Yet Another Wine Selection Epic Fail: Fifty Shades of Red … Wine

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Dear Wine Retailer:

If you really want to stay in  business, you need to help customers find a wine THEY will like.

Not a wine YOU feel they SHOULD like.

Vino-Masochism: Fifty Shades of Red … Wine

I was feeling vino-masochistic Saturday afternoon because wanted t0 drink some wine that I had not tried before. Because of previous face-to-face retail wine recommendation experiences, I was prepared for an unpleasant experience.

I got more than I expected.

Can I Find A Nice Bottle for $40?

I went to Sonoma Market which has a very nice selection of wines. I was prepared to pay up to $40.

In the wine aisle, I spotted one of the store’s wine sales people and remembered him as someone who doesn’t like the same wines I do.

In other words, this person follows the fads and fashions which — right now — means wines that my palate considers thin, watery, sour, lacking in fruit.

And never mind how the wine tastes. When it comes to ABV, today’s wine-fad-follower has no need to taste many wines to form an opinion: they read the label and the alcohol is more than 13%, then the wine is automatically crap and don’t see no reason to bother pulling the cork. I got a load of that current and stylish dogma a little later.

Contra-Calibration

Anyway, I figured that if “Calibration of liked wines” didn’t work, then perhaps on this occasion, “Contra-Calibration” might.

So, I got his attention. I immediately laid out my out-of-date and un-stylish taste preferences and expressed those in very clear terms by mentioning wines I have bought there before.

His lip curled at the thought and said:

“Oh … you like those simple, over-expressed wines and by the way Ridge treats everyone badly now that they are so famous and no longer offer their wines to us.”

Simple. Over-expressed. Delivered with a sneer.

Run! Don’t Look Back!

Again I should have sprinted from the store.

But I stayed as he launched into a derisive tour of awful, simple wines on the shelf behind him: Wilson & Mazzoco Zins among others. They were, according to him, awful, simple, over-alcohol-ed and … over-expressed.

And so it went. Like a performance of Sartre’s No Exit in which I would spend eternity listing to him rant about how could any intelligent person possibly like THOSE wines.

Finally, I decided to break the existential rant, make my own exit and picked tabottle of Mazzocco Zin off the shelf … mostly because it seemed to get the worst of his abuse.

Had I left then, the Contra-Calibration may have worked. He hated it which indicated that it was probably to my liking.

But he persisted. And I didn’t leave.

The Complexity Complex

“That wine has no complexity,” he said. “Surely you value complexity.”

I let him hook me. I was tired of arguing because all I wanted was a decent bottle of wine not an extended debate.

I put the Mazzocco back on the shelf.

My mistake.

In the end, I bought the two bottles pictured above.

Palate Abuse

Let me preface the continuation of this rant by saying that there are undoubtedly people who will like these wines  which I found giant, raging tannin-monsters with no fruit, no subtlety and no complexity.

They both had a lip pucker-factor of about f/1000.

Perceptions Vary: Learn To Live With That!

If wine sales people are to be successful, they have to understand that perceptions vary.

And when someone comes in and names specific and widely available wines that they like, the wine sales person has a duty to know the inventory well enough that they can recommend wines that they don’t personally like. And not to try and convince the customer their palate is crap.

Wine recommendations based on these sorts of encounters are doomed to fail much of the time. That’s an opinion based on 45 years of experience including the ownership of a wine importer/wholesaler/distributorship in Los Angeles.

Many Happy Returns

Kudos to Sonoma Market.

I re-corked both bottles (minus a tasting pour of a couple of ounces), took them back within half an hour and got no argument for returning them.

Yes, I bought two more bottles of wine — those I had tasted before and knew I would like. And spent less than $40 for both of them.

All’s well that ends well … especially when there is a learning experience as well.

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• When Rogue Wine Calibration Bites You In The … Palate
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