Building a Display
One of our hardworking retail wine reps posted this video on YouTube of him building a display. If you’ve ever wondered what a retail wine sales rep does, check it out. (Most don’t don’t make short films though; nice job, Jake.)
Alphabet Soup – The Wine Trade and Post Nominals
Alphabet Soup When Wine Geek was a little wine geek, his father’s best friend sold ‘booze’. Not exactly sure of everything he sold, but Geek specifically remembers hearing that said salesman ‘could drink any man in town under the table’. Apparently, this was the skill-set needed to be a ‘booze …
A Noble Pursuit — “In Pursuit of Balance”
A Noble Pursuit ‘In Pursuit of Balance’ is not just a movement but the actual name of an organization of some movers and shakers at the super-premium end of the wine business, and they are starting to bring some balance back to the ‘style debate’. The group even has a …
Decanting: Is your carafe half full or half empty?
Although things like appellation boundaries and production rules are finite and not flexible (unless you are in Burgundy), the appreciation of wine, i.e. drinking & enjoying it, is entirely subjective. Wine Geek has read of or witnessed the entire spectrum of opinions and practices on this subject. His kitchen looks …
Keg Wines!
An old idea + new technology = a wine revolution* The most seasoned (read: oldest) of those reading this might remember ‘draft wines’ from the 70’s and 80’s. Usually in flavors of ‘Chablis’ and ‘Burgundy’ in 15 gallon beer barrels, they were innocuous, inoffensive (usually) wines that were great for …
The Other 1,350 Grapes
Think you’re a Geek? Let’s talk about the ‘other’ 1350 grape varietals and see what you’ve got… Jancis Robinson, OBE/MW is irrefutably one of the greatest wine writers living (or dead for that matter). Her mastery of the subject matter is legendary plus she has a compelling writing style that …
French Wine
The Wine Geek is old enough to remember when most of the ‘good’ wine we Americans drank was French wine. And not just us Americans – other than that small handful of other European wine-producing countries that mostly drank local (Italy, Spain, Germany for instance) most of the world’s restaurant …
What Customers Want
Attention Restauranteurs: Ok, so the wine business isn’t exactly the ‘tech’ business, moving at the speed of light, but this business does seem to evolve pretty rapidly lately. Are we running so fast that we’re leaving money on the table? At Great Lakes Wine & Spirits, we are extremely proud …
Rep Picks
It appears that super-premium/higher-priced/allocated wines are making a comeback Happily, there are signs that ‘super-premium’ priced wines are staging a comeback. Perhaps not to the level of those halcyon days of 2000 to 2007, but way more interest than last year. It makes sense too: once one has tasted the …
Wake Up and Smell the Cardboard
Red, White and Green Yes, for us American consumers it all started as a cost savings move by value-oriented mass-production wineries. The wines were serviceable – never great, but never bad really. Of course, the perception was bad; it didn’t matter what it tasted like, it was in a box…how …