Category: Shower Thoughts

What Passes for Exercise in the Wine World

Originally published on June 20, 2010.

OK, not really. Some people exercise very hard and very often. I’m not one of them. But if I did, this is what I would be doing. If anyone knows of Pilates instructor offering this type of class, please let me know!

The cartoon is from Harold’s Planet, where you can sign up for a daily cartoon to give you a little comic relief from your usual daily feed drudgery.

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: We’re no longer in the wild days of old school blogging, where we just posted images willy-nilly without regard for copyright. So if you want to see it (and you do), go here.

And Now a Pause for a Cartoon Break…

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Back in the day, we could just plop in pictures from anywhere into our blog posts. In the many years that have followed, we’ve learned that we should be concerned about copywrite rules and proper payment for content creators – even, or especially, those on the internet. So rather than plop in the picture, go have a look at their wine cartoons – and if you like them, buy them!

I can’t find the cartoon I posted back in 2010 on their site. It’s a little different than the How to Appreciate Wine version that I liked below. What I had originally posted was How to Truly Appreciate Wine. And it went like this:

  1. Attend a history of wine lecture: MAYBE
  2. Attend a wine tasting course: MAYBE
  3. Read literature on the subject: MAYBE
  4. Watch documentaries on the subject: MAYBE
  5. Buy a bottle and drink it with someone nice: DEFINATELY

True then. Still true today.

Originally posted on May 28, 2010.

I subscribe to a lot of daily email lists, all somewhat related to wine, wine/press, food, and restaurants: HARO, Urban Daddy, Thrillest, FoodEatDrink, Tasting Table, Buffalo Trace, winejobs, decanter, Garagiste and who knows how many retail store sites.  My in-box (well, honestly, my trash box) is filled enough wine/food industry news to fill a cable network.
But I also subscribe to Harold’s Planet which publishes a daily carton about a blobby little guy named….you guessed it….Harold.  Some of his thoughts/adventures are really funny, some are a little weird, and occasionally, like today, they’re about wine and absolutely, 100% spot-on.

Go Big Red! A Slight Diversion into March Madness

Originally published on March 22, 2010.

I don’t usually pay much attention to March basketball fever. But this year, Cornell University* has been advancing. And advancing. And has actually advanced to the Sweet 16. It’s MADNESS!

So to celebrate, from now until the end of the game on Thursday, I’m offering a sweet Sweet 16 deal. 16 bottles of (BIG) RED wine and you’ll get a 16% discount. (And no, they don’t have to be big, full-bodied red. Just red.) I figure it’s only fair since I credit the Cornell Hotel School wine tasting course as my formative wine experience.

Now those of you who actually pay attention to my views on wine store price structure are saying, “hey, you always tell me that if a store has a standing discount of 15%, their margins are probably too high to begin with.” And that’s true. But this is not a standing discount. It’s limited-time-only MADNESS! It disappears as soon as the game is over on Thursday. If the Big Red win, I’ll come up with another discount scheme (maybe 8% off on 8? Or a stupid crazy deal on Finger Lakes Riesling?) But I’ll cross that (suspension) bridge when I come to it.

And to make things more fun, you have to know the secret phrase to get the discount

Which you would know if you subscribed to the Frankly Wines newsletter.

Which you can do right here.

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: That link’s dead, so maybe consider subscribing to the Copake Wine Works newsletter!

If you’re seriously considering taking me up on this offer, come into the store or if you order on-line, type the secret phrase in the comments box when you check out. The regular 10% discount will show up in your shopping cart and we’ll credit the remainging 6% after checkout.

Go BIG RED!

* Guess where I went to school

The Things That People Want to Know

Originally published on March 18, 2010.

Time to do the period round up of search terms that land the user on the pages of the Frankly Wines blog.

Last month, someone wanted to know how a “20 year old J Roget sparkling wine tastes.” This one makes me laugh because the last time I drank a bottle of J Roget was almost 20 years ago. It was the pre-formal tipple of choice. Nothing said fancy-formal-dance-pre-party like a case filled with $5 bottles of bubbles. But please don’t do the math. It both dates me and possibly incriminates me.

Apparently my site has also become a key resource for people looking to learn the finer points of counting out a cash drawer.

Burning cash-drawer related questions included many variations on the following (with my answers in parenthesis):

  • how to count out a cash drawer
  • a quick way to count nickels in a cash drawer (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30…..)
  • how to count bills with one hand (I have no idea)
  • which side do ones go cash drawer (the far right)
  • how to count to 200 with 20 dollar bills (if you’re able to type in this query and read the answer….well, do you really need to ask this question?

It’s good to be needed.

Ah, Technology

Originally published on January 9, 2010.

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Yup, we were making a Negroni. Sbagliato. And were probably going to put prosecco in it since we were going to be featuring it during a prosecco tasting. That all may sound very familiar read from the vantage point of 2024. But look at the date this was originally published. 2011. Yeah, we were just that ahead of our time.

This is an attempt at uploading to my blog directly from email. Does
it work. And if it does, do I have a use for it? Is there really
anything so important in the world of Frankly Wines that it can’t wait
until I get back to my desktop?

Probably not, but I’ll probably do it anyway.

And the picture….obviously has nothing to do with this post.  Or with wine.  I just wanted to test the photo function.  And really, why have a blog if you can’t occasionally force your readers to look at cute pictures of your kids?

The Strangest Thing

Originally published on January 6, 2010.

This is a TomTom GPS system.  It’s the picture that shows up in in any TomTom advertising.  It’s on the TomTom site, the Amazon site, the buy.com site.  Anywhere the TomTom is sold, you’ll see this image.

What’s so strange about it? 

Well, if the driver of the car using this TomTom were to turn left on West Broadway and drive just past the first street (which is Warren Street), he could double park in front of my store and run in to buy a bottle of something.  (In real life, he would probably ask if he could park there, or where the World Trade Center is, but this is an imagary TomTom situation, so he’s actually running in to buy wine.)

It’s strange that of all the places they could have used on their screen shot, they chose this little corner of Tribeca.  Actually, I think the screen shot used to show Warren between West Broadway and Murray which was even stranger….and even closer to the store.  At least Chambers Street is a main east-west artery.

Actually, the imaginary car in the current ad would be right in front of Chambers Street Wines.  Perhaps they know someone at TomTom that I should now?

Things You Need to Know: How to Count Out a Cash Drawer

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This is easily my single most popular post ever.

Originally published on November 11, 2009.

You may think owning a wine store is about, well, wine. But if you’re a Frankly My Dear reader, you know there’s more to it than that. So in the spirit of giving valuable real-life tips to would-be wine store owners, I’m staring a new recurring feature: Things You Need to Know. In each segment you’ll get step by step instruction on how to do very useful wine store things that have nothing to do with wine.

To start: How to Count Out a Cash Drawer

Imagine. It’s the end of a long day. Lots of wine tasted. Lots of bottles stocked and sold. Lots of time on your feet. And the only thing that stands between you and going home is counting the cash left in the register.

You would think this would be easy. After all, it involves counting and not much more. But you would be wrong. For some reason, this seemingly simple task has the ability to reduce very intelligent people to the brink of tears.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In my vast experience counting out cash drawers, I’ve developed the most effective, efficient method of doing this. Yes, you’re laughing. But trust me – I’ve probably counted out a lot more registers than you have. So seriously. Just trust me.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Gather writing utensil, paper (maybe something less expensive than a Post-it Note?) and calculator.

2. Down the left side of your paper, write 50/100-, 20-, 10-, 5-, 1-, Q-, D-, N-, P-, Rolls-. Don’t argue. Just do it.

3. Count out the 20-dollar bills (20, 40, 60, 80, 100. 20, 40, 60, 80, 200. 20, 40, 60, 80, 300….etc) and write it down next to the 20- on the paper.

4. Count the 10-dollar bills (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 200….etc) and write it down next to the 10- on the paper.

5. Count the five-dollar bills (I don’t really need to explain this, do I?) and write it down (next to the 5-… I’m going to spot explaining that as well.)

6. Count the one-dollar bills (Just count them, from 1 to whatever. Don’t make piles. Just count!) And, yes, write it down.

7. Count the quarters – hold them all in one hand. Pick out four with your free hand and put them in the quarter bin. That’s “one.” Pick out four more quarters and put them in the quarter bin. That’s “two.” Repeat, repeat, repeat…etc. And then right it down (next the Q… for… “quarters.”)

8. Count the dimes – hold them all in one hand. Slip them into the dime bin as you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. Let’s say you wind up with 23 dimes….then you have $2.30. 45 dimes? $4.5. Get it? Write it down.

9. Count the nickels using your nearly perfected hold-in-one-hand technique. As you slip them into the bin, count 5, 10, 15, 20….you know the drill. And…write it down

10. Count the pennies. Just count from 1 to whatever. No hanky panky. No piles. Just count. And….write….it….down!

11. Count the rolls. These are a separate line item. Don’t try to add dime rolls to your dime count. Or penny rolls to the penny count. Just count up all the rolls and write the total down. Don’t trust me on this one? Go ahead. Add your quarter rolls to your quarter count. Then…when you realize that your total is all off because you thought a roll of quarters = $5 and a roll of dimes = $2 and nickels, you totally forgot to add in the nickels…..well, you’ll have to go back out the rolls from your totals. But you won’t remember what to back out because you won’t remember what you thought the rolls were and you’ll just have to recount everything and…..just trust me on this one and TREAT THE ROLLS AS A SEPARATE LINE ITEM!!

12. Add everything up. Write down the total. Add everything up again to double check your total.

13. Run the register report. Notice your cash is $250 short!!!! Panic! Panic! Panic!

14. Realize you forgot to count the big bills….because you didn’t follow Step #2. Count them and add them to the total.

15. Next time, do it my way.

The Mom Test

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This was when the Tissot wines were at Frederick Wildman and they just… sort of… sat there. Somehow I realized they were there, or Rachel, my first Wildman sales rep knew I would dig them and brought me a sample. However it happened, once I was on to them we bought as much as we could. And they were so, so, so much fun to sell. Around this time, over about six months, Wildman wound up going through three, maybe even four vintages of the Poulsard as it started to catch on and buyers started to realize it was there, buried in the Wildman book. The Tissot whites were also starting to move as well, but the Poulsard was definitely the easier sell, so it FLEW!!!!

Originally published on November 12, 2009.

Within two years, Camillie Riviere, who had been a major force in getting the Tissot wines out of the warehouse and onto shelves and menus, would start her own importing company with the Tissot wines as a key part of the founding portfolio. Those were crazy days – she would come into town with a magic bag literally stuffed with more bottles than a human should be able to carry. An appointment with her was always as close to a party as you could get, without actually being a party. The idea was work like hell to sell the wines as soon as they came in, and then get back to France to find more wines.

What does any of this have to do with the Mom Test? Nothing really. I just like to take an occasional walk down memory lane and recall the days when I really did spend most of my time behind the counter, when regions like the Jura were still new and mind-blowing and not just another notch on the coolness belt. It reminds me that for most wine drinkers, the Jura is still as obscure as it was when I was writing these posts over ten years ago, waiting to blow people’s minds. Sure, the wines are more expensive now then they used to be, (a spate of small yield vintages haven’t helped) but there are still ways in. Time to sign myself back up for Jura Duty and go find those ways.

I’m down to my last bottle of Tissot Poulsard 2006, the obscure red wine from the Jura region of France. We’ve sold quite a lot of this obscure little wine over the last couple months, possibly due to the following reasons:

  1. An enthusiastic, well-trained staff that likes the wine nearly as much as I do
  2. A recent article in the New York Times Dining & Wine section.
  3. My fabulous 3-Pack (that’s really a 2-Pack)
  4. A hand-written bottle tag noting that Poulsard is a surprisingly good match with steak (people can’t resist the word ‘steak,’ especially when they see it in print)
  5. Flying colors on the Mom Test

The Mom Test?

Yes, the Mom Test. My mom likes wine, but she doesn’t exactly qualify as a wine geek. So if I sit her down at a meal with one of my more esoteric choices and she enjoys it, than there’s a good chance that most of my customers will enjoy it. It’s a good test because if she likes it, it’s just because she likes it. Not because it’s the newest, coolest thing. Not because it scored big points. And certainly not because she’s SUPPOSED to like it.

So when I tell customers that the Tissot Poulsard is beloved by wine geeks AND my mom….well, it works better than steak.

——————————————————–
P.S. If high scores on the Mom Test have you hankering for a Tissot Poulsard, never fear. My last bottle of 2006 should be joined by some 2004 this week and soon after that, some 2007. Don’t wait too long to get some….my mom may just buy it all.

Why Ticker Tape Parades Aren’t So Great for Wine Stores

Originally published on November 6, 2009.

The Yankees fans were in the neighborhood for the big ticker tape parade. I wish I could say it was good for business. Unfortunately, most of the fans that stopped in only had interest in buying the following, none of which I sell:

Cigarettes
Matches
Beer
Liquor
Little bottles

One fan was mystified that a place that sold liquor didn’t sell matches. He failed to notice I didn’t sell liquor, so therefore, I didn’t actually need to sell matches. At least according to his theory.

Tales of a Clairvoyant Wine Merchant

Originally published on November 5, 2009.

A couple weeks ago I was going on, as I’ve been known to do, about how my personal wine geek preferences seem to be a leading indicator of what shows up in the New York Times. Yes, I know one really has nothing to do with the other. But I still get a kick out of it. I’ll quote a portion of that post:

“…if my personal obsessions are good indicators of what you’ll see in future New York Times articles, then stay tuned for features on dry muscats, Gemischter Satz wines, very old Chianti and anything alpine…..”

And what showed up in this week’s New York Times? Gemischter Satz wines! And a mention of my latest favorite Gelber Muskateller, a.k.a. a dry Muscat!

Spooooooooooky.