My Wine Had An Identity Crises!

For those of you who don't know me you wouldn't know that I once worked at a large wine distributor for nearly seven years.  We actually distributed wine, beer, liquor and some waters too.  We had two main divisions - the Wine Division and the Liquor Division.  I belonged to the Wine Division and neither division really associated with the other.  Both "sides" (which is what I'll be calling it from now on I'm sure) felt it was better than the other. Looking back and being a bit more objective now, it is clear that the liquor side had a more glamorous role than the wine side.  The job of any distributor is to order products from a supplier, mark it up and then place (sell) it in a store, restaurant, hotel, etc.  The list goes on and on; a distributor is a prime example of what it means when one says "middle man".  Both the states that I've lived in, after turning the legal drinking age, do not allow liquor to be sold out of anywhere but a restaurant or an actual liquor store (a.k.a. the ABC Store).  Wine, on the other hand, can be sold just about anywhere.  I'm surprised that ToysRUs doesn't have a special "Mommy Juice" aisle in all their locations by now.  "S'cuse me Sir, but can you point me in the direction of where you keep the new mommy help items?"  My shopping-list would be a nice split between games like "Baby Learn to Stick Shapes Into Holes", "Loud Rattle Thing" (better known as the toy that usually gets "lost" first), books to put your baby to sleep, and then I'd hit the vino aisle and grab my "Baby Cries Red Tears Zinfandel" and two bottles of  "Relax Mommy Riesling".  And if it was on sale I'd make sure to indulge in a bottle or two of  "You're Welcome I'm Pouring This Chardonnay"!

But, I digress; my point was to say that the Liquor side concentrated on restaurants - and the "nicer" the liquor was...well, the higher quality the establishment buying it was.  The Wine side got to frequent nice eateries too but we had two divisions inside the Wine Division and only one of them sold to restaurants and hotels.  Sometimes, but very rarely, a member of the Fine Wine Division would claw his way into the Liquor Division.  It was done in a way that very few people ever caught a glimpse of this happening and when you did it was like witnessing something floating into a black hole...never to be heard from again.  In my seven years there I only witnessed this once...almost twice, but that guy was almost completely enveloped  by the liquor side's proverbial brick fortress by the time I realized he was oozing his way out of the Fine Wines clan.  Well, I wasn't part of the Fine Wine Division either; there was a darker side that lurked in the basements of this distributor (lie, we had the downstairs corner offices and I was a manager and had a pretty good view to boot) called the Chain Store Division.  Three of us headed up this division and I was the lowest level manager of the three - imagine being like the red-headed step child of the family...I was like that kid's hairless cat.  Anyway, I would get yelled at by my manager and he got directions (screamed at) from his manager who had received word (demands) by the Great and Powerful Oz (or a Magic 8 Ball...I was never clear on that) that we need to place more new wines in the grocery stores "p-r-o-n-t-o!!"  After rolling my eyes in such a way that I'd get a little frightened that whoever was up in the glass towers of the Liquor Division would hear them like I shook the dice-cup in Yahtzee - I, in true management form, would tell my minions...errr, sales people to "hop to it" and go out and place that wine!  "The world is depending on that wine...get out there and save lives!"  Yeah, right...it was out of hand and it's getting worse!

If I were to be the type to place bets...wait...hahahaha!!  Let me start over.  I would bet that there are well over 350 brands of wine out there.  That is brands only; I'm not even talking about the types or the flavors inside each and every one of  those brands.  I'm not a huge math person so I'll leave the multiplying and such out of this but just to give you an idea of where that number is heading...I once put Sutter Home on a monthly promotion which is basically a temporary price change - I had to include all the "flavors" of their 750ml bottles and there were twelve. TWELVE!!  When I was leaving the wine business about ten years ago, the blending of wine types was becoming popular so I can't even imagine how many more just that one well known brand (crap wine though it is) has added to its menu.  It is mind boggling.  "Oh, you can't decide between a Merlot or Cabernet?  Well then, try this Cab/Merlot blend! What's that you say?  Oh, you like Merlot better than Cabernet?  No worries; let's head over to the Merlot/Cab aisle!".  I'm just waiting for the day someone mixes all the major flavors together and markets it with "Introducing Confused Vineyard's Dry Sweet Red White Oaky ZinChard with undertones of a college party gone wrong and a hint of rotten leftovers found in the office refrigerator!"  I wouldn't want to be the one passing out those little communion sized cups for local tastings that you see in some grocery stores!  "Taste of death, Sir?".

Maybe because I used to sell wine I tend to notice this more often than some, but when I go to the local grocery store I really don't see any rhyme or reason to wine placement.  I would think that I would at least have a good jump on understanding how they shelve each wine.  I'm not blind - I see the "flags" from around the world indicating what region you're currently shopping; no one, in my opinion, can tell where one country ends and the other begins.  Furthermore, the distributor may decide that some of, let's say France, should just be placed under other "flags" they use...which to me sounds a bit snooty (snooty?  snotty?) - "Can you help me Mr. Grocery Store Dude?  I'm trying to find Chateau St. Blah-Blah-Blah but I can't seem to find it under the France "flag"."  "Well, you idiot shopper did you look under Whites?"  Really?  The colors themselves aren't snooty; it's more like some wine snob is throwing the rest of us common wine-folk a bone or something.  I'd love to know what criteria they use to place some wines under just their  particular colors.  Also, is there so much wine being shoved into stores that they've been forced into just using Kool-aid descriptions now?  Again, I actually don't mind that at all other than it rings in my ears the same as when my daughter is telling me which juice flavor she wants in her lunch box that week. Really I just want them to pick one way and stick to it!  Heck, throw "Pink" in there too!!  I mean, come on...White Zinfandel deserves its own flavor-color; everyone knows that this sweet, pink wine has spent many, many years welcoming blossoming wine drinkers into the world of fermented grapes.  White Zinfandel is actually the gateway wine if you think about it...wait, no one still drinks that after a year or so do they?  One exception being that for some reason it's the only non-dry wine flavor served at most of those Applebees-type eateries.  So, in an effort to get some clarification I went to two new stores (with as little of a preconceived opinion as possible) to see if I could figure all this placement stuff out...no, no I couldn't.  I felt like switching over to beer just because regardless of its placement, the labels are big enough to read from a central location with little effort.  I hate beer though soooo that sucks.  I love watching people look for a particular wine though.  It strikes me as so funny to see the familiar wine stance - eyes squinched (with our without glasses), shoulders hunched over, spine curved over just a bit and one hand on your hip with your other finger pointing to each bottle like it's guiding your laser-beam eyesight.  When you're going over the section that you're so sure the wine you liked from a previous week was before, you'll scan over the same section of wines over and over like you're trying to find a particular misspelled word on a vocabulary test!  Here's a tip - when you get to the point that you're actually touching each wine label like it'll help your eyes settle on the hidden word better and hoping you don't get interrupted thus having to start your word-hunt over...you can be sure it's probably located in the other "flagged" area.  Actually, I saw three different "flag" categories at one store (the other just had a wall of random wines...and the two previously mentioned flags); the nicer of the two stores I went to had the region flag, a color flag, and then actual flavor flags.  For example, if you're looking for a nice Chianti you may find it under "Italian Wines", "Reds", or its true flavor group "Chiantis".  Oh, and don't forget to check the end-caps as well!  However, those are usually the lower-end wines that the store buys in bulk or a promotion is currently going on...or they've had them too long.  You're welcome!

I could go on and on about the wine business and how out of control it is.  I just can't seem to wrap my mind around how many more bottles any store can possibly cram onto one shelf!  I feel as though I'm playing a game of Jenga each time I maneuver a bottle out of its teeny-tiny home.  It can be rather unnerving.  It also makes me glad that I got out of that business!  I mean, it was expected of us to keep getting new wines approved by store buyers on a constant basis and very rarely did they say no.  But HOW?  How can they say yes to just about every single one??  Plus my sales peeps had to go make sure each wine we carried got the proper attention at each chain store.  'Course that just means they went to dust off the bottles and turn them so the labels showed well.  If you have to dust off your product every week wouldn't it tend to make one conclude that the ratio of said product to humans in the area was a bit miscalculated?  There was actually a fist fight that broke out on one occasion between our sales guy and one from a competing distributor because they both wanted to place the same flavor of wine at "eye level"...and it just had to be on that particular shelf!  Two grown men fighting over shelf space...how daft!!  And what is "eye level" anyway?  Well, it's an (un)educated guess of what height everyone is and placing wines at two to three inches below that measurement.  News flash wine-0h's - I'm 5'7" (average per Web-Md thank you) and your "eye level" has me doing the wine stance every time I shop for my Riesling...who did you measure to get your magic number?  A character in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel?

Well, everyone knows that girls tend to buy wine by how pretty the label on the bottle is anyway so...where's that "flag" I ask you?!

Cheers!