huevos con vino

In an earlier post, I expressed my general frustration with a specific wine store in the Seattle area.  I should also point out that the store has a nice selection, decent prices, and…well…a nice selection is better than nothing, right?  Anyway, my point here is that, while I had a couple of mediocre service experiences there, I’ll keep trying it from time to time.  I’m not about to pretend that I’m their most important customer, but I do think they should have at least made an attempt to say something to me.  It’s okay, though…the joke is on them: I buy most of my wines over the Internet where the only customer interaction involves a credit card number and an address.  That way, they can’t judge me by any criteria other than my available credit…*)

My fiancé took this photo in October 2005 at Archery Summit in the Dundee Hills.  I love it!  There are a few more, but I’ll just whet your appetite…whomever “you” are, since I doubt I have more than 1 or 2 readers yet.  *)

As I’m new to wine connoisseurship, and to writing about my wine-related experiences, I’m going to assume that I will deal with more than one sneaky waiter trick in my life.  But the first one I had was pretty brazen…and it probably works quite often.

It’s an old trick.  The customer, who pretends to have discerning taste but who is actually 25 years old and nervous just to be eating at such a nice place, picks out a specific wine.  Now, in this case the restaurant shall remain nameless, but it is one of the top places in downtown Seattle, so we’re not talking about a crappy joint.  I’ve been back several times since this experience and it has never happened again, but then I’ve dealt with the sommelier instead each successive time I’ve returned.

So I pick out the wine for the four of us.  Let’s say it’s a Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.  You can see where I’m going, right?  I choose the $200 wine and the waiter (a shaved-headed man named Chuck) brings us the $100 Alexander Valley version of the same wine.  Of course, he tries to pass it off as the Napa Valley vineyard variety, but luckily I spot the label and recall that I ordered the more expensive version.

At that point, as a customer, I was in a tight spot.  I hate to complain about anything in a restaurant, in part because I recognize the difficulty of the job (being a waiter is really hard and not very lucrative), but also because this is the start of a long evening of dining and drinking.  I don’t want to be a dick this early in the evening, at least not until after I’ve had my entree.

As casually as I could, I said, “Oh hey, which wine did I mention before?  I think it might have been the Napa Valley version.  I’m sorry, I know there are a few types of Silver Oak.”  Or something like that, but more deferential.  I wanted to allow the waiter a chance to get out of the situation without being a jerk.  Happily, he recognized that I wasn’t a schmuck.  He apologized for his oversight and got the head sommelier to sort us out.  After that, everything went very well.

But man, it made me wonder: How many jackass frat boys show up at nice restaurants and order $100 wine, only to receive $30 wine that they think is worth $100?  On the one hand, maybe it doesn’t matter if they don’t notice.  But on the other hand, that’s just too dishonest for me to approve of.  Even if you’re a schmuck who thinks that food and wine quality don’t matter because “hey, it’s all going to end up in the same place,” you still deserve to get the wine you overpaid for.  Right?

My fiancé (or is it “fiancée”?) and I were shopping at Pete’s in Bellevue recently.  I was buying a bottle of Rulo Combine because I had just tried their Chardonnay at Etta’s downtown and it was terrific. 

A bit of background: Pete’s is a great store.  Some people prefer Esquin or other Seattle-area wine stores, but I like Pete’s because time and again, their staff perform the single most important task that any service industry person can perform: They provide service to their customers.  I’ve been to Esquin twice, both times dressed nicely and groomed relatively nicely (no mohawk, etc., etc.).  Both trips were a total drag…nobody spoke to me, offered to help me, or even seemed to want to approach me as I stood there staring at a bottle of Tikal Jubilo for a good five minutes. 

More background: As a former service industry employee myself, I quickly learned that you can never assume which customers will spend the most money.  The same advice holds true even in a wine store, in my opinion.  And I can assure you that the good stores, such as Berry Bros. & Rudd, do pay attention to me even if I look like hell and I’m sweaty and I’m carrying a messenger bag and a travel guide.  True story: I bought a bottle of Chateau Lascombes from a man wearing a suit, tie, and ascot at Berry Bros. & Rudd.  The service was so insanely good, I felt compelled to buy the wine…quite a hardship.

The story once more: I love Pete’s.  Their large Bellevue store has plenty of space for browsing, a few different cash registers for fast checkout, and friendly staff who will bend over backwards to make you feel comfortable and confident in your purchases.  I can’t say that about many wine stores in general, or even many stores at all these days.  So when I go to Pete’s, I make sure to treat the staff as well as possible.  I don’t ask them esoteric and usually stupid questions about wines, or whether they stock XYZ wine, until they ask me if I need help or if they are clearly free to talk for a minute.

So, I’ve got my bottle of wine, I’m ready to leave.  There are two people working the floor, which is unusually low.  One staff member is helping a woman and has been helping her for several minutes so he’s clearly engaged in a large sale or something.  The other staff member is busy with another customer at the other end of the store.  No problem, I can wait a minute.

After waiting about three minutes, the guy in front of my fiancé and I gets antsy.  He’s trying to buy 3 bottles of something cheap…not a major sale.  But he’s really ready to leave. 

He turns to us and mutters something about the “horrible goddamn service in this place.”  I sort of smile and nod, then look away.  We’ve been waiting three minutes.  That’s hardly a problem.

Suddenly, this guy loses it.  He takes a $20 bill out of his wallet, trains his gaze on the nearest staff member, and yells “MONEY-YYYYYY!!!  MONEY-YYYYY!!!” while he waves the bill in the air.  Amazing.  A staff member approaches and this customer wants to chew him out while he pays for his wine.

Wow.

This happened in November, but I still feel embarrassed for the poor staff members at Pete’s that day.  They didn’t deserve to be put in that position.  I also wonder about that guy.  What does he do for a living?  Is he the sort of fellow who talks on his mobile phone throughout dinner while his wife sits there quietly?  Is he the one who cut me off on I-5 the other day?  Does he urniate on toilet seats while talking on his mobile phone?  Probably.  Will he return to Pete’s to buy his wine?  I hope not…although if he wants good service, he’s in for a serious meltdown at Esquin.

So that’s my favorite wine customer story so far.  I have witnessed a couple of other really weird situations, like the time I was tasting wines with my father and stepmother in Sonoma, when suddenly we heard a screaming, retching noise that sounded unbelievably unholy and frightening.  It turned out to be a grown man puking into a toilet in the bathroom while a five-year-old kid tried to use the other stall, and the kid got scared so he screamed as the man hurled.  It scared the crap out of everyone in the tasting room and generally killed the soft sell environment they were trying to craft.  But that’s another story.

As a kid I collected all sorts of stuff.  I was a little different from most other kids, though.  I’d go with my dad to the comic store and spend about $10-$20 on a single, 1960s X-Men comic, for example.  And then I’d carefully seal it up in an acid-free Mylar bag…and then I’d never read it.  In fact, I wound up buying and not reading a bunch of comics, including some really interesting and rare issues.  The only ones I bought to read were 1970s issues of Mad Magazine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a few other recent comics.

I did the same thing with sports cards.  I would spend hours carefully sorting through cards pulled from pack after pack, scanning the latest price guide to see which cards showed promise (they’d be put into binders or individual holders) and which cards were less interesting (they’d be put into specific acid-free cardboard boxes with perfectly spaced, divided rows).  And so it went with vinyl records, CDs, and other objects that required tender care.

Despite these hobbies, I had a fun childhood.

Now that I’m 29 years old, I find myself enjoying the process of seeking out and purchasing wines partly because of the storable nature of wine.  But I’m also quite drawn to the collectible nature of wine.  I can almost convince myself to buy, say, an extra bottle or two of that Radio-Coteau because, hey, maybe I’ll shop it around in a year.  Wine seems to hold quite a bit of value as long as you store it properly, and if you want you can always drink a bottle and make room for another one.

One of the criteria that motivates some of my purchases is the availability of a specific bottle.  I find myself salivating over the highly limited releases, the wines and varietals I’m not even sure I’d enjoy but that are so rare I can’t help but want to buy one.  For example, Bokisch makes a wine called Rosado.  I have no idea if I’d like this wine, but when I see that they made 14 cases my heart skips a beat.

I think I love the idea of exclusivity associated with a limited supply of anything, whether it’s wine or motorcycles or sports cards.  The problem with exclusivity is cost, of course, and I can’t afford to buy one or two bottles of every limited wine I stumble across (such as the Thomas Fogarty Camel Hill Cab Franc. only 50 cases! hurry!!).  Perhaps if I worked in the wine industry, or the NFL, I could make enough money and/or contacts to obtain as many of these limited wines as possible.  But as my “about me” section explains, I’m having a hard enough time consuming wine as it is.  The last thing I need is a glut of, well, exclusive wines.