The fun of the hunt
After having our shop for nearly 10 years now a big part of our enjoyment and our most rewarding experiences are when we put customer and bottle together and it works. The customer loves the wine we picked for them! It takes many forms, sometimes it is someone looking for the perfect bottle for themselves on a special occasion, sometimes it is for a gift, and still others is for their go to “Tuesday night wine” that they not only love but has to be priced appropriately for Tuesday.
When we get that feedback though that they loved it or their recipient loved it, we feel great about the job we have done. It is quite literally why we taste so much. It gives us the background knowledge to bring bottle and buyer together successfully.
Mid last year we were approached by two customers who know each other from work. They are both in our wine club, and my sense of them is that they are pretty sophisticated wine folks. They both like to try many different things. They have both traveled and in some cases lived all over the world, and they appreciate wine. Not just expensive wine but wines from all price points and all parts of the globe, enjoying each bottle for what it is and what it has to offer. It is great fun to talk wine with them, and occasionally to share a glass or two.
Their request last year was to create an add on to their existing wine club. They wanted us to pick out 6 bottles each quarter (their regular wine club membership like all of our clubs is quarterly), focused almost exclusively on France and Italy, and they gave me an average price point to work with. I was honored at the level of confidence they showed in my palate. I agreed immediately! My thought was, “this is going to be really fun.” It changed my approach to my daily tasting appointments too, now tasked with looking for some really different wines spanning vintages and appellations from what can only be considered 2 great “old world” wine producing countries.
We also taste with these 2 individual palates in mind. Granted they are fairly easy to please given the length and breadth of their own wine journeys, but we are still conscious of their likes and dislikes. To date we have found and secured wines from vintages as far back as 2008, and some made as recently as 2015. We have explored the historic wine regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhone, Tuscany and Piedmont. We have even found a way to work in a wine from California with a bit of a twist in that it is the American property of one of the oldest and most well regarded producers of Chateauneuf du Pape.
There have been some misses too. There are regions we would love to access for their own private wine club, but alas here in North Idaho there are still some locales that we just can’t get wine from. We also need to stay opportunistic and move on a wine quickly when we find one that fits for them. It remains a treat to work on this “club” though and more often than not we are finding plenty to choose from.
For all wine consumers here in North Idaho there is a bigger lesson though. The bottles you are looking for are out there! You don’t need to be limited to what you find in the big box and grocery stores which tend to take on“sameness”. When you find a wine merchant that understands your palate and is able to work with you on your requests give them as much feedback as you can on their choices. For us here at the dinner party the most valuable knowledge we can gain from our customers is not only which wines they like but which ones they don’t. The wines you don’t like really help us as wine professionals define your palate.
Our job is all about that knowledge, of our customer’s tastes and of the wines we have to select from. Stop by the shop and see if we can help bring those two knowledge bases together successfully for you.
If there is a topic you would like to read about or if you have questions on wine, you can email George@thedinnerpartyshop.com, or make suggestions by contacting the Healthy Community section at the Coeur d’Alene Press.
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George Balling is co-owner (with his wife Mary Lancaster) of the dinner party, a wine and table top décor shop located by Costco in Coeur d’Alene. George worked as a judge in many wine competitions, and his articles are published around the country. You can learn more about the dinner party at www.thedinnerpartyshop.com. Be sure and check out our weekly blog at www.thedinnerpartyshop.com/home/blog-2. You can get all of these articles as well as other great wine tips by friending us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/#!/dinnerpartyshop.