Image by @Doug88888 via Flickr

A hallmark of being in the right place at the right time is the wisdom of carrying the right stick with which to scare up opportunity. If it’s a 14th Century Nordic cudgel (and you’re more softspoken than you’d like to be), your efforts will be a bit brassier than your game (target) requires, leaving a blushing wound where the smile should have been situated. Similarly, bring a pencil, thin dowel or knitting needle with which to “generate a little productive dialogue” and you’ll wind up creating nothing more than a 30-second memory in your prospect’s mind – as substantial as a carpenter ant’s sneeze. There’s an art to finding a mutual balance point when hunting for what you want – or convincing someone else that her/his needs will undoubtedly be fulfilled by caving to your pitch.

I could be talking about wine sales, or I could be talking about proposing marriage, or I could be talking about training unruly sots to tuck their elbows in at the tavern. The point is that when you have a goal to accomplish, there’s generally a resistance to overcome – an an art to doing so – be it human objection, circumstantial difficulty, chemistry, friction, culture, economy, astronomy (ie: the planets were lined up just so), whatever. There’s simple math all around us: the logic, the beauty, the austerity, the graciousness of natural law – a law upon which the tangible universe all around us relies, and according to which stuff just works. When you weed the garden, your crop thrives. However, when you allow the weeds to propagate, nature is still operating in its wonderfully balancing way. It might not sound right, but think about it; weeds are people too! That garden just may have a weedy destiny, despite the gardener’s intervention. Energy fills voids. Heat from one room seeks to balance the cold room next door. The pause after the logical pitch/proposal creates the empty space for an opposite reaction. Therefore, when he shouts: “SO, YA GONNA MARRY ME OR WHAT??” she responds in kind: “HAIL NO, FOOL!” He must rustle the shrubbery with the energy he wants to receive. Golden Rule stuff. Simple Math.

So the wine salesman says to the restaurateur, “Assuming we can help one another, I’d be honored to see my wine on your list. In addition, I’d be delighted to refer anyone and anyone to your awesome restaurant.”  And the restaurateur says to the wine salesman 30 days later, “I hope your check arrived in the mail today. If not, please let me know and I’ll get that sorted right away. By the way, is there any more of that delightful syrah available to us?”

That’s another abstraction of what Simple Math is. Just in case you were going to ask again if I love calculus, I don’t. But if you look at a rose, the math involved in its design really hits the spot for me. Natural law – beautiful.

Image via Wikipedia

As we all know, a vintage is simply a year. The word “vintage” connotes more than just a number, depending on what you’re talking about. In the case of, say, an uncle, it’s deferential to refer to his vintage when he’s celebrating a birthday if he’s unhappy about getting older, slower, more gullible, whatever. Just say, “Wow, you’re only 65? Born in what, ’46? That was a great vintage, Uncle Fester! Hell, you look great.” In terms of cars older than 25-30 years, we always seem to allude to “vintage cars” – meaning old – but when talking to a guy like my pal who restores these, the vintage becomes the year of manufacture. He digs ’61 Chevy trucks, by the way, and would bust me in the grill (get it?) if I were to say that ’63s rock harder. Besides, what do I know? But the vintage is everything to him, and I love him like my very own dog. So for wine, yes, vintage indicates when the grapes were picked, of course – but should never, ever cause one to generalize about the yumminess of what’s in the bottle (re: Calistoga 1998, Haut-Medoc 1983, Beaune 1948) because A) The wine pundits make sweeping generalizations for us based on high-production wines that were submitted in order to judge a winegrowing year; B) your trash may be my treasure; and C) sweeping is reserved for musical passages, glances and brooms.

A vintage can indicate the mere character of a calendar year. For me, 2011 has been a kick-ass vintage that was determined well before bud break.

But back to vitis vinifera in California (because I don’t have the time or desire to get nerdy about the vines outside of my own locale)…yep. You can see it coming. I’ve seen it before, when the shit hit the fan, when rains came at the wrong time, when temperatures didn’t subsequently rise enough to prevent moisture, mold and general ickiness down to the root tips…when naysayers said, “Oh boy; we’re in the trash heap now.” It’s been a bit hairy for early-harvested varietals in Napa-Sonoma (whites, pinot, syrah, sangiovese and the like) but it ain’t over yet. There’s less fruit, sure, but the quality is awesome thus far, according to those tasting and testing. Now here we come to an interesting point: successful winemaking begins with effective, intuitive viticulture. If you’ve got a Jim-Bob-Johnson winery pushing out small quantities and utilizing clean techniques, you’re looking at a greater likelihood of quality down to the bottling line. Alternately, if you’re talking about the 5-million-case Miller-McPherson-Kerbopple Holding Company dba McFurdiger Enterprises squeezing out SKUs and product from 10 tons per acre, employing only the finest in mechanical harvesting technology and low-payroll, high-production, undocumented labor units to supply the marketplace with only the most reliable $4/bottle bullshit, then yes, the 2011 vintage may be seen as something somewhat sketchy and cause the overseas-closeout-liquidation-cutesy-animal-label marketplace to lather up their forklifts for more participation in the big lie they actually foist off as fine wine. But there’s no farmer thus far whose boutique-level efforts have ever characterized the quality of a vintage (in the press and on heavily-trafficked wine websites), at least to my knowledge. And you’ll always find joy in a bottle somewhere, somehow; maybe even believe that a winery you never heard of has just spun straw from gold and earned your loyalty. You just have to experiment. Put the shiny magazine down, hang up your smartphone for a while and let your palate be your guide. What. Do. You. Like?

I need to tip the hat here. I discovered John Anthony cabernet a few years ago and was KNOCKED OUT. It was the 2003 vintage. Enough said. Also, if you’ve ever drunk a Trefethen ’98 cab, you cannot tell me it’s not extremely well-made, only that it may not  be your bag. The point is that when you take what the Earth has offered and do something mindful with it, it will work out. She doesn’t hand you awesome wine, only the building blocks.

I am opinionated and made sure to create fictional corporate names in Paragraph 3 while using real brand names in the next one out of respect for sheer awesomeness. That, friends, is what simple math is all about. It just is, and it’s everywhere. Hopefully this post inspires insightful discourse and discourages hopelessness when you consider whether you’ll want to buy any 2011 California wines.

The next show (just me doing an intensive interactive pinot tasting) will be on the same site on October 25th at 6 pm. You can chime in via telephone or Twitter. Just remember to sign up or sign in first. See you there!

Cheers,      Christian

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

I called on a retail account today and was told that there are indeed a few bottles of Simple Math “peen-yot” available. Uh-oh. Readers, are you getting the kind of help you need at your local bottle shop, or you earning short shrift? Enter the simple math formula. With refinements, of course.

To reiterate the theme, you take what you want, what you need to accomplish it and which alliances make sense. You build your widget using the finest screws you can find and refuse to pay government prices. You offer the widget at a fair or even ridiculously generous price. You help your peers, pay your karma tickets and situate yourself in the right places at the right times.

Then, to refine or embellish on the theme, you partner with your marketplace, encouraging and empowering, educating and engendering mutual gratitude through universal success, with emphasis on creating winning episodes for your ultimate supporters – the consumers. At the end of the day, it’s Jane and John from Anytown, USA who may build upon a memory with your widget on the table. Jane may have a penchant for telling Jackie and Josh all about this new widget she’s discovered, becoming knowledgeable and spreading the cheer that comes from erstwhile expertise – in this case of wine, her stature of connoisseur. (Remember, a connoisseur is only someone who readily identifies her likes and dislikes – she doesn’t have to publish a textbook.) John, on the other hand, may be interested in heralding the arrival of a newfound brand; he may dig the label, the logo or the name itself. He may be wont to tell Jared and Josephine about it (particularly if they have a natural affinity for any of the aforementioned elements (say, the symbol that looks just like pi but isn’t). John might also enjoy opportunities to show his widgetary conquest to larger groups (say, in a dinner setting with colleagues from JebCorp Enterprises).

Will Jane or John feel empowered when they tell their tales about the groovy new widget? You bet. We like to share good news. There’s enough crud clogging the cortex these days. But what happens when they faithfully pass along the information their awesome local retailer has given and proclaim the good news about this new peen-yot? Well, for one, egg on face, particularly if Jackie digs Burgundy or if Josh racks riesling in his spare time. It spells RSVP doom, and, gosh darn it, that new bottle will probably be filed above the refrigerator for a while and in the blue curbside bin come spring cleaning time, not to mention in the annals of embarrassing moments. When it comes to this type of widget, JebCorp, Josh, Josephine, Jared and Jackie may assume then that Jane and John know exactly Jack about the subject. John may ditch the whole conquest and return to the joy of java and Jackie to a jejune jag of juicing.

There’s a bright side. One sunny day, the staff of Western Widget closed up shop for three hours and went to a trade show. A marvelous time was had by all. As far as the eye could see, there were red widgets, white widgets, tannic ones and soft, booming widgets and sublime. Here, there and everywhere were widget producers that had various ways of describing their wares. One could take in whatever one desired and say “uncle” when the going got too esoteric. But through it all, the basic information was as freely available as wind in the Alps. The staff simply ate it up. This was a field trip to remember!

Upon returning to the shop, the doors were flung open and a new joy was expressed – lo, a lust for product knowledge that was a palpable energy in the air! The shelves practically shuddered with excitement as the widgets in stock thrummed and jostled in anticipation of finding new homes. And after about a week, as customers filed into the shop with the usual desire to be guided, one by one the appearance of glazed looks began to vanish. Each new customer told a friend and, before long, a line would form outside the shop before it opened each morning – a line comprised of people who had developed an understanding of widgets even beyond the ones they’d generally see on the shelves. Certain widgets would be snapped up and sold out, and customers’ friends would stream into the shop asking for the particular widgets their friends had shared over dinner the previous evening. Demand began to tangibly overshadow supply, and you could see stacks of Widget #11 and #42 moving in and plowed through even before being unpacked (putting a big grin on the delivery driver’s face). It was like Tickle Me Elmo all over again; heck, an Ivy League Beatles stampede! All gently ushered by friendly staff, mind you. These customers knew several places where they could get the widgets, but they picked Western Widget because it was there that they learned about their passions. Like a reading at a bookstore, it was, or a slicing demonstration at a cutlery shop. And through it all, the staff loved their jobs. They were continuously empowering themselves and earning reputations all around town. The owner, you ask? Oh, mark my words, the owner of Western Widget was not only able to actualize her professional goal of making a mark on her local widget culture, but she was also making ends meet far beyond her expectations. The accountant told her, “You can pay fair wholesale prices for what the widget producers need. They can keep on producing, you can keep reaching for the harder-to-get widgets, and I can take that much-needed vacation in Bora Bora.”

Well, the last part was a fantastical addition to what we all know is a fairy tale. But we can dream, and that’s the most wonderful part of being human.

Your ticket covers the wines and the food – and 90 minutes of Q&A with the winemaker.

I’ll be featuring: 2010 pinot, 2009 rose, 2008 chardonnay, 2007 syrah/grenache, and MAYBE 2008 cab/cab franc/syrah. Even better, a bottle of the now “sold-out” 2009 Sonoma Coast pinot will be on hand to taste. This will let you understand the development of a young pinot and get a snapshot of the ’10′s future. Psst! There are a couple of bottles of the ’09 you can still buy – but you have to be in the right place at the right time.

See you there.

here today, gone tomorrow

save for a few improvements and availability in magnum format, the early birds got their worms and the rest of the people “thinking about it” couldn’t get any. That wine was gone in about 8 weeks, travelling to good homes in bags, baskets and boxes, packages and pokes, sacks and sidecars, Harleys and handcarts, rickshaws and Range Rovers, canoes and carry-ons, in wagons and on Pogo Sticks, and even down pantlegs – the latter two modes of wine movement warming my heart the most. Thus, what I had to do was forewarn the peeps and prospects about a new release – the 2010 vintage. Yes, from different fruit: the Windsor Oaks Vineyard. And yes, from a different appellation: the Russian River Valley. And yes, made in a style very similar to those previous two darlings from the Sonoma Coast – Dijon clones, the pie crust component, French oak, no filtering, food-grade acidity levels that allow for excellent aging…you know, a Simple Math style, no matter from whence the grapes shall have grown. I started offering this as a future about a month before release, and pouring barrel samples for one of the pickier portions of our profession – sommeliers. The comments from the start were: “This is young but is going to rip my heart to shreds in a few months.” “Stunning.” “Thanks for letting me taste this; I know you won’t have any by the time it’s fully showing.” Of late, now about three weeks on the streets and having been hand bottled (as gentle as its gets), it’s nothing but good news. I heard last weekend, “We’ve been buying pinot for decades – Rochioli, Peay, Hanzell….we came here to find something up to par, and you have done it. What a find.”

Here’s an image from about two months ago:

along for dinner in SoCal

I’ll keep this short so you can keep sharp by addressing two notions – 1) Q: What aboot consistency, fella?  A: My goal is and always be consistency in quality and value. I can’t be married to one vineyard because sustainability is a cornerstone of the whole project. If a crop fails, I keep my shirt by remaining nimble, flexible and mature – then I take the growers I know out to lunch and help them strategize for survival, seeing as how we’re all in this together.  2) Q: But I can get good pinot for $10.  A: But you can’t get great pinot for $10. And if you feel you can, remember that $25 of that budget behind the scenes went into brochures and bribes to big-box distributors who can deliver those huge quantities to your humble burg, population 3000. This is not a diss. I was raised in such a town and know the game.

If you would like to examine yet another wine in a crowd of wines and think about wine all the time and become an armchair expert on wine and promise me you won’t call me to ask technical questions about wine (it’s already on the website) – check it out. Simple math, really – it’s very fairly priced and people like it and are buying it from under your feet. That’s all there is to it. I’ll let you in on a secret, too. If you haven’t joined the mailing list and would like to, there’s a great way to really do summer right on a 3-pack of my BBQ wines, paying $60 for $78 worth of goodies. Check it out.

Thanks for reading, wonderful folks. Be well, and be sure to visit the new tasting room some time around September 1st. It’s listed on the contact page but there’ll be more info very soon!

the "Rhonal variety"

In this crazy world, there’s more than enough noise for you, if that’s your cup of tea. The ability to filter is of utmost importance for a number of reasons, perhaps mainly for sanity maintenance. If you can keep your head clear, you can accomplish just about anything. Picture Neo dodging bullets with that far-off look on his face, like either a Boddhisattva or an idiot savant. Be that, and your efficiencies will come into line, and you’ll swat your emails, your problems, your projects off course like so many horseflies. (note: Trust me – East Coast horseflies in particular don’t give up after one swat – but the analogy was invigoratingly satisfying).

It bears to reason that in your job, product knowledge has a relative component to the point above because when you’re peddling wares or ideas, you have not only boatloads of extracurricular data in your head fighting for airtime but scads of information you’ve picked up to help you perform your task as best you can. The way to handle my husband just texted me that the water heater has died in tandem with this microprocessor does not run on biodiesel despite what a blogger told me is fairly simple: read a kajillion self-help books on meditation and organization. Right? Naw, not necessarily. One answer among several, though, is to wake up in the morning with a firm grasp on what one does for a living and embrace getting better at it.

It’s not about the cache of where you work (location, location, location) but rather what you do and improving upon it (vocation, vocation, vocation). Do you have a gig as a host at a shi-shi bistro? Will you ignore me, the guy who tips 30% because I hate math and would rather just round up to the nearest ten buck increment, or will you dispense with the iPhone and greet me like it’s the last conversation you’ll have before being interred in Gitmo? I’m not a good employee because I aspire to rule the world a bottle at a time, but I got to CEO by bull__ing with the best of them, acting like there would be no other place I’d choose to while away a shift, including bed. And 9 of 10 customers surveyed afterwards preferred this saccharine antic. The 10th was a masochist and preferred rudeness (see iPhone texting, glazed-eyed apathy, etc.).

I was on the other side of the hill today (Napa) taking an exam under the watchful eyes of the Society of Wine Educators. Wish me luck, and if you can mentally manipulate ScanTron readers from a distance, feel free to bend to your will the machine about to mark any of my answers as incorrect. Cheating is OK if it employs Star Trek techniques. Anyway, I came back to the Sonoma side and idled into a very famous tasting room. What do I have now, 5 or 6 wine business cards? I ask about industry comps and upon acceptance, deal her the Jack in my poker hand. She’s been around, 20 years my elder, and by default earns a great deal of my deference. I’m just genteel like that. But it starts to go haywire from an informational standpoint, and you’ll see the impact of her ‘tude as we go along here. I remark that the driveway was the longest one I’d seen since Highway 128. She glowers. I was just sayin’. I wasn’t sayin’, you know? I say that the place is just huge, huger than I’d expected, and that I was there to taste some wine from a renowned winery after having opened one of their early-’80s zins and being impressed with its ageability. She’s nonplussed by my proferral of props. I’d expect some warmth on that one.

She says this is a multi-generational, tiny winery. I ask how much they produce. She says 250,ooo cases. M-hm. Tiny.  She takes the spit bucket away from me and offers a stainless steel martini shaker, saying that they don’t allow spitting into spit buckets. Not in those words, but hence another disconnect. She pours a pinot for me, and here it gets good. 1) “Pinot noir is a Rhonal varietal.” Come again? I asked thrice for clarification/verification and nearly got a spanking. nkay. Who the hell took my world away? Then 2) “How does this compare to your pinot?” Apples/oranges? Whaddya mean? (And she’s wont to repeating her questions without rephrasing, which is like reasoning with the Headless Horseman.) “I mean, is the finish spicy?” So you’re asking if my pinot has a spicy finish? Well, yes. Erm, I use Dijon clones, and this is clearly of Pommard, and it doesn’t make sense to compare dissimilar pinots except on their own merits, and your question about spicy finish seems to be one of quality and I’m just confused by this line of questioning…. More silliness ensues, but she’s really a rude person. I taste an ’08 cab franc, and we go on to, as she puts it, “the reserve”. What does that mean? From a technical standpoint, what – oh, this is a totally different varietal, OK – so anyway, back on the rails, are we talking about barrel selection, time in oak, bottle ageing, what connotes “reserve”? Answer: “From a technical standpoint, it means this is what the winemaker wants to call reserve; it’s his special wine.” (repeat the Q & A, seeking a rephrased answer – to no avail). She hands me a receipt, even though it totals $zero (comp – thank you), and wants to know if I’d like to take a brochure.

I hightail it out of there, never to return. But not without telling her that I’d diligently seek out the heritage of pinot noir as indigenous to the Rhone Valley!

Education is key. If you’re going to carry the overhead of a tasting room, you’d better hire people that know wine. Your visitors can absolutely slay your winery by word of mouth in the blink of an eye. I don’t care how many hundreds of visitors you get every week. Let’s understand what’s in our own backyards and promote California wines to visitors in a knowledgeable and professional manner. That will keep the numbers where they need to be, rather than be subsumed by the $5 South American plonk taking over our marketshare. Vocation, vocation, vocation.

Image via Wikipedia

My friends and compatriots in the wine business report that consumer enthusiasm (and participation) have increased with the turn of a new year. It’s anyone’s guess how and why wine purchase trends fluctuate but, realistically, I perceive the following: holiday time (ouchy for most), tax time (zowie for many), and the freshness of January 1st (a new slate for all) create the living, breathing cycle of life we call bidness.  Simple Math is and will remain quantitative, so this isn’t a report on tasting room traffic & conversions. There are spreadsheets you can buy for that. Here, it’s from the heart, and as I said, wineries all over Calfornia are saying their fans are pouring in thirsty and pouring out with full hands. Love it. Are we as vintners delivering value? You betcha. That is, if we want to keep the wheels turning. And how do we do that? I never claimed to know everything, but this is what I think:

1) Make great wine. Don’t take shortcuts. If it takes longer, then take the time.

2) Look at your costs. Put a profit margin in there if you’re feeding a family. A happy home = a happy business, and sustainability only follows balance and goodwill.

3) Do not jack up your prices just because you’ve got a healthy following, great ratings or spectacular competition results. Continue to price your wines so they remain accessible to “the rest of us” below the top 3% elite.

3)a.   Offer your wines to the elite anyway, and pray that they’ll take a chance on spending less.If they tell you (and someone did tell me a few years ago!) that they won’t spend less than $150 on a bottle, send ‘em one as a gift. Maybe the light will turn on. Maybe it won’t. That’s psychology for ya – a slippery slope. But it feels good to give something away anyhow, doesn’t it? Karma don’t lie.

4) Anyone who’s built wealth will tell you they did so by being frugal. Warren Buffett advised the public, “Never buy at retail.” Well, you have to sell your wine to consumers at retail but be generous! Offer deals to fans, and the word will spread, fueled by appreciation.

5) Pursue the unique. Blending is fabulous, but typically only in the bottle. Life is too fast-paced to take the wallflower approach.

6) Forget the norms. Test new ways. Eat breakfast lying down (not too frequently, since it’s actually known to cause acid reflux). Let the power of consensus rule the day. Practice the Golden Rule. Pour barrel samples. Be a cellar rat for free. Trade peaches for zinfandel. Help Social Media entrepreneurs help you. Be your own Social Media entrepreneur. Stop relying on uber-critics and become your own judge of a great wine. And tell someone when you’ve tasted an awesome vino!

The sun is shining on a Sonoma County January afternoon, and life as I see it is fantastic. My sympathies to those experiences tundra-like conditions. It will pass. It’s looking good all around.

The transcript:

___________________

I don’t know if you got my last e-mail but am resending it again due to the problem i had with my mail account. please respond as to know how to proceed.

Hello, My name is Philippe Langner an American .I live and work here in Thailand . Actually when I was home last time in NY, I got a bottle of one of your wines from a friend as a gift and I loved it, Since then I have been planning on getting your wines for my wedding coming up soon, here in Thailand ,I got your contact through your website and I want to know if you will be able to supply me some cases of those wines.I will be making my payment via my American based credit card . I am registered with a shipping agency in USA, which has other representatives in USA .So you are not to get the wines shipped but the wines will be picked up at your location by this licensed shipping agency. The shipping agency have all the appropriate exportation documents and permits, Therefore concerning the shipping of the wines , I will refer you to this shipping company that will come for the pick up of the wines in your location once I have made my payment .They have got like items shipped to me here twice without any delay .Kindly get back to me so that I can make my orders.

P.S send all replies to ( PhilippeLangner@gmail.com ) for fast response.
Thanks.
Philippe
PhilippeLangner@gmail.com

Right, Philippe, you betcha. Or is your name Ngebwe, or is it Nikolai? Or perhaps Xiaoyang? Most likely not, according to officials at Western Union, CG Insurance, Mastercard and VISA. See, this is what could happen: The email comes in and looks mighty tempting to a winery hungry for a sale. So an email contact is made. The sender may or may not capture your IP address, but the ramifications of that range from small to worse, depending on your IT security. Chances are that the sender, having sent the email from a public ISP like gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc., is as mobile as necessary. Perhaps even held at gunpoint and being coerced to write the message by the orchestrator of the scam, whose fingers probably never even touch the keyboard. The pawn may be a teenager who’s copying the master text and sending it out to a list of “info@_____” addresses attributed to wineries. The pawn may not even read English.

Next, regardless of what investigating you do (gee, who was it that poured my wine for you?), (say, maybe whowhere.com or Google can indicate who this sender is?), (how much does he want, which wine, how fast…time to make a contact), the scammers get prepared to answer questions in as aloof a manner as they must in order to get the deal underway. This, if you email your questions/concerns (remember, no phone number is provided), you may quickly engage a person who can smooth-talk you into an emotional investment. Classic victimization. So if you reach out and ask “Who’s the shipping company and what’s their contact info?” you’ll learn that the shipping company is just setting up a new office and doesn’t have a website  or phone system set up yet. You’ll learn that your Philippe has done business with the shippers numerous times without fault and that your preferred shipper cannot compete at all. You’ll learn that the person who just may call you back (if you’ve insisted they do prior to your lifting a finger to proceed with the logistical arrangements) has the uncanny ability to call you from a cell phone with spotty reception that belongs to a friend. You’ll get no contact with the principal of the freight company, even if you request it, because that person is perpetually busy. Philippe will also be hard to reach, out shopping with his wife as a subterfuge for connecting with the right people to handle these unreasonable requests for information. At last, if you decide that this is a deal you’d really like to make, you find out that Philippe will pay you with several credit cards. See, his CC company will refuse transactions if they’re too big, and the wedding is JUST AROUND THE CORNER. No time for delay!) These funds will clear, and whether the processing is cumbersome is just up to you and your systems. But you’ll see funds go straight to your bank, and all seems well.

Now, the next day, Philippe tells you that his wedding guest list has tripled, and he therefore needs much more wine. “Run the same cards, and if any decline, let me know,” he warmly tells you. Some cards will decline, and there may be a contact from the owner of one of those cards telling you that this transaction was never authorized. What to do? Must be a mix up. There are, after all, 16 digits to every credit card number, right? So, Philippe apologizes and gets you yet another card to run. Hey, the funds clear again. But wait – the shipping address doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t exist. Clear that up? “It’s a new office location, so it doesn’t show up in a Google query yet.” Hm.   Alright.   Oh, Philippe sends a little extra to take the edge off of the credit card processing fees. Very thoughtful. Bundled up, ready to go. Send the money to the freight company? Why doesn’t Philippe pay the freight company himself? Oh yeah, no time. All that wedding planning. He’d appreciate you doing it yourself with the money he’s sent you. You have to wire it. So you do. There’s a recipient of the money. It’s traceable. But who is this person? She’s in Thailand and her name is Clara Johnson? And hey. Philippe? I mean…Philippe? So Clara gets the money. Who’s she? Oh, she’s purportedly an employee, but you know what? She’s a patsy. She’s been hired to make a few extra bones but running errands, picking up money, delivering it to the scammers, and who know what will happen to her? Will she continue to enjoy this super-easy, very lucrative job? Will she disappear? Will she take the fall if the criminals get caught? Yes.  She’ll be the one the FBI or the Interpol will find. Local authorities won’t get involved in a cybercrime unless the stakes are related to matters of state. But there’s an overriding jurisdiction problem, so don’t bank on anyone helping over, say, a pallet of wedding wine.

But I get ahead of the game here. You’re wiring money, it’s received. It’s time to arrange for the hurry-up shipment. You make the plans with your warehouse. They pull and pack it, and bill for you this. If you’re still feeling lost over who’s who and what’s what, you may have opted to see this bill of lading through with your own two eyes. Guess what? You’re going to either hang around for hours at the warehouse to no avail, or you’re going to see an unbranded truck with your wine up and take it away. In the latter case, not so bad, right? You just sold a boatload to some weirdo – who may even have offered you a seat at the wedding – in friggin’ Bangkok! But in the former case, your time has been wasted, and call your new customer and the shipping company all you want but nobody will answer. The phone may even at this point become disconnected. Then, the funds you’ve secured ALL turn out to be from stolen, lost or cancelled cards, or – even better – generated by a $50 piece of software! The money you’ve pulled in must be returned. But wait – what about the money you’ve wired to the shipping company? Gone. Irretrievable. Magically, you can reverse all kinds of charges but the reality is that while they disappear from your bank account, they really don’t go anywhere as anything real. The nature of money, ideas of trust and symbolism – ut that’s for another blog.

There’s really not a lot more to say. This has happened numerous times to California wineries. It really need not happen again. I don’t have the time to offer a full, in-depth investigation but I’ll just keep it simple. Don’t be taken in by this crime. The emails are still circulating, and there’s a reason for that – somebody’s taking the bait. Let’s stop the madness. Please feel free to share this piece, and go ahead and Google the term “wine scam”, where you’ll run across some wonderful pieces written here and there.

Image via Wikipedia

At a major wine event with my wife. Surrounded by wine energy and the sheer feel of the building we’re in. A coastal ex-military facility awash in erstwhile foodie nostalgia. The smells of panini and zinfandel still cling to the windows. Happy to have a view; the crash bar door is open and we were placed just right to be able to see the pier.

A volunteer walks up and asks who did the brochure. I say, “We did.” She says, “Look at this. The graphic frame needs to blend into the background, not be visible.” I say, “We did it.” She says, “I’ll fix it for wine.” I say, “We did it. Intentionally. We’re artists.” She says, “Not so good. Give me wine and I’ll fix it.” My wife says, “You don’t fix art. There’s no judging it.” Volunteer: “Heh heh. It IS bad, don’t you agree?” I say, “Do you like my wines?” She says, “Yeah, but…” and just then, a guy from Connecticut comes up next to her and says, “I was over here earlier, and I wonder if you have a minute to talk about putting your wines in my portfolio.”
I say to the volunteer, “Thanks for your, um, help.”

It isn’t the participant’s purpose or right to manage a volunteer. It’s the volunteers’ leaders that reel them in and keep them on task. The participant (me) is to be courteous, and the human being (me) is to be honest while tactful. The lesson here is that while I bit my tongue and held my breath, the Fates had something better in store, bringing the distributor back to the table in the nick of time. Having been on both sides of the table – as a participant/exhibitor, attendee, volunteer, in-house staff and unionized technician – I’ve seen several scenarios run through. One thing I have learned about this type of situation is that, while any volunteer that doesn’t want to be there can certainly opt to bow out next year, a volunteer also has two things: 1) entitlement to an honest opinion 2) a responsibility to respect the participant as the reason for the event.

Later that night, my wife and rapped about it, and we wanted to chew that woman’s head clean off for insulting our work, detracting from my brand’s maiden voyage in this venue, and clogging up the space in front of the table (which is prime real estate in terms of investing in mindshare). However, it’s a good thing that we didn’t open up a candid can of whoop-ass. That volunteer could be the type to go right up the flagpole and complain to the event organizers about being told to beat it and find a freeway to play marbles on. She could also be a USPS-type pressure cooker. She could be: afflicted with Asperger’s Syndrome, sporting a thumbtack in her shoe, mourning the loss of a loved one, jealous, resentful to be a volunteer, anxious to assert her value, hustling a graphics gig, connected somehow to Alan Funt or You’ve Been Punked (nano-tech is not to be dismissed, and I don’t watch TV, so I wouldn’t ever see the aftereffects), freshly inaugurated into the annals of Twerp of the Year…. But I’m not responsible for shepherding her glitches. As a member of the population, her expression had its place, for some reason. The potential for a dream to distill and present nocturnal messaging to me about who I am and what’s to be done about any one of a few appointments/hangups/aspirations/issues MIGHT lead back to this volunteer and her big mouth. Everything happens for a reason.

So – lieutenants and captains of the volunteer corps – it’s OK to take on the help of anyone willing to support 5,000 winos in a great hall. Just know that while my wife and I took our lumps with grace, it’s a good idea to keep the ice handy in case a touchy curmudgeon (and the wine business abounds with them) responds to insults with something more old-fashioned.