Okay, so I realized my last post had nothing to do with wine.
Then next, I realized, I wrote it because it was what I felt, something real, and it has been so long since I felt anything real about wine.
I, along with the prevailing economic situation, have sucked all romance out of wine.
What is there left in wine if there is no romance?
Not much. Just another commodity item, one whose price tag is $10 vs the harder to sell one that is $50, and then the really hard to sell one that is close to $100. Great.
What is it, when restaurants tell you they are hanging on by a thread, worried, anxious, not seeing any changes, hoping things will get better? It is something, but it is not about wine.
There was a time that the mere mention of Agrapart Non-vintage 7 cru would bring tears to my eyes because I've actually been to the estate and saw how this delicious beverage was made, tasted the grape juice that it came from, saw the men around the hand-press actually press down with their muscles and their backs until all the juice ran down... tasted the base wine, saw the vineyards, the horse that plows ("Venus"), tasted the bubbles and the vintage stuff that the proprietor only opens for special guests.
Wow, that time is today.
5 comments:
Nancy,
This post is hard for me to comment on....first of all the thought of you losing your passion for wine breaks my heart. As someone that has sat across the table from you sharing and discussing a glass of wine that is so fucking amazing that we can not stop smelling it...sitting there looking back and forth at each other, feeling like we were doing something almost naughty because we took so much pleasure in it....that is romance.
It has got to be so hard to be out there trying to sell wine right now and it is a very different thing that what we do at the store....you are walking in to a restaurant or retailer and trying to move units, at the store people are coming to see you to help them buy something....they come to buy something so in that way what we do is easier, (I hate to admit that because I once got very pissed off at Michael Sullivan for making a comment like that....but he was right in a way).
It must be very deflating to hear all the "we have been so slow" stories when you are trying to sell your beloved Rieslings...I mean how many times can you hear no before you stop being excited and when sales are slow it shows in your pocket so you have to work even harder to push product and move units...not sell your beautiful wines...changes the way you see them a bit I bet.
Your Agrapart story shows that your love of wine is still very much alive....any time you want to sit across the table and share a glass of wine, I'm there girlie!
Awww, Sam, thank you for the beautiful comment. First of all, I'm not really losing my passion for wine, but it is true that it has not been activated for a long time.
Funny thing is this morning I got all choked up reading Sharon's Wine Blog (see her blog link on the left here) where a few posts from her most current one, she talks about drinking non-vintage Agrapart 7 cru. Then later, I read Randy's article on going through Champagne and he also talks about going to Agrapart. Funny and coincidental.
Problem is that the business of selling wine is unromantic, and takes the romanticism out of wine. I'll have to find a way to resolve that.
Thank you for the offer to get together and drink some wine together. That sounds awesome! I'll have to take you up on that soon.
I guess another reason for the post is that the economy has really made it so that people are looking at the price tag so much more than the wine. Like who cares what wine it is as long as it is $10 or less. This is not romantic! But very real and practical and a sign of the times. Sigh.
I'm preaching to the choir, but let me just say there is no joy in having people choose a wine over another because it costs half as much as another one. This is not why any of us went into the wine business, to move units of the cheapest, easiest, most bulk form of product.
But, that $10 bottle of wine has its place, and (as she reaches for another sip of the Mosel River 9.99 Riesling), can give lots of simple pleasure on a Monday evening, with papers to grade. Of course, I'd love to be drinking something more profound, more serious, more, oh, decadent. The little bottle of wine that sits quietly in the door of the fridge, drunk glass by glass over the course of a couple of days, is a beautiful thing, though, and life wouldn't be as rich without it.
Vicki
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