need to reinforce why people are doing business with you. This is your one time of the year to show them what your business looks like beyond 1 salesperson, 1 delivery guy and an invoice. Details are very important.
• You can't replace 9 months of poor sampling and representation with 3 hours in a crowded room somewhere.
  
• Make it fun for the suppliers-Take them out somewhere cool afterward. Arrange interesting ideas for them to burn free time. These get really old really fast. If you can coordinate some cool down time activities, you'll be a hero. Happy Suppliers= more sales.
  

Bottom line- This is money spent you'll have a very hard time justifying or tracking. The direct sales are pretty few and far between. If you view this as a "thank you for your continued business" and make it fun, your business just might grow as a result.

You can't discount optimism

In a counterpoint to my last blog post about the "Dinosaurs of Retail", I'd like to call attention to a new species of retailer: The one that succeeds because they don't know any better.

The old guard and conventional wisdom of the wine world have a way of suppressing even the most rampant wide eyed enthusiasm. As times have changed, the merchants that prospered during the 80's and 90's became cynical as their market changed. Once in a while, you come across a retailer that hasn't been jaded, one that doesn't realize that times have changed. The state of the business today is the only reality many of them have ever know. This gives them a huge leg up on the competition. They haven't fallen victim to conventional wisdom yet, and as a result, they are discovering the new boundaries of where our market is.

Consumers haven't stopped buying wines that cost hundreds of dollars, though, that market surely has diminished. The new guard, just discovering some of the world's best wines, are coming up with creative ways to turn consumers on to them. I am now seeing break-even tastings featuring wines worth hundreds of dollars. More people will pay $25 for a 2 oz pour of Chave or a "la la" than you would expect. The rare chance to try one of these wines may be enough to turn someone into a collector. The amazing correlation to all of this of course is the decreased reliance on the Ratings Rags.

Veterans of the industry are quick to dismiss what this new breed is doing. I just can't see why they would want to squelch this approach. It seems like telling a tightrope walker to "look down". My message to them, don't trust the old guard, you're doing great.

The dinosaurs of retail

It seems that no matter where you are in this country, you can always find a dusty, tired, sad, dark, cold wine shop, that is run by a crusty guy that laments on how much better things used to be. As much as the economy hasn't been all that great as of late (you may have heard this), every indicator suggests that the wine industry is very healthy, specifically in the consumer sales growth department. Some speculate that fine wines (over $20 retail) sales, growth has eclipsed 10% for more than 12 out of the last 13 years.

So why do so many veterans think the wine industry used to be so much better? The easy answer is-It's changed, and they haven't. There was a time, not that long ago, when big corporations would send a peon into their local wine shop (the aforementioned dirty dusty archetype of what a wine shop was perceived to have been) to purchase a dozen cases of overpriced, brand name Napa Cab for their 100 or so best clients. They did this a couple times a year, and was repeated by many companies. Imagine how easy those sales were. No inventorying, just clearing at a 30% markup. Thank you and thank you. This was enough business to sustain the other 10 or so months of the year when business came in the door in a trickle. Frankly, the buyers at these shops didn't feel obligated to be all that nice to the novice wine buyers that require a lot of attention for a 1 or 2 bottle purchase.

Flash Forward 10 years, what has changed? The expense accounts have disappeared and the wine buying public has been replaced by the 25-34 demographic. They grew up in the age of Urban Outfitters and The Gap. They like bright eyed wine shop owners with ample lighting and clean shelves. They also like knowledgeable friendly wine shops that have enthusiasm and patience. If they aren't catering to the novice and hosting great in-store tastings, they're just waiting to go extinct, like the gaudy expense accounts that their business was based on.

Your first wine list sucked, Sorry, but it did.

I was in an account earlier this week, where the buyer had just taken over from a waiter that was handling the wine list. The new buyer was a pretty savvy guy that clearly knew what he was doing. He and the sales rep I was with were having a pretty hearty laugh at the current wine list. I immediately sympathized with the former buyer. The list was chock full of classic rookie foibles. It was a wasteland of Cakebread, Chalk Hill, Sonoma Cutrer, Banfi and Jadot. Clearly the big guys had gotten to him. Thing is, it looked an awful lot like the first wine list I wrote, and the wine list that seems to repeat itself over and over. Odds are, if you've ever written a wine list, your first one sucked too.
The above mentioned wines are fine on an educated buyer's wine list. They can often give safe harbor for the intimidated customer and can be used to fill specific needs. This guy had no idea the interplay between all of these mainstream selections. They are all safe harbors, playing it safe turns the wine list into a grocery store aisle. Rookie buyers need to be able to write a list, no matter how bad it is. They will learn. I remember thinking when I was writing my first few lists "I hope I don't make an ass out of myself on this one". The poor waiter whose list they were cracking hard on was written as a safety move, the catch 22 is, he didn't know enough about wine to write a good list yet. Damned either way.
How do they get better? Simple. It's up to us to educate the rookie. Not with propaganda, but with interesting and diverse samples. It's our responsibility to show rookies wine, even if it makes no sense in their establishment. Not for them to buy, but to help them expand their horizons. Help them figure out their palate, and what works for them. In our world, their is nothing more rewarding than putting together the best wine list of your life, and that's usually each subsequent one after the first.

Kings of the 4-day work week

"Wine sales", as was once told to me by a mentor, "is the hardest business to be great in, but the easiest to be bad in". What he was getting at, of course, is the impossibility of accounting for a sales rep's time. It's pretty easy to do the bare minimum, work a modified cherry account run, and still earn a buck. As managers, we assume they are diligently seeing all of their accounts, giving solid presentations, volunteering for events, and generally being accountable. The reality is, we have no real way to know on a day to day basis what is going on out there. There are plenty of companies that try to make them submit plans for the day ahead, or for the previous week, but no one ever really double checks.
What has eventually happened, is the entire day of Friday has been largely written off as a selling day. There are usually no deliveries on the next business day (Monday), and it has become culturally acceptable to be creative with this time. This is the most common day for sales meetings, sometimes requiring many hours in the car to and from. Often the time is utilized for end of week paperwork, and emergency weekend deliveries. What if this time were used to sell wine? What if you were to take a bag of samples out, say, 2 Fridays a month?
There are a number of reasons beyond the cynical that we don't really work the market on Fridays. Many retailers are busy getting ready for the weekend, ditto restaurants. But what if you are likely the only rep out there on Friday, and you have an appointment? You will get a better crack at an uninterrupted presentation than if there are 4 reps lined up behind you. If you are well regarded by your accounts, they may even welcome the diversion. Each account is a little different, so Friday's need to be handled carefully. This presents an opportunity to be better than good enough, and certainly better than the majority of your competitors.

Jealous Much?

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run. ~George Bernard Shaw

As of late, I have run into a tremendous amount of distrust amongst distributors. Since I am no longer a distributor, I have really been seeing it through different eyes. Perhaps naively, I put together a company that wasn't too closely linked to just one distributor, but instead diversified among a handful of superior companies. I assumed that when it came to the issue of reps seeing me on the streets with their competitors, it wouldn't be a big deal. In some cases I was right, but in many cases I was wrong. Without really getting into the gory details, I'll just say that as I am having increased success, my distributors are wondering which distributor my priorities are with. The reality is, my priority is with my winery clients. But I definitely give attention to the companies that reply to emails and phone calls. There's plenty of me to go around, just utilize me! I don't prefer one distributor over another. They are all my partners, and I sincerely want them all to succeed.
This all may speak to a deeper issue. One that isn't discussed very often. The real competitiveness of many distributors. As times have gotten tougher, I see distributors fighting each other more and more. I see maneuvering, and dirty tricks more than ever. Maybe I'm a "great society" type that says that if distributors put together great portfolios, strong training, are honest and help accountable, then attrition will take care of everything. This is all of a sudden, a very cutthroat industry at an equally cutthroat time. Everyone just needs to chill out a bit. The reality check should be that you aren't competing for just one placement. Buyers will stock their stores with as many items that a) make sense b) you give great presentations to c) fit what they need at that price. Notice how those 3 factors do not include your competitors. The truth is, you are the biggest variable, you can't worry about your competitor if you're not taking care of your other business. It's like being competitive with the weather.