Terry is here pouring his wines. He always seems to wind up pouring on rainy days and Mondays. Honestly, he usually seems to be pouring on rainy Mondays. And true to form… it’s a rainy Monday. Rainy Mondays aren’t the busiest days for foot traffic, but that’s OK because Terry and I can gossip a bit in between the customer. It also gives me a chance to whip up some fun shelf talkers for his wines. (NOTE: what you see below aren’t really shelf talkers.They’re neckers. But that’s a technicality that only supermarket buyers and POS specialists care about.)
Have a look at my handywork below… and just in case your eyesight isn’t quite so good, I’ve typed out the specifics.)
Aquila del Torre AT Sauvignon Blanc: Italian Sauvignon Blanc… not your usual suspect. Put it under house arrest — your house
Gillia Freisa d’Asti: Like Nebbiolo in a bustier (think Sophia Loren in leather)
Gillia Malvasia: Only mean people don’t like this wine
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This was sucha good idea. Should have done more of this. And should do it again. I could include delivery drivers!
Frankly Wines has a Facebook page. Why? I’m not so sure why, but we have one. And when you have a Facebook page, one of the objectives is to get people to like it, pay attention to your posts, and comment on them.
If those are the objectives, than our two most successful posts in 2011 were:
A picture of a cat sitting next to a bottle of Puffeney Chardonnay
A picture of one of my sales reps holding a massive bottle of wine
Those results could lead me to just post links to the Lolcat site, but honestly, those cats sort of annoy me. And they don’t have much to do with wine. But the sales rep posts…that could be fun, relevant….and if done right, not require a lot of work.
And then the idea of the Frankly Wines Five Questions was born.
As background, this idea is based on the idea of the Proust Questionnaire, a sort of party game popular at the turn of century (the last century). Proust didn’t write the questions (which include queries about your favorite virtue, your heros, and how you would like to die) but his answers are some of the most famous. If you’re not exactly a student of 4,000 page novels or the parlor games of the Belle Epoque but this still sounds familiar, you many recognize the modern version that always runs on the final page of Vanity Fair magazine.
So the Frankly Wines version is five open-ended wine questions that we’ll put to the many wine reps that come through our doors. They answer the questions, pick out their favorite bottle in the store (that they don’t rep), we take a picture (and put it in the always-popular fish-eye view) and voila – a Facebook post.
There are some very cool people in the ranks of the wheelie-bag-pulling sales rep army. We know them well, but we thought it would be fun to introduce them to the rest of the world.
(And….it’s a really easy way to put together an entertaining post.)
On to the our guinea pig:
Clarke Boehling, Rosenthal Wine Merchant
1. Your idea of perfect wine happiness: A cellar full of wines that have personal resonance for me, in a house I designed myself, in which I have space and time to cook meals to pair my wines with.
2. Your idea of absolute wine misery: Doing an in-store tasting during which every single customer describes my wines as “tart.”
3. Preferred method of wine sample transportation: Donkey. But, because that’s difficult in NYC, I stick to my red L.L. Bean bookbag from 8th grade
4. Dream dinner companion (living/or dead): David Lynch. (At his house.)
5. Wine pairing that blew your mind: 2005 Montbourgeau Savagnin and raw oysters. BRINE on BRINE! And not something that would have immediately occurred to me.
Frankly Wines Pick:Domaine Macle Chateau-Chalone Vin Jaune 2003: Why this one? We forgot to make Clarke tell us why, but in this case, the wine speaks for itself! You don’t see many bottles of this sitting around, so when you see it, you grab it!)
This post is from the original Frankly Wines newsletter. I think it’s pretty funny, but I’m easy that way. It was inspired by a conversation with one of my sales reps. We were talking about how he was starting to put stuff away for future consumption. I gave him some things to think about, but he was hesitatnt. I told him to just do it, that his future self would thank him. And from that conversation, this post was born. Of course it took me about a month to get around to actually writing it, but that’s life with three kids and a wine shop!
On to the post: A NOTE FROM YOUR FUTURE SELF
(OK, this first part is from me. Your Future Self will chime in later…)
So no matter what you’re drinking right this very minute, if you’re serious about wine (and I mean serious about drinking wine, not about treating it like a trophy and hoarding it away for the benefit of future auction buyers) than do your future self a favor and pick up some Cru Beaujolais now.
Now I’m not talking about Beaujolais Nouveau (which shouldn’t age must past the year it was bottled) – I’m talking about the very good stuff from villages such as Morgon, Brouilly, or Fleurie. These are wines that can be hard to resist straight out of the gate, but really start to show their stuff with a bit of bottle age…. say, about five years… which will be just about the time your Future Self will be craving them.
I could tell you all about these wines. How they manage to combine bright, lip-smacking fruit with sneaky mineral complexity. How they remain one of the wine world’s great values. I could go on about the subtle differences between the various crus. But I don’t need to.. because your Future Self already knows all about them. So don’t listen to me. Listen to… you:
Dear Current Self,
Do me a favor. Buy some of these wines. Even better – buy some in magnum. If you don’t, five years from now, you’ll be wishing you had some, remembering this email and kicking yourself. Or myself. Or ourselves… or…whatever. Just buy the Beaujolais! Seriously, you’ll thank you later.
I’ve posted before about the sad underbelly of “living the dream” of owning a wine store. One of the sad things is the lack of the big, fat corporate expense account… Or an account to buy shiny new computer equipment (or an IT department to set it up.) So when your old stuff moves into the scuffed-and-limping-along phase, you deal with it for as long as you need to.
So when you drop your phone two months after buying it…And the screen cracks…but the touch screen still works..and yeah, there are glass shards kind of sticking out but they’re not actually drawing blood…and the kids can still play Angry Birds without inflicting harm on their little fingers…
When this happens, you stick with your sad sack phone for as long as you can, ideally until your contract resets. Which is what I did. And yes, I could have gone to any of the many “guys” that helpful customers knew that could fix me up. But that would require phone calls, and subway trips and time….and like I said – it’s not like anyone’s fingers were bleeding!
But…yesterday after over a year of using this cracked phone, my contract reset and I was able to justify getting a replacement. With the upgraded insurance. And the super protective outercase. And the new Siri feature (which frankly, is a little creepy, but it’s even more entertaining than Angry Birds.)
So bye bye iPhone. I’m sorry I dropped you…so many, many times. But you served me well until the end. RiP(hone)
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Part of the reason that people never thought we had spritis is because the shop name was Frankly Wines. If it had been Frankly Wines & Spirits, that would have solved the problem. But it wouldn’t really have fit on the sign. (And when I first opened that shop, I had a wine-only license.) Customers take the names of alcohol-related shops very literally. You think I would have learned that lesson and names my new shop Copake Wine & Spirits Works. But nope, I went with just Copake Wine Works. It fit on the sign, it evoked the nearby Copake Iron Works. And honestly, even though we do sell spirits, we’re not the typical “liquor store” that “& Spirits” or “& Liquor” evokes. I think even if we did have that catagory in our name, people would still walk into the shop and ask where the liquor is.
I worked in marketing for many years before opening this store, so I know a thing or two about the theortical application of reach and frequency in the midst of major media clutter. But with the store, I’m living the reality. Every chance I get, I mention that we now sell spirits. It’s in the newsletter. Every newsletter. For the last six months. We have a big sign at the store with a big arrow pointing at the spirits shelves. And those shelves happen to sit right next to the cash register, where there’s usually a helpful Frankly Wines employee ready and willing to answer questions.
And one of those questions is often, “Is there a store around here that sells spirits.”
Now from this position, if the person asking the question were to just turn their head a half click and focus, they would see several shelves filled with spirits. Actually, they probably did see the shelves. They just didn’t SEE them. Such is the nature of our cluttered environment.
Anyhow, this is a long way of introducing some of the gift options we’re most excited about this year Cocktail Kits!
Because they involve sprits. Which we know sell. Right up there by the cash register. Right in front of your eyes.
The Not-So-Classic Not-Champagne Cocktail Kit: All boxed up and ready to go, this could be the perfect gift for your favorite budding mixologist, bar chef, or whatever they want to be called these days. Each kit includes everything you need to make Nick’s not-so-classic take on a classic Champagne cocktail. It’s the perfect accompaniment to brunch, with just a little sweetness, a hint of berry fruit notes from the cassis, and a lovely floral lift from the Elderflower Liqueur. And bonus – the bottles are really, really pretty.
Each kit includes 1 bottle each:
Pierre Chermette Crème de Cassis Chase Elderflower Liqueur Vullien Sparkling Vin de Savoie + a recipie card
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I really need to get the Copake Wine Works wine club up and rolling. Soon. Soon!!!!
I firmly believe the best way to learn about wine is to get out there and just drink it. Drink wines you’re not familiar with. Made from grapes you’ve never heard of. Grown in regions you can’t find on a map without aguide. You may not like everything you try, but you may also find something you absolutely love, that completely takes you by surprise.
And the best way to get these bottles of wine you never you needed?
Easy….join a Frankly Wines Wine Club!
(Full disclosure: I may be somewhat conncected to Frankly Wines. But if you didn’t already know that, you really need to pay more attention.)
So…Wine Clubs. We have options…lots of them.
There’s our monthly Sampler, available in two different budget options. Or go for maximum impact with our Bubbling Over sparkling clubs.
All are available in 3-, 6-, and 12-month options. Or go on a month-by-month basis – just sign up and we’ll keep sending you wine (and charging you for it, we’re not THAT generous) until you tell us to stop.
Click here for details. (Please ignore the wonky formatting, it’s still very readable and this time of year, there’s not enough time to slow down and fix it.)
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Oh the days when I could buy as much Ledru as I wanted and sell it for $50. I dont’ like to live in the past, but this holiday season had a bit of “glory days” about it. It was so much fun to sell these wines at a price that was wildly affordable for any champagne – especially these. As predicted, the wines blew up, Marie-Noelle retired, and the prices when up – but still not sky-high, not really compared to where they could have gone. One of my favorite memories of this time in the wine world was my Ledru pen. Some tchotchke company had taken the picture below from my web site and put it on a sample pen that they sent me to try to drum up business. It arrived in the mail and I couldn’t stop laughing at the tiny little image of Marie-Noelle Ledru on a cheap ballpoint pen. I wish I still had that pen. I do still have a few bottles of Ledru left. Maybe it’s time to open them.
‘Tis the season to drink Champagne. Is there really any more to say?
(Ok, there is more to say. Like that you shouldn’t wait until the holidays to drink Champagne. You should drink it year round. Whenever you want. And not just for big celebrations. Because champagne is “just” wine with bubbles. And it’s delicious!)
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I still post a version of this every year. It’s still true. Most people still reserve Champagne for special occassions, when simply opening a bottle of will make any occassion special.
Now, on to the recommendation.
Marie Noelle Ledru outstanding in her field (photo credit: Bonhomie Wine Imports)
If I could place a bet on which champagne is going to be the hottest thing going in the next couple years, I would bet on the bubbles of Marie Noëlle Ledru.
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Yeah well, I sure called that one.
This is Grower Champagne produced in the tiniest of quantities. Ledru owns 6 hectares of vines – small enough as it is, but absolutely tiny when you consider she sells off half of that to bigger houses. She farms without chemicals or pesticides, minimizes sulfur additions, hand-disgorges each bottle, and does the riddling on her own.
Yes, all this attention to detail makes for good copy, but the wines speak for themselves. They’re a marvel of ripe fruit, firm minerality, earthy, salty, biscuity goodness. But what’s most amazing is the pricing. This bottle is $50 on the shelf. Certain perfectly-nice-but-but-definitely-not-hand-tended champagnes are pushing this price point.
But that $50 price tag may not last for long. [A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: hahahahahahahahaha. $50 for Ledru!!! I’m literally (like really, literally, actually, crying] As I mentioned, Ledru is poised on the edge of being the next big (well, not really big) thing. The people who talk about such things are quietly buzzing about these wines. Their charm, their deliciousness, their sheer value. The distributor has already removed any quantity deals…because what’s the point of a quantity deal when there’s not much quantity to sell.
So next year, when every single cool kid is going on about Ledru, you can say you drank it when.
Marie Noelle Ledru Grand Cru Ambonnay Brut NV Price: $49.99 Marie Noelle LeDru Grand Cru Ambonnay Brut NV (Magnum) Price: $99.99 Marie Noelle LeDru Grand Cru Brut 2002 Price: $74.99
Arriving soon: Extra Brut, Extra Brut Magnums, Rose
Yes, I clearly have a thing for these wines.
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I should have bought more. Way way way more.
We’re now in what I call the silly season, more commonly known as DECEMBER! As my 7 year-old would say, “In my imaginary world, I have a beautiful booklet laying out all my suggested gift options. Would you like one?”
But that’s the imaginary world. In the real world, the autumn decorations are still in the windows, I’m still sorting out my Champagne buy, and there’s no beautiful booklet anywhere in the near future.
But there will be blog posts. And facebook posts. And tweets. So stay tuned.
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Yeah, there wasn’t much of any of the above. Well, maybe there were tweets, but I’m not going to wade through them. As for blog posts? There were exactly four more before the end of the year.
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: It’s impossible for me to post about muscat and not make a joke about “muscat love.” This was true back in 2011 and it’s still true now. Except now, in all the social apps, I could actually add the tune Muskrat Love to the posts. Would that have helped me sell those magnums any faster? Doubt it, but I would have bought them anyway!
I have a thing for muscat-based wines….especially dry versions. Or ‘almost’ dry versions. Sales reps know this, so I’m an easy target. I already had signed up for the regular size bottles of this delicious, very-nearly dry Binner muscat, so my former-staffer-now-sales-guy knew I would be a sucker for the big magnum bottles.
Supercool, super-tall magnums.
Biodynamic/little-to-no-manipulation wine-making.
Yummy dry wine with the slightest bit of CO2 prickle….it was a clear case of muscat love-at-first-sight.
Obviously I’m biased, but I do think this wine would be an objectively good match to the Thanksgiving dinner. You could drink it before, during, and after. And never mind the actual wine – the bottle is just damn cool. Be the hit of the party and pick up a big bottle. Or go all Goldilocks and get both small and large….together, they’re just right
Domaine Binner Muscat Ca Gazouille 2008:$29.99 Domaine Binner Muscat Ca Gazouille 2008 Magnum 1.5 Liter:$52.99
