Category: Behind the Counter

Tom Wark’s List of 20 Things Every Wine Lover Should Do

Originally published on April 15, 2009.

I try not to be one of those bloggers that just points to other blogger’s posts. But occasionally, I come across one I want to share. From Tom Wark’s Fermentation, this is a list of 20 things every wine lover should do. I like it because it’s not terribly wine geeky and because many of the suggestions involve being better prepared to actually DRINK your wine (rather than just stare at all your fancy trophy bottles). And the #1 item on the list involves getting friendly with a great wine merchant*. Something I couldn’t agree with more!

*If you happen to be in needof a great wine merchant, I may know one.

Wood you, could you, spare a wooden wine box?

Originally published on April 10, 2009.

Wooden wine boxes. I have a theory about them. Look at the picture below.

Does it start your pulse racing with desire? Or does it evoke a sense of loathing? If it’s the former, you’re not alone. We’ll put a wooden box on the curb in front of the store and it will be gone within an hour. Some people ask if they can take it, but most just grab it and run. I fall on the loathing side of the box scale, but it took me a while to get there.

So my theory….I propose that the esteem you place on wooden boxes is disproportionately related to the amount of time you spend actually unpacking them and pulling the bottles out. So, the longer the amount of time you spend in the retail side of the wine business, generally, the more you grow to hate them.

The major thought process of each phase is noted below.

Phase 1 – Intense Adoration: Wooden boxes are so cool! Maybe my local retailer will give me some. I can use them to panel my basement. Or make a table out of them. Or turn them into planters. Or even make a computer out of them! I could live in a wooden wine box if it were big enough! Oh, look…there’s a wooden box in front of the store. Do you think they’ll mind if I just take it? Yea! My first wooden box! (For those actually working in a wine store: I can’t believe the owner/manager is actually letting me take home all the wooden boxes I want! This job is fantastic!!!)

Phase 2 – Moderated Respect: I’m a little more discriminating now (since I already have 23 snazzy wine box planters. And my entire basement paneled in them.). I’ll just keep my eye out for high end Bordeaux boxes. Or really cool ones with actual lids and clasps. One of those could make a nice tool box.

Phase 3 – Mild Annoyance: Great, more wooden boxes to open. Where’s the hammer again? And they certainly are heavier than the plain old cardboard ones. But still, they do look great on my basement wall.

Phase 4 – Utter Contempt: Can’t find the hammer…maybe I can just rip the top off……ouch splinter! And I still need that stupid hammer so I can pound down these stupid nails so the customers don’t hurt themselves when they run off with them. And do they really need to put the $10 bottles in a wooden box? Really????? The box has got to cost as much as the bottles! Don’t they care about their carbon footprint? Don’t they care that I just got yet another splinter. Don’t they care that I can never find the hammer when I need it?

To be completely honest, I can fall back to Phase 2 when I come across a really great box that doesn’t require a hammer to open. For example, the Rustenberg Five Soldiers Chardonnay comes in a fantastic box with a sliding panel as the lid. It’s big and impressive, as is the wine, and only requires one little screw to open it up. And I suppose it really would make a really nice tool box. Maybe I could keep my hammer in it.

The Battle for Wine in Grocery Stores (New York Chapter)

Originally published on April 5, 2o09

The biggest news in the New York wine industry this year (with the possible exception of Southern’s price hikes, but that’s another story) was Governor Paterson’s proposal to allow wine sales in grocery stores. I initially wrote about it here and my thoughts also popped up on Dr. Vino here. The proposal was removed from the budget, but as reported in Newsday (and many other outlets) it’s likely to resurface at some point.

In case you didn’t click through to the links above, here’s the summary: Governor Paterson put forth a proposal to raise state funds by allowing stores that currently sell beer to also sell wine. Big grocery stores loved the idea. Independent wine and liquor stores hated the idea. Lobbyists lobbied, press people spun, the entire political machine ground into gear.

I even got involved, entering the fray of New York City and State politics. I sat in on meetings with my State Senator’s (Daniel Squadron) chief of staff, with the Manhattan Borough President (Scott Stringer), and the Speaker of the New York City Council (Christine Quinn). I even wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Downtown Express in response to an op-ed piece by Whole Foods.

My biggest issue was that the proposal was incredibly one-sided. It benefited the big grocery stores without addressing any of the constraints on existing independent stores like Frankly Wines. Not a big surprise given where it came from: Whole Foods essentially proposed the proposal here. Also not a big surprise that none of the legislators we talked with were aware of the existing constraints: there’s no reason anyone would ever imaging these rules exist. I can barely imagine they exist and I live with them every day.

But just in case there are any senators or assembly people, council members, community board members, borough presidents or other New York State or City elected or appointed officials lurking around the Frankly Wines blog, here’s a rundown of all those wacky rules.

  1. You can get a license to sell wine.
  2. You can get a license to sell wine and liquor.
  3. If you have one of the above licenses, you can only sell wine or wine/liquor + a few other items listed in the ABC laws. Not allowed: wine gift bags (a store upstate was fined $10,000 for doing just this), reusable wine carriers, and wine gift boxes.
  4. Also not allowed: FOOD, including the sorts of mixer you would naturally want to pair with liquor.
  5. You can get a license to sell beer (but you can’t sell beer, wine, and liquor. No existing license exists for that.)
  6. To get a beer license, 50% of your “displayed inventory” needs to be comprised of the following: diary goods, canned goods, baked goods, fruit and veggies, meats, fish, and the mysterious “other groceries.” Only 25% of “displayed inventory” can consist of snack food and beer.
  7. Wine/liquor licenses may be denied if the location is within 200 feet of a school or church. This does not appear to be the case with a beer license, either in the application requirements or in the actual retail landscape.
  8. Applications for wine/liquor licenses can face opposition from the four closest stores currently holding wine/liquor licenses. This does not appear to be the case for those seeking a beer license.
  9. You can only have 1 wine/liquor license per person (“person” includes corporations and partnerships.) Not the case with a beer license, where one corporate entity can hold multiple licenses (and because they can buy across multiple outlets, they can buy more and get better pricing.)
  10. Wine/liquor stores must be closed on Christmas and during certain hours each day.
  11. Beer sales are also somewhat restricted, but less so. And the stores in which beer is sold (ie grocery stores) have no restrictions on their opening hours.

So to be somewhat equitable, a “fair” proposal would need to allow wine/liquor license holders to sell food (although that 50% requirement shouldn’t be forced on us) and any other wine-related items we want to sell. It would need to allow wine/liquor license holders to open multiple locations…or even form buying groups in order to get better pricing. It would allow wine/liquor license holders to sell beer. And to enjoy the ability to get a license without concern for opposition from existing licence holders. And to not have to worry about those pesky schools and churches. And to enjoy the less restrictive opening hours that beer sales enjoy. To be truly fair (and to offer true consumer convenience and choice) it would also allow grocery stores to sell liquor, but they don’t seem to be very interested in that. In short, it would require a major easing of the restrictions currently governing wine (and ideally) liquor sales.

What it shouldn’t require is to incorporate the proposed restriction to limit grocery stores to selling wine from wineries that produce fewer than 250,000 gallons of wine annually. This is an attempt to ensure that the grocery stores actually sell New York State wines (rather than simply taking them at their word that they will do so.) I think this is a bad idea for 2 reasons. 1) If you want the stores to sell New York State wines, than force them to sell NYS wines (although this probably violates all sorts of interstate commerce laws. 2) In states where grocery stores can sell wines, the groceries tend to focus on big, mass, brand names – wines that produce considerably more than 250,000 gallons of wine each year. The smaller independent stores differentiate themselves by seeking out smaller, more unique producers. Yes, this is a broad generalization. There are plenty of big grocery chains offering great, boutique selections and plenty of independent stores offering big, corporate brands. But by forcing the grocery stores to stock smaller brands ONLY, the proposal would be removing one of the ways smaller stores can effectively differentiate themselves and compete.

Ideally, any proposal would also have some type of phasing-in period. At the risk of sounding whiny and anti-free-market, I think it’s worth noting that retail spaces and leases were selected and signed based on an existing set of rules and regulations. Sure, things change. In other retail sectors, small stores need to content with big box stores moving into their neighborhoods. But a Whole Foods, Walmart or Home Depot doesn’t spring up fully formed overnight. There’s usually at least a year, probably longer, during which the little guys can make plans to adjust to the new addition, even if that adjustment means making plans to close up shop.

So there’s clearly a lot more to consider than just slapping a wine license into the hands of anyone with an existing beer license. I’d like to think one reason the initial proposal failed was that the legislators realized the one-sidedness of what they were presented with…and that there was a lot more they needed to understand before making any changes. Maybe. Or maybe it was the lobbyists.

The Perfect Wine Retailer’s Shoe

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I found them on Zappos — where you can order thousands of dollars of cowboy boots, try them all on in the privacy of your own living room, send back the ones that hurt like hell and keep the two pairs that apparently were made for your very specific feet (in my case, Lucchese, size 9, gives a blister-less fit from the very first wearing.) I suppose I could have done that at a shoe shop, but pulling too-small cowboy boots off your feet is something best not done in public.

Originally published on March 27, 2009.

After almost a year and a half at the store, I have decided on the perfect shoe. This is a big deal because in my old corporate gig, I wore heels. Very high heels with pointy toes. This works when you’re only walking from your desk to a meeting or out to lunch. Doesn’t work so well when you’re in a wine store, hauling around cases, standing behind the register, and making local deliveries.

The first 6 months or so that the store was open, I was pregnant, so the shoe choice was further constrained by what I could fit my feet into. Mainly very flat, funky sneaker-type shoes from my previous pregnancies. Over the winter, I wore out two pairs of fairly flat calf-high boots. Now I’m back into those flat, funky sneaker things, which I’m really starting to hate. Apparently, I’m finally starting to miss my heels.

So what’s a wine-hauling, hand truck-pulling, heel-loving girl to do?

Cowboy boots. I have decided I need one (or a couple) pairs of cowboy boots. They have heels, yet they’re sturdy. They’re pointy, yet they’re comfortable (once you break them in.) And they can work with jeans or trousers.

Now I just need to buy a pair (or two.) Anyone know where the nearest cowboy boot store is to 66 West Broadway, Manhattan?

Lend a Helping Hand Truck

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Sad to say that the handtrucks.com site doesn’t really exist any more. But thehandtruckcompany.com does!

Originally published on March 22, 2009.

The other day I was dropping off some wine for a recent event that Swirl Events was hosting. Anu, Swirl’s founder, and I got to talking about…no, not the wine I was dropping off, nor the event she was planning, nor any wonderful wines we had recently come across in our vast wine-drinking experience. We were talking about the hand truck I was using.

And it is a fabulous hand truck. It’s a Wesco Superlite Folding Hand Truck. Big rubber wheels, a retractable handle. Like the name says, it’s superlite and folds up to such a small size that on the way home from a delivery, I can just hang it over my shoulder and tuck it under my arm like a big purse…with wheels.

I love my hand truck. And no, you can’t borrow it. Buy your own at handtrucks.com (yes, this site really exists.)

Occasionally I write about wine

Originally published on March 20, 2009.

OK, time to get back into the swing of the blog thing. And what a better way to start than listing all the wine I tried today. Note I said “try”, not “drink”. If you’re not in the industry, there’s a very good chance you think all wine-industry people sit around and drink all day. Not true. 1) We spit and 2) we’re usually standing when we taste, either at behind the counter at the store or in front of a table at a distributor portfolio tasting.

Yesterday was a taste-from-behind-the-counter kind of day. We saw a total of seven different distributors, all but two with winemakers in tow. This matters because winemakers require more attention and better behavior than your regular sales rep. The winemakers (hopefully) know more about the wine than your sales rep, so they have more to say. And while some wine buyers may take pride in being rude to anyone who tries to sell them anything, I’m not one of them. If you’ve taken the appointment, you should at least pay attention, maybe ask some questions, try to learn something. Otherwise, don’t take the appointment.

Yesterday there were lots of appointments. Here’s what I had. (I’m working from memory here, so if any of my reps are reading this, give me a break if I’m wrong!)

Appointment #1:

  • Ribero del Dureos (Portugal), one from 2005, one from 2006. Always cool to try the same wine from two different vintages. One was filtered, one wasn’t so that was extra cool.
  • 1 Chinon, the winemaker’s 2nd vintage, which I liked more than the first, as did the winemaker.
  • Higher end Ribero del Duero. Something like 550 different parcels of land to add up to a total of 4 hectares. This is madness!

Appointment #2:

  • One very nice rose from an island just off the coast of Provence. Lots of mouvedre in the blend…may be why it reminded me of a Bandol rose at a fraction of the price.

Appointment #3:

  • High end Godello from Bierzo region of Spain.
  • Tempranillo/Granacha blend from La Mancha
  • Wacky blend of five different grapes which added up to a really nice wine that people will like a lot…even thought it’s a sort of geeky wine (for reasons I won’t go into for fear of seeming even geekier than I actually am.)

Appointment #4:

A veritable grab bag of goodies, including:

  • Nice Muscadet that made me wish for warm weather
  • Old vine Quincy (what, you’ve never heard of Quincy?? Come on!!! It’s in the Loire, like near Sancerre. OK, I’m a geek.) which is the more concentrated mate to the Quincy I currently carry.
  • Nice little Navarra (big day for Spain)
  • Bordeaux – either Cru Bourgeois or Bordeaux Superior, can’t remember, but primarily from St. Emilion fruit…ie mainly Merlot
  • Another Bordeaux – Grand Cru St. Emilion

Appointment #5:

  • 2 village-level Mersaults, one from 2005, one from 2006. Slightly different fruit sources, but still cool to taste the differences between sites and vintages.
  • 2 Premier Cru-level Mersaults, both 2006. Even cooler to see the difference between two different sites from the same year. These wines would retail somewhere between $70 – $100, so that just made the tasting even cooler. Man, they were good!
  • Premier Cru-level red burg by the same producer which we already carry and love. 10 minutes after the winemaker left, a regular customer came in and bought a bottle of this very wine. Would have been sweet if he’d gotten there 10 minutes earlier. Winemakers love to see real customers buying their wine.

Appointment #6:

  • Value-oriented producer from Washington and Oregon (there’s really no reason a winery has to stick to one state, although most do). Pinot Grigio (OR), Chardonnay (WA), Pinot Noir (OR), and Cabernet (WA). In addition to the wines, lots of gossip about distributors and the wine-in-grocery-store legislation, and discussion about the FCC’s policy about not showing butt cracks on TV.

Appointment #7:

  • 1 Menetou-Salon Blanc (never heard of this region either? Come on now…it’s near Quincy!!)
  • 1 Valencay (also in the Loire, as is Quincy) – a blend of Gamay, Malbec, Cab Franc, and Pinot Noir, which I think is actually every red grape allowed anywhere in any of the AOC regions in the Loire Valley (and if I’m wrong on that, please don’t tell me.)

Whew! I think I need a beer.

Why I Love My Daily Postal Delivery

Originally published on March 11, 2009.

In the world of wine retailing, snail mail is still a much used form of communication and commerce.

In the non-wine world, most vendors will allow you to pay on-line. In many cases, you can make ACH payments directly from your bank account without leaving the comfort of your computer screen. Not so much when it comes to paying wine distributors -this is still very much the land of envelopes, stamps, and paper checks.

Because of this, I’m much more in tune with the minutia of the postal service than I have been since, oh, I had a pen pal back in 6th grade. I know where all the postboxes are on the way to all the neighborhood coffee shops. I know their pick-up times on weekdays and Saturdays. I know how many automated machines there are at each of the two closest post offices, as well as their latest drop off times for same day send-off. I’m possibly as well qualified to answer local postal questions as I am wine questions. And I always have stamps. Always.

So it’s not surprising that I actually look forward to my daily postal delivery. The distributors often send out exciting communications that they actually expect you to read. And sometimes they’ll send you the single, solitary copy of an invoice that they actually expect you to pay. Like yesterday…I received a paper invoice for $0.50. Yes, fifty cents. In an envelope that took $0.42 worth of postage to mail. On a piece of paper that probably took some employee $0.08 of time to mail. No further comment necessary on that one.

Yesterday I also received 1/4 of an envelope with 1/4 of each of two checks in it. Lucky for me, the snippet of envelope had my return address on it, so the USPS was able to send it back to me. Also lucky for me, the snippets of checks were still in the envelope so I was able to figure out which distributor to call to tell them their valuable piece of paper was going to be late. (Because if your payment is late, you get reported to the state’s “delinquent list” and effectively go into wine detention, also known as C.O.D….but that’s a story for another post.)

I guess when you contribute disproportionately to the 202 billion pieces of mail handled each year (I know this, because it was in the letter the USPS sent with my mangled envelope) a few of those precious posts are going to wind up on the wrong side of the postal gods.

Valetine’s Day – When Wine Retailers Celebrate Christmas

Originally published on February 15, 2009.

Wine store owners, at least wine store owners that actually manage their own stores, are essentially chained to their counter from Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day. It’s no different for many types of retailers, but since I only own a wine store, I can only speak for wine store owners.

Given that my family lives several states away, we’re only just getting to celebrate Christmas now…on Valentine’s Day. Postponing Christmas has certain advantages, like postponing the gift buying until after the holiday rush. And avoiding the craziness of holiday travel. And enjoying the traditional pink Valentine’s Day tree….

….OK, we don’t really have a pink tree, but it would be cool if we did.

Happy Xmastine’s Day!

Days That Drive a Wino to Drink

Originally published on February 12, 2009.

What I’m about to describe isn’t exactly a typical day. Most days, at least in my little retail universe, are a mix of placing orders, writing checks, chasing down distributors who always seem to lose my checks, printing out shipping labels, picking out mixed cases, helping customers, fighting with the cash registers, dusting, putting stickers on bags, sorting out deliveries, stocking shelves, and maybe tasting through a few wines with a sales rep or two, occasionally with a winemaker in tow.

Wednesday was a little bit different.

I started out with my 10am blind tasting group. On deck, 5 different wines made from the ever popular Tannat grape. On the off-chance you haven’t heard, Tannat is the star grape of such star regions as Madiran, Irouleguy, and Uruguay. It’s inky dark, deeply tannic, and perfect with steak, stews, or cassoulet. Not exactly breakfast wine, but what can you do when duty calls. There are 2 Tannats at Frankly Wines and we’ll probably be getting a third soon….because every boutique wine store should have 1 Tannat for ever 100 square feet of floor space. It’s in the manual.

NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: It’s totally not in the manual. First, there is no manual. And second, if there was a manual, it would most certainly advise against having more than one Tannat at a time, period.

Blind tasting finished, I brushed my purple teeth and headed off to a winemaker lunch at Alto. I love winemaker lunches…especially when I don’t have to plan them. This one was with Elizabetta Foradori, possibly the chicest Italian grower/winemaker I’ve yet to meet. She does magic with the Teroldego grape which, on the (probable) chance you’ve never heard of it, is a very old grape that makes its home in the northern alpine reaches of Italy. Some day soon I’ll go on about my growing fascination with alpine wines, but for now, I’ll just lay out what we tasted: 2 vintages of Myrto (a white made from the very non-international grape Incrocio Manzoni), the current vintage of Elizabetta’s Teroldego Rotliano (a fresher, younger-drinking style of Teroldego) and 6 vintages of her more serious, age worthy Granato (also made from Teroldego) going back to 1986. That’s 9 wines. For lunch. Survival tactics include lots of bread, a gallon of water…and a conveniently-located red plastic spit cup by my place setting. Red plastic may not seem terrible chic, but neither is a table full of drunken wine buyers.

Lunch over, teeth brushed again, and off to a Burgundy tasting at the Design building. Less zoo-like than I had expected, but still plenty of of French spoken, plenty of men in suits, and plenty of elbows making their way to the Grand Cru wines. I settle in next to a spit bucket and concentrate on distinguishing the Volnays from the Pommards, while dodging elbows and spit streams, balancing my glass, scribbling highly evocative tasting notes like “powerful”, “more perfume than the last one”, “a little more earthy”, “berries”, and muttering in fake French. I generally ignore the price list, as one 6-packs of some of these wines would suck up most of my weekly open-to-buy. There are probably 20 tables at the tasting. I make it to about 5 before the tasting ends and I head outside.

Going for full-on contrast to my Foradori lunch at Alto, I have a hot dog and bad coffee for my 5.30PM snack. Then off to the International Wine Center for my weekly Diploma wine class. This week,we’re studying the Loire, a region best loved by fashionable Parisians and New York-based wine geeks. We’re learn that come test time, even if you smell stone fruits in your Pouilly-Fume, you should say you smell melon, because it will make the graders happy. There’s a discussion about whether a wine is medium+ alcohol or high alcohol. And another about the odd purple color of a Cabernet Franc, which looks suspiciously like a Malbec. We taste 7 different wines, and I realize I’ve already drunk 4 of them at some point in the recent past, outside of class. Of the other 3, I’ve had similar styles from different producers. Since I’m not a fashionable Parisian, that must make me a New York-based wine geek.

As if a day filled with 5 Tannats, a Teraldego vertical, and a bunch of Burgundies hadn’t already proved that point.

People Love the Corks!

Originally published on February 4, 2009.

This is a little after the fact, but check out Dr. Vino’s post on Frankly Wines and the increasingly famous cork wall. There’s a picture included if you haven’t actually seen the cork wall live and in person. Just ignore the boxes piled in front of the counter, and various piles of stuff on the counter, the empty bottles sitting behind the counter…..obviously my art director was out to lunch.