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: Oh I remember those days. One of the huge perks of owning the business is that no one can tell you not to bring your kids to work. The kid in the picture actually drinks wine now. And has a pretty decent palate!
This installment of Things You Need to Know doesn’t really apply to all potential wine store owners. Just the ones that think it would be a good idea to open a wine store six months or so before having a third kid. Because if you, then eventually there will be a day when your manager has the rare weekend off, your newest staffer has a delayed start date due a nasty bronchial infection, your backups all dare to have lives outside of being your backups…and one of your kids will have a birthday party in the wide-open space of a Brooklyn park that guarantees at least one of your other kids will wander off into the Brooklyn wilderness if your husband attempts to take all three of them to the party.
Which is a long way of saying that if you have three kids and a wine store, eventually you’ll wind up with one of them in the shop in need of a couple hours worth of entertainment. They want to have fun. You want to get some work done. But there’s only so much work that can get done when the kiddo can’t even reach the counter.
Here are some tips:
Stock the Bottles Game
Shocking how well this one works. Probably because the kids aren’t usually allowed to touch the bottles. But in this game, not only do they get to touch the bottles…they get to MOVE THEM! To play, each shelf section is assigned a letter (another use for the indispensable Post-It Note.) Then the grown up calls out “yellow tops, Section A” or green tops, Section C,” or whatever. The lucky kiddo gets to PICK UP and MOVE THE BOTTLES from the wherever they’ve been piled to the assigned section. Once all the bottles are lined up, the lucky kiddo gets to yet again, PICK UP THE BOTTLES and HAND THEM to the grown up who puts them on the shelf. And if the kid is very, very lucky, he may even get to PUT BOTTLES ON THE SHEFL ALL BY HIMSELF! (Unless you’re 3 – 7 years old, you probably can’t imagine how exciting this is.)
Make a Display Game
First, you need to explain that a “display” is something you set up to be eye catching so people will stop as they walk by and want to learn more. Then you let the kiddo loose with various, often forbidden goodies, in this case, corks, plastic cups, flower pots (from the actual spring window display, fake autumn leaves, and yes….BOTTLES!
Photo Shoot
Give him the phone. Let him take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Delete as needed. (Although some may turn out to be sort of cool, in an abstract impressionist sort of way.)
Last Resort Let Angry Birds and Red Remover get you through the home stretch.
Today, we actually didn’t need to get to the Last Resort phase. The plastic dinos came out of the rolly bag (yes, we packed a rolly bag even through the apartment is right round the corner.) They took over a few wine boxes and the husband and other two kiddos returned just as they were about to annex the Australia section.
A while back, I shared a quick tip on how to remove slow pours from a wine bottles. Or rather, how to remove a slow pour from a wine bottle without breaking a nail or slicing your finger off.
Now if you don’t already know (and haven’t already guessed) what a slow pour is, then here’s the definition: it’s a little plastic device that allows you to pour wine s-l-o-w-l-y. Without looking stingy. Which is especially important at big, fancy tastings where you want to give lots of people a little taste of wine but are too cheap to run through more than a bottle or two.
These are geezers.
So the other day, I’m talking with one of my sales reps to coordinate an upcoming tasting at the store. What time to arrive, which wines, what order – the usual – when he asks if I have any geezers he could borrow. This is a strange question, so I ask for a little clarification.Well, apparently ‘geezers’ are his name for slow pour – which makes perfect sense since geezers stereotypically move more slowly than the average person – especially if that person is a New York City wine sales rep. ‘Geezer’ also implies a certain crankiness, which is usually how the person pouring the wine feels when stuck behind a table dealing with clinkers, anti-spiters, and the general sloppiness that is a big, fancy tasting*
These are also geezers….but you can’t put them in a box.
So we’ve started to call them geezers at the store. It’s especially fun to yell down the basement – “bring me some geezers – they’re in that box under the stairs!” Just as long as no one from the AARP is in ear shot.
*Not to be confused with the good time that is pouring at a cool, little Frankly Wines in-store tasting, where the pourers get to stand in front of the table.
I’m from Ohio, so I’m used to tornados. Or at least tornado warnings. You sort of know one might be coming, but there’s not much warning. In school, we spent a lot of time practicing tornado drills, just in case a giant funnel cloud suddenly descended from the sky. Our high school mascot was even a tornado. So I get tornados.
But we didn’t see many hurricanes in Ohio. Hurricane Irene is my first one. And so far, as we sit here waiting for the storm to hit, my first impression is that hurricanes involve a lot of, well, waiting. And preparation. And then more waiting.
Since we don’t really know what we’re getting until it gets here…and since I live just around the corner from the shop, and just around the corner from the evacuation zone, determining opening hours has been an exercise in playing it by ear.
The plan: stay at the shop until one of three things happened:
Customers stopped coming in the door
Wind and rain started to threaten a safe trip home
My husband called in need of backup to deal with three building-bound kiddos
How to communicate this to those hunkering down and needing wine? The old school Door Sign + Chalkboard Method worked pretty well.
The Chalkbaord
The Door Sign
And…in case you’re wondering. I shut down around 4.30PM. And the kiddos had nothing to do with it!
A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This was Hurricane Irene, which turned out to be a bit of a nothing burger. At least down in NYC. Upstate in the Hudson Valley it was a major disaster. One year later, in October 2012, Hurricane Sandy would be another story. But we’ll get to that in future posts!
If you haven’t heard, there’s a hurricane on the way. Everyone here is busy putting together their emergency preparedness kits (except me, I’m putting together this blog post.)
The National Hurricane Center recommends the following: Batteries, water, insurance papers (in a zip lock bag), tools, full tanks of gas, pet car items, a traditional telephone (you know, the sort that plugs directly into the wall) a radio (who has a radio??), canned food, prescription drugs…..on and on.
But they make no mention of a really important thing: WINE
Highly recommended in hurricane situations: BOX WINE
Box wines are ideal for upping your hurricane preparedness. One 3 Liter box includes the equivalent of four bottles, but in a much lighter format. And each box usually come with a handle, which makes them especially easy to evacuate. And a bonus: the bag-in-the-box can be used as a pillow. So you have one less thing to pack.
Given all this, I fully expect to see box wines included in the next version of the National Hurricane Center’s official preparedness list!
NOTE: Thank you to Jeanna for making the initial recommendation to include a box or two in your kit.
So I missed yesterday’s earthquake. I was on an airplane, descending into LaGuardia with 2 out of 3 Frank kids, when it happened. The taxi driver into the city was very excited about the whole thing, but we felt nothing. Back at the shop, I was told the bottles jingled a bit but nothing fell of the shelves. We appear to be much better at breaking bottles than an earthquake, at least a 5.9 earthquake.
