Tag: That Customer

Sometimes You Can Find a Needle in a Hay Stack!

Originally published on June 13, 2010.

So I’ve been going on about various versions of That Customer #4, the one who comes in looking for the vinous equivalent of a needle in a haystack. While coming in with a picture makes it much easier to track down a given wine, it doesn’t make it any more likely that this wine will be on the shelf. But today, That Customer was very very lucky.

The conversation started as usual, “I’m looking for a specific wine.”

But…he had a picture (and it was a very clear picture.)

And…..I actually had the wine! The very wine in the very clear picture!

It was Robert Sinskey’s Abraxas, a very cool white field blend from California.  Abraxas is an Egyptian Gnostic god and the letters in his name represent the seven classical planets. Apparently today, the planets were all well aligned.

That Customer #4.6: The Unreliable Witness (Part 3)

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I can’t believe that it took me nearly three years from opening the shop to stock this wine. And I can’t believe I stocked it on a whim! I still adore this wine and love selling it… and need to reorder it for Copake Wine Works soon. Looking back, this wine (along with the Bornard poulsard pet-nat) were probably the first big steps I took into the natural wine-proper side of things.

This would have been long before natural wine morphed into “natty wine,” when it was just starting to tiptoe into wine shops like mine – the cool, neighborhood-focused shop that stocked small production wines… but didn’t really focus too deeply on what “production” actually meant.

Originally published on June 6, 2010.

Time to wrap up on this Unreliable Witness series. I’m going to close it with a success story – and give a mention to a tasty, funky wine I’ve been wanting to mention for a while. A combo That-Customer-Wine-You-Never-Knew-You-Needed column.

Like I’ve said before, the best way to make sure you can find that great wine you had the other night is to write it down. Better yet, write it down….and take a picture. Then you can be the success story instead of the poor follow looking for the French wine with the house on the label.

Real Life Example: That Customer #4.6 – The Success Story:

So in this example, Customer #4.6 calls us. He’s looking for a wine he had the other night. He knows it was sparkling, had Dolce in the name, and was from somewhere in Italy. He thinks the producer was Donati and most importantly…he’s taken a picture of the label!

He emails it to us and yes, it’s dark and blurry and obviously taken at the end of a late night in a dark bar, but it’s enough that we can put everything together and confirm he wanted the Donati Camillo Malvasia Dolce Frizzante 2007

So we special ordered him a case and the story ended happily!

But that’s not the end of it…I was intrigued enough by his description to order an extra case for the store. Clearly, this was the rare…

Wine I Never Knew I Needed

Now I don’t usually order wine sight-unseen (well, bottle-un-tasted) but this bottle had several things going for it.


1) Customer #4.6 described it as a cross between cider, wheat beer, and cream soda, a funky combination I found oddly irresistible.

2) It’s part of the Louis/Dressner portfolio which is filled with oddly irresistible wines and one of a handful of importers from whom I’ll buy the occasional case without sampling.

3) I hadn’t been able to try it at the recent Louis/Dressner trade tasting because by the time I arrived (I always seem to arrive later than I’d like) it had already been drained by the sipping masses. While disappointing, this is usually a good sign.

4) It’s from the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, home to many delightful fizzy wines (including Lambruco) which the perfect companions to salty snacks. And I’m always looking for companions to salty snacks.

So I decided to make a leap of faith and bring in an extra case for the store. And it is indeed tasty. It’s not the easiest wine to sell – the cider/beer/cream soda description scares off a lot of people, as does the fact that it’s slightly sweet. But those who have tried it (me, my mother, a group of people in Indiana who keep ordering bottles of it) really like it.

It’s weird, but good. And we all need a little of that in our lives.

That Customer #4.5: The Unreliable Witness (Part 2)

Originally published on June 1, 2010.

In an earlier That Customer #4 post, I set out some of the reasons why it may be difficult to find that great white wine you had last week at a restaurant that was from Italy or maybe Spain with a blue heart on the label or maybe it was a fish but you’ll know it when you’ll see it.

Even if you remember the country, you’re still going to have difficulties remember the wine. Especially if it’s from France.  The following real life example is especially instructive. It’s also amusing, but let’s just assume I’m sharing it because it’s instructive.

Real Life Example: That Customer #4.5:

So That Customer #4.5 comes in. He’s just getting into wine and he’s super excited because he had something the other night that he really enjoyed. It was the first red he’d ever had that he actually liked and he wanted to get another bottle or two.

What he remembered:

The wine was from France.
And it had a fancy house on the label.
And he’d know it when he saw it.

So he walks over to the France section. And he sees a bottle with a fancy house on the label. Chateau something-or-other.

That’s it! (Major excitement! Huge!)

And then he looks at the bottle next to it. Which is also called Chateau something-or-other. And has a fancy house on it.

Or maybe it’s that one. (A little less excitement.)

And then he looks to the bottle next to that one. Another fancy house. Same as the next one. And the next one. And the one above it. And below it.

Now he’s bummed. And we’re bummed because he’s bummed. The excitement has rapidly drained away.

This is because about 45.65% of the bottles from France have fancy houses on the label. Another 32.14% feature some sort of clever drawing and obscure French-language pun. And the remaining 22.21% have no defining features whatsoever*.

So as much as we wanted to help him, there wasn’t much we could do. Well, there was plenty we could do – we had him describe the wine as best he could and gave him something we thought he would like. But if we knew the specific wine (or grape, or region) he was looking for, we would have had a very helpful reference point.

There is a moral to the story:

The next time you taste something you like, just write it down or take a picture. Chances are even if you’re carrying around some last-generation mobile phone, you have a camera or some sort of memo function. This little step will save you from being a bummed out That Customer #4.5.

Instead, you can be That Customer #4.6, who emailed us a photo of a bottle he was trying to track down. We looked it up, found the distributor, placed an order and voile – Customer #4.6 was soon the proud owner of a case of his heart’s desire. (Which did NOT have a house on the label.)

* This numbers are 100% fictitious (at least as far as I know.)  Please don’t tell me you took them seriously.

That Customer #4: The Unreliable Witness

Originally published on March 30, 2010.

Police officers and detectives will readily tell you that people make lousy witnesses. Ask ten witnesses to recall what they saw on a crime scene and chances are very good you’ll get ten different answers. As it goes with crime scenes, so it goes with wine stores.

Now this is the best case scenario – where we sold the wine and can definitively recall exactly what was sold.

More often though, the customer had the wine at a friends house or at a restaurant. With no recollection of the producer. Or the region. Or the grape. But….they’ll definitely know it if they see it.

So we find ourselves gently explaining that hoping to stumble upon that wine is the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. Not that we start quoting statistics, but here are some numbers to mull over:

  • In California alone, there are 2,843 bonded wineries. (I looked that one up on the Wine Institute site.)
  • Let’s say each of those wineries produces 5 different wines. (If you’ve ever been to a winery tasting room, you know this is a conservative estimate.)
  • That’s over 14,000 wines. And that’s just California. Throw in the rest of the world and you get to a very big number very quickly. 

I don’t think any other consumer product has nearly so many labels on offer.  Think about toothpaste. Even if you throw in every earthy/crunchy organic producer, private label and near-prescription grade brand, you can probably only come up with 20. (If you can think of more, list them and I you’ll win a bottle of something. Unless you work for Colgate or Proctor and Gamble.  Then you’re disqualified.)

Wine is a just bit more fragmented.  So hoping to recall that random bottle from two weeks ago is highly unlikely. Because 1) unless you’re a highly trained detective, you’re an unreliable witness and probably wouldn’t recognize it even if you see it. And 2) because you’re probably not going to see it.
So don’t be That Customer.

Jot down the name. Or take a picture with your phone. And then we can help you find it, special order it, or pick out something similar.  Then you can be a Happy Customer instead.

That Customer #2: Some Refinements

Originally published on September 10, 2009.

A lot of retailers seemed to really enjoy the last installment of That Customer that featured the (perhaps willfully) clueless customer who walks into a dark store without noticing that it’s, well, dark. And possibly closed. Or just about to be.

I thought it would be a good idea, or at least some fun, to set out the etiquette in such a situation. Emily Post doesn’t cover this stuff, so I might as well.

Retailer After-Hours Etiquette:
If you’re going to let someone in during closing, you have to give them the same attention and consideration you give any other customer. You can’t give them the evil eye while drumming your fingers on the counter. If you don’t want to help them, don’t let them in.

Yes, it is true that if they can see you from the street, they’ll be pissed if you don’t let them in. I recommend hiding as the most effective strategy against this form of perceived rudeness. Most cash registers are on top of a counter. Most counters can be hidden behind. I suggest you do this if you really want to get out of the store quickly.

Customer After-Hours Etiquette:
If you walk into a store and it looks like they’re in the middle of closing (dark lights, pulled blinds, frantic shelf stocking, cash counting) then they probably are indeed in the middle of closing.

Ask if this is the case. If the answer is yes, then this is not the time to leisurely peruse every single bottle on the shelf. This is not the time to have a 15 minutes phone conversation with your roommate about what she’s thinking of making for dinner. This is the time to tell the staff what you’re looking for so they can quickly point out some good choices and go about their closing chores while you make your decision. You shouldn’t feel pressured, but you shouldn’t feel entitled to lollygag.

And there you have it. My view of after-hours (or nearly after-hours) etiquette. It’s all about mutual respect and understanding.

And being more aware of your surroundings than your mobile phone conversation….but that’s probably the subject of anther post.

That Customer #2

Originally published on August 22, 2009.

This is the second installment in our recurring That Customer feature. Now just to reiterate (in case you don’t feel like clicking through to the original post) – “these” customers are annoying not because of anything that has to do with wine. They would probably be annoying to anyone who works behind a counter for a living. They quite possibly could just be annoying, period.

So…onto the complaining part

That Customer #2:

When we close for the night we follow this basic protocol before starting to count out for the night:

  1. Bring in the chalkboard sign
  2. Roll down the light/heat blocking curtains
  3. Dim the lights to just-barely-glowing level
  4. Lock the door
  5. Perform final closing chores

As you might guess, numbers 2 and 3 make the store a little dark. More than a little dark. More like nightclub- or trendy-bar dark. Can’t-see-the-labels dark

Now, imagine you walk into a wine store that’s this dark.

Would you think, “Gosh, this must be some new trend in wine retailing. Makes it a little touch difficult to see the prices, but hey, it’s kind of cool.”

No, you would probably think, “Oops, they’re about to close! Better hurry up.” You might even ask if we’re about to close. And we would say, “Yes, but come on in and pick something out.” We wouldn’t say “quickly” but it would sort of be implied. And you would come on in and pick something out…quickly. Because you would have noticed that we’re about to close.

Unless you’re That Customer.

In which case, you would walk into a near-dark store and just wander around slowly picking up bottles (in the dark), trying to read the labels (in the dark), ignoring our request to let us know if you need help (as we stand in the dark.)

That Customer somehow doesn’t notice that the shades are pulled, the lights are off and we’re counting the cash register out by the light of the bathroom because….we’re about to close! That Customer probably wouldn’t notice if we snuck up behind them, put a kraft paper wine bag over his head, and whisked them down the cellar stairs. Well, they would probably notice the whisking part, but nothing before that.

OK, ok…maybe we should lock the door and just not let anyone in. But sometimes a customer sneaks by just as we’re about to put our key in the lock – or appears outside just after. And it would be cruel and unusual punishment to deny someone wine when they’re so close they can practically touch it. So since most people can pick out a bottle 10 minutes it takes us to finish the other closing-up chores, we let them in. But too many times waiting for that customer to wander around in the dark….we might have to change our policy.

So please, don’t be That Customer – you could ruin it for everyone.

Don’t Be “That” Customer – A New Recurring Feature

Originally published on July 11, 2009.

It’s a very rare day that we complain about our customers. After all, without customers, Frankly Wines would just be a very expensive wine closet. But occasionally, a customer walks in that just rubs us the wrong way.

Now I can hear you out there, thinking “those wine snobs, making fun of poor, unsuspecting customers that come in and ask innocently silly questions. That’s why wine has such a bad rap as an elitist’s drink. That’s why I just stick to beer!”

Now I can’t speak for other stores, but at Frankly Wines, we like to talk about wine. What you may think of as a silly question, we think of as an opportunity to talk about wine. And it’s a very rare customer who can annoy us by talking about wine.

No, the rubbing the wrong way usually has very little to do with the specifics of wine retail. That Customer would likely annoy anyone working in any retail establishment, regardless of what they’re selling. That Customer would likely annoy anyone, period.

You really don’t want to be That Customer. It’s just not polite.With that background in place, the Frankly Wines blog will kick off a recurring feature about That Customer. It will do nothing to increase your wine knowledge or increase our sales. But it could help make the world a kinder, better place.

Here we go:

That Customer #1Customer #1 walks into the store. It’s a small store and there’s only one person manning (or in this case, wommaing) the shop. I greet the customer, asks if he needs any help. He doesn’t. The phone rings. It’s a customer checking on a delivery for later that afternoon. Our conversation takes less than a minute during which the word “delivery” is probably stated 10 times.

During this less-than-a-minute conversation, That Customer comes to the counter to ask a question. I try to give the universal “be right with you” sign, which he doesn’t notice. He doesn’t really seem to notice I’m on the phone. Clearly talking to another customer about a delivery. Not talking to my mother. Not talking to a friend. Not yapping away for an extended period of time, like, oh, more than 45 seconds. Not talking on a phantom blue tooth ear piece in which case I could just be crazy and not actually, clearly, obviously talking on the phone about a delivery.
Nope, he asks his question loudly. Then asks it again. Loudly. Sort of like my 5 year-old, who is, well, 5 years old. I smile, wrap up the last 5 seconds of my delivery conversation and answer his question, smiling, smiling, smiling.

Now I get it. It’s annoying if you’re in a store being ignored while the person behind the counter yaps away on the phone. But there’s perhaps a shade of difference between that situation and someone who greets you, asks if you need any help, and then has to take a 45-second phone call from another customer with a question.

Most customers notice the difference. Most customers have the patience to wait out a quick phone call. That Customer, not so much.

Please, don’t be That Customer.