kerewin's whine cellar

Just a little bit of sorry will do

A lady came in today and was perusing the Sauvignon Blanc section. I went over to help her and she said she was looking at either the St. Supéry (Meritage blend) or the Charles Krug. Having only tasted the SS, I could basically just guess what the CK would taste like. However, they both have great reputations and similar prices, so I knew she would end up being happy with either.

So, I explained to her what each would be like. She asked me which was better and I had to be honest and say that I thought the St. Supéry. Then she asked me the killer. "Which would one would you probably buy?" so I said, "Well, the Charles Krug."

"Why?" she asked.

"Um, well, the sales guy for S.S. once spilled red wine all over my clean, white shirt."

"Did he apologize?"

"Not really."

With a smile she grabbed the Charles Krug, "We can't reward that kind of behavior now, can we?"

1. Talked about the several acres of contiguous property and then felt the need to define "contiguous" for me. This is after I told him that he used such a nice S.A.T. word.
• 2. Told me about the seven natural lakes (damn I have a good memory, I had that by heart) on the property, following it up with "That is, not man-made." I almost spit in my glass while tasting, thinking, "How else would they be natural?"
• 3. Corrected my pronunciation of Meritage. Which, OF COURSE, rhymes with heritage and not Dodge.
• 4. After knocking a glass of wine out of my hand and breaking it, he not only didn't help clean up, he didn't offer to pay for my dry cleaning. This after I said, "Oh man, I JUST picked this up at the dry cleaner." (Instead, he responsed, "Well it is a good thing the most of it landed on me" [his dark slacks])
• 5. Even though he reacted with shock, "Oh my god, I've never done that before!" he never seemed actually apologetic, nor even said, "I'm sorry."
• 6. After tasting me on their most expensive wine, he proposed a special deal. "If you order three cases we can make a fourth case a special price, bringing the whole thing down to a point where you could pour this by the glass. [Yeah, at like $18/glass jackass.] At this point, I just laughed in his face, "We have 17 tables, I don't order four cases of ANYTHING"

1. He got back to Cali and Fed Ex'd me a box of winery t-shirts, posters, and Wine Away with a card suggesting that while I didn't have it to use when I most needed it, I would definitely have it the next time he came in to town.

The box contained neither payment for my dry cleaning, nor free wine. Either one would have worked wonders, with the free wine being, of course, the best option.

In a year and a half of buying wine for the restaurant, I had only 2 bad experiences when my reps brought winery reps with them. This is numero úno. Remind me someday to tell you about numero dos.

Posted by kerewin at August 20, 2004 09:03 PM