Transformational over Transactional
Something I am detecting, acutely, in these early days of 2021, are the relationships that were shaped while working in the wine trade. How many times did I sit at someone’s mother (or grandmother) table enjoying a home-cooked meal while tasting the wines they also made? What did they get out of it? Another meal for a bunch of American wine buyers. Another lost night. More free wine consumed, eating into the margins.
It’s something I ask a lot. Then, maybe it was because they knew I had buying power. But not now. I’m done with that. So, why, if at all, do some of those folks still stay in touch?
I’ll go you one even better. How many times did I send a consumer to a winery in Italy for a visit and those folks at the winery rolled out the red carpet? I mean wine, dinner, maybe even a place to sleep. And for what? Maybe a couple of cases in someone’s cellar, at best?
There has to be more to it than a mere transactional sentiment. It doesn’t make any sense to spend time and money and labor and all that only for a couple of cases of wine. I say this not because I am cynical of my Italian winery friends motivation.
No, I really think many of my Italian friends in the wine trade in Italy aren’t thinking about the transaction as much as the need to transform the hearts and minds of Americans (and other nationalities too). It wasn’t that long ago that they (we) had to spend an inordinate amount of time apologizing for the wine we made (or sold) because they (we) felt it might not be rising to the standards set by our French cousins. I know, that seems like a lifetime ago. But the need to please can often outweigh rational and proper business practices. In other words, transformational relationships surpass the merely transactional ones, over time.
And that is so funny right now, to me, because I have been examining my old wine trade relationships and have found too many of them were merely (to them it seems) the price of doing business. The newly landed wine blogger who didn’t know anybody, who was short of cachet and needed a little support, emotionally (and maybe even financially). The executive who was trying to make inroads into the greater world of Italian wine and wanted to tag along to make some of my relationships also theirs too. The wine buyer, the sommelier, the list goes on. Sadly, those folks, in the post-Covid world of stark, brutal reality, have fallen by the wayside. The friendships have dissolved, gone. Sad.
But, in the transactional world, one knows that nothing is forever. You get a great by-the-glass placement that’s making everybody a bunch of money, and the competition takes the wine buyer to a strip club and gets him a lap dance, and badda-bing, you lose the placement. The wine buyer got a better deal. It was just another transaction. Not even a good business decision, by the way.
So, back to the Italians who have made transformative relationships more important than their business transactions. An example.
There is a wine producer in Piedmont, and I will not use his name, because the person is a very humble person who would be embarrassed by the story I am about to tell you. But for years this person has had me in their home, taken me to dinner, spent time with me, both in Italy in in my own home. We’ve become friends.
Yes, for a short while we did a little business together but the importer changed and it became almost impossible to do business in the future. But always at Vinitaly there was a moment to have an espresso, talk about books, ideas, or the blue sky, even though this person never made a bloody red cent off of me or my influence.
I felt guilty, for sure. I always wanted to do something, something more. But the stars never aligned.
But I also realized that both of us are doing fine in the world. Why couldn’t it be more than a transaction, a real relationship, a friendship? And that was really what it was and is.
[I know, not a tasting note in sight. Alfonso walking the plank with another one of his cockamamie ideas.]
We’ve all had a lot of time to think. We’ve shed a lot of things. Some of us have died. I’ve given away books, clothes, tools, music, money, and yes, stepped away from people I thought were my friends, but for some reason or another are no longer. We’ve all sacrificed something in this past year.
But my friend in Piedmont, is still my friend. I drink his product at home from time to time. I think warmly of him, and he isn’t the only one. There are scores of people in Italy whom I think about in that regards, even though they have nothing – I repeat – NOTHING – to gain from my present position.
This is the
golden nugget that makes Italy and her people and her wine so indisputably ascendant.
Because these people know something about the value of real relationships, they
are and will continue to succeed even in these trying times. And you know what?
I’m going to be there with them, raising glass after glass for them, and with
them, because that’s how you succeed in the wine business. When you give it all
your heart, and then some.
Happier new year, y’all!