Otto anni fa...

Happy Valentine's Day, wherever you are...

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

I'm Your Man

Do we ask too much from any wine? With the grapes long ascent through time, asking nothing from man, except to be held and loved and partnered in a glass, maybe with a little cheese and bread. But we want to triangulated it and take it apart, stem by stem. Both camps, the terroirists and the wine-stylists, want wine to be what they think it should be. But what does a grape made into wine really want? Maybe it just wants to be your man.

Swimming in wine and spirits, my kitchen, my home, my world. There are so many expressions of the magic. Small harvests, droughts, spinning cones and tuning forks, I ready myself for a trip home.

No, not to Italy, but to the place my grandfather brought my father and made their home, in the New World. Part of the youthful rebel inside turned me around, back to the Old World. And so it has been like this, walking, walking, all these years, back away from home. I strayed, but never got too far.

So I took the last thirty years in the service of the Old Country and her wines. Along the way, fashion led Italy to take on the mantle of the New World, only to cast it off as the fashions change. And those of us who never went to med school, but were expected to perform surgery in the field, without anesthetics, what was in store for one whose life took them in that direction?

All the many Italians we piled into our cars, and the French and the Germans and the Australians. They piled into the Mercedes and the Volvo and the Infiniti and now the Silver Bullet. They all came to look for America, searching for Eldorado.

Dallas today, tomorrow Atlanta. Chicago next week, followed by Denver, Phoenix and San Diego. Drive to Los Angeles; fly to San Francisco and down to Miami and back up to Boston, D.C. and New York. Every inch of America.

The cycles, the trends, the oak, the concrete, and every autumn the grapes would ripen and souls would pick them and squeeze them and let the fateful mystery cling to those rotten bunches and make diamonds appear. In the New World, a master of wine and war would fantasize in the darkness of the sunset, thinking about his Old World home and the maidens in the field busy with the grapes being born and dying. Planting by the cycles of the ocean and harvesting by the fullness of the moon. Grab a horn and blow the walls down. Dig a hole and drop the precious liquid inside it. And wait. Three months, six months, nine months or more.

And to what end? To end up on a wine list in some rotating bento box 600 feet in the sky, waiting for someone to pay $195 for a meal? Or $120 for a bottle of wine? And we send our best and our brightest up to man those stylites, fending off diners pleas for white zinfandel as if they were the advances of Satan?

And still we aim the Silver Bullet to the next call, to the Italian kneading the dough waiting for the fire to heat up the oven. Still hoping, still breathing, wishing for the light we saw all those many years ago as we entered the tunnel to expose us to the greater light within the clusters shining on the vines dripping with dew. I’m your man, yes I am.

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Lyrics by Leonard Cohen

Dead of Winter-view

Interview by Beatrice Russo

Alfonso seems to be a bit distracted lately, what with his new gig as a clogger, the accolades and the busy travel schedule in his future. What does he think? That he’s the rock star? I was back home this week, gathering some of my stuff, doing taxes and hanging with friends. Before I head back to South America to work the harvest, I sat down with him over an ancient bottle of Sassella, and picked his brain. He apparently thinks he has something to say to his 3 loyal readers, so he is getting a little help before this shill is gone.

BR: So catch me up on what’s going on lately AC? Have you found a way out of the corner that you painted yourself into?

AC: I see you haven’t lost your lust for snark, young grasshopper. Thanks for caring. I decided against getting out of the corner in the traditional way and just broke on through the wall.

BR: A while back it seemed you were whining about how much this Italian wine blog was taking your energy. How goes it now?

AC: I cut down to two posts a week, and proceeded to get some of my life back. I really don’t know how I did three essay length posts a week for almost three years. But now with only two a week, it seems like a walk in the park. Readership is still strong, my posts are still those non-linear stream of consciousness genre-bending rants, but I’m ok with them now. Many of my friends and readers are thanking me for that too. They were telling me they couldn't keep up with the posts and were getting frustrated with my proclivity for providing posts so prodigiously.

BR: Wow, glad I asked. Good to see you got your confidence back. So you put your Italian wine blog on a diet, what do you do for fun now?

AC: I was looking for a way to make money with this blogging thing, so I proposed to my work that I get together a team and start a blog, one for the industry and corporate types along with all the rest of the folks who surf on by.

BR: I remember you mentioning folks like Eric Asimov and Jon Bonne, who have wine writing gigs but also do the blog thing, you called it clogging?

AC: Yeah, corporate blogging. So, we worked up a name, The Blend, something that would encompass wine and spirits, and the synthesis of flavors and interests.

And hey, it's not just the superstars doing it; there are other folks around the country doing this too, like Dave Buchanan and Steve Bachmann.

BR: Ok, you just went into crypto-talking points on me. What are you talking about, Senor Viejo?

AC: I see the Latin language is suited to your temperament, young bumble bee. Let me elucidate. Our industry is changing rapidly. Companies are merging; wineries are shifting their allegiance to other forms of delivery, whether it be outside of the three-tier system or by incorporating new ways to lure folks to try their products. I think the world I live in has been successful to a point. But now those existing frameworks are being challenged and folks are storming the castle, in a manner of speaking. Look at what someone like Gary V has done to bring new wine drinkers into the fold. Well, I’m not looking so much at the new folks, in this case, as in giving the established people in the conventional networks an opportunity to peer through their window and see where the change will be taking them, and all of us. That said, if I can make the folks aware, those who built the industry into such a large behemoth, perhaps they can get on the Change Train and help move our industry forward. In other words, be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

BR: and you think you are going to do this with a blog? Dude, what have they been putting in your Añejo?

AC: Bea, look, I’m not Moses. I’m not John the Baptist. At least I hope I’m not. I’m the Invisible Man. Everyone says everything around me and asks me not to say anything. I often forget most of it, because it is rumor, not true or at best, wishful thinking. But what I get in the deal is people speaking their minds to me and those are pretty valuable indicators in these days. From the customer on the retail (or restaurant) floor to the Executive VP on the Sixth floor with a view and a clear shot. People talk to me. And because of that I can be a better shape-changer of the industry by seeing where we are going, trends and otherwise, and letting anyone who wants to know, know about it. Open access, free exchange of information, linking up, sharing ideas. The sum greater than the parts, that kind of thing.

BR: So you want to play God in the wine business.

AC: Nah, nah, that’s what we have Bacchus for. No, I’m just sounding the trumpets.

BR: OK, Joshua, but God told your friend Jeremiah, "You will go to them; but for their part, they will not listen to you".

AC: Funny girl, I see you’ve been reading something other than Glamour and Seventeen, Bravo! All kidding aside, it’s just an experiment to see if we can bridge the gap between the Twitterers and the Corporate Jet set. Everything has a life cycle and our country is experiencing a sea change.

BR: Are you telling me you’ve gone back to being a vegan?

AC: I never went that far, but you’re on to something. Our business must develop sustainable sales programs that don’t rely on the few wine drinkers to keep it propped up. The era of rampant consumerism is over. Over. Now we must expand the bench, widen the field and bring more wine drinkers, drinking a little bit more wine everyday.

BR: Were doing our part in Argentina.

AC: Yes you are, along with eating grass fed beef when you do eat meat, which has a smaller carbon imprint. Bravo to you and your new country.

BR: What else is rolling around in your head, AC?

AC: The idea that restaurant prices are too darn high. I saw a Zenato Amarone on a wine list for $168 the other day and almost had a heart attack. That just doesn’t make any sense at all. Those days of 3x, 4x, 5x markups are over, too.

That and the reality that a lot of the larger company salespeople have so much on their plates lately, along with just not being into wine and the career of wine. All these cool and groovy wines that we search out for our customers, those customers never hear about them from our people on the streets because they are too busy doing other things. It’s not a secret; I had this conversation with a sommelier the other day. I told him that when I look at a wine-by-the-glass list or the sommelier special wine selection list, I rarely see products from the company I work for, even though I know we have the same level of products. Organic? We have ‘em. Biodynamic? We have them, too. Small farmer, small production, no oak, no ML, not plastered all over retail? We have them. In fact they are so not available in any retail that it is a punishment to see a list and not have one or two of the really wonderful wines that we all go nuts over. I don’t want to go into a restaurant and only drink our products, but I'd sure like to see the ones that we have offered as well. And that ain't happening enough.

BR: Didn’t mean to raise your hackles, AC. Remember your shingles. So where you off to lately?

AC: I just got back from NY and later this month I’ll be heading to Napa Valley for the wine writers symposium.

BR: And Italy? Anytime soon?

AC: I have a trip planned for April. Some big things shaking and I'm excited. 2009 will be a year to remember. I hope I’m still working in a year, what with downsizing and the economy as it is. If I’m not, I might just head on down to Argentina and work the fields with you, how would you like that?

BR: AC, you're like a dad to me, so I don’t want you as a Facebook friend or anything like that, but you’d be more than welcome to join us south of the border. But I don’t think you have to worry. Just keep stirring the cauldron, you’ll be fine. What else, any last thoughts?

AC: In a perverse sort of way, I have been researching the 2008 Bordeaux harvest and am fascinated with the way the wine trade in France is going to sell this vintage. I have been asking all kinds of experts for their opinions on the vintage. It’s all over The Blend if you want to read about it. Having been in Tuscany for the 2008 harvest, I think we can all benefit from the way the Bordelaise spin their web. Those folks in Montalcino especially, could learn from their French cousins. But we’ll see. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to get folks to buy the 2005 Piedmont and Tuscan red wines, especially the higher end ones like Barolo and Brunello. Folks like Giacosa, Tua Rita, Dal Forno, Roberto Voerzio, to name a few in my world, these winemakers have lost their market in America. And I’m not sure they know what to do with us. They’ll probably have to look elsewhere until we get to a place where a $300+ bottle of wine isn’t a stretch. I’m not sure when we’ll see those days come back, if ever.

BR: Well, on those uplifting notes, I have to meet friends for beer, AC, so thanks for taking the time to rant and rave with me. And thanks for the yummy Sassella.



Images provided by the Italian cinema. The movie? One of you rock stars out there knows, for sure.

One Sommelier's Quest for Fire

Sometimes on the wine trail we veer into restaurants. Actually, often. I feel like the old Wells Fargo delivery man, with my pack of information going from outpost to outpost. On the rare occasion there is a kindred soul at the inn.

Last night I ran into one. I had forgotten he had landed at the newly refurbished hotel in downtown Dallas. My first meeting with him was in a large retail chain. You know the kind where they furnish the employees with some kind of apron with a kitschy logo of the owner or the store, which usually has some goofy name? I remember we were in the pinot grigio section and he wanted to show me what he had in Italian wines. The young man kept telling me he wanted to be on the floor of a restaurant as a sommelier, you could really tell it was his dream. Eventually he made his way into the cellar of a renowned hotel, an entry level cellar rat kind of job. But he had ditched the apron.

I kept in touch with him via email over the next few years. Through time he made his way up the ladder out of the cellar to another new and bright hotel as an assistant to the head sommelier. He was moving on up. When a nearby hotel went looking for a sommelier for their renovated restaurant he applied and got the position as their sommelier. In less than a few years he went from dusting bottles in a chain store to acquiring great wines for an elegant room with a young chef and a new direction.

When I saw him last night, in his brown pinstripe suit and his certified sommelier pin on the lapel it really did my heart good. He is following his dream and getting to his promised land. And that’s not an easy thing in today’s world. Looking around the room at 9:00 PM, there were few guests dining on this night, I could see his disappointment that he couldn’t offer his services to the people in the seats because the seats were empty. And who knows when they will fill up again? On this night I was with a group of writers and p.r. folks. It was the normal activity that hotels and p.r. moguls do to get the word out.

One combination our sommelier put together with the chef was unusual and inventive. It was a salmon carpaccio with mascarpone and thinly sliced (shaved?) fennel. Our somm paired this dish with a young Vernaccia di San Gimignano. The pairing of the three elements with the wine was perfect, not that I was looking for that. I’m over perfect matches; life just isn’t that way most of the time. But once in a while, the lightning strikes and it‘s magic. When the young somm asked me what I thought of the pairings I mentioned the Vernaccia. I didn’t remember it at the time but rolling around in my head was a paraphrase of what Michelangelo once remarked about the wine, that “it kisses and caresses you, it bites and throws you!”

I could see from the inner glow that the young somm was pleased that someone had noticed that he tried very hard to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. I was looking at his brown suit and flashed back to a day thirty years ago when I donned a brown suit and went to work as a sommelier in the same city. It was one of those restaurants which rotate high above the city. I digress for a moment, excuse me. I remember going into the wine room to get the umpteenth bottle of white zinfandel (it was a destination restaurant for tourists) and upon coming out of the room I lost my table. Of course they were just twenty or so feet from where they were when I went in to get the wine. But it so disoriented me (and I have a little fear of heights anyway) that after a few weeks of that I took off my brown suit and went on to my next job. Now that restaurant has also been renovated and there is another young somm up there, which is another story. All this to say, we have come a long way, but the situation still requires diligence and devotion. We still have to get them in the seats and make them feel good.

Maybe it was the glow from the wines, or the homemade limoncello or the Madeira, but when I left that dining room I really wished that these young people, chefs, servers, sommelier, will be able to get everything they want from their livelihood in that dining room. If you are in the wine business you know what I am talking about. We need the business to once again flourish and thrive. OK, I've gotten schmaltzy, I’ll stop now.

Go find a sommelier and help them keep their fires burning.

Photos by Marc Pelissier

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Grand Cruelty

After most of the week in NY for Italian events, and coming home to make a Bordeaux tasting, which I missed, I meditated over the relationship between the French and the Italians. Over and over, during the Italian events, I kept hearing the mantra, “We’re #1” as if making and selling more wine would automatically put any country over the top.

The French, does anyone think they care about those kinds of declarations? I see their claim to fame is their careful cultivation of their image as a country of small gentrified farmers coddling the land and coaxing out the best from their beloved terroir. Marketing as a fable, having gone through malolactic.



And I am not writing here to beat up on the French farmers or winemakers. Or wine lovers. But the argument that positions one great country against another, to me is just meaningless. I am a bit surprised that professionals in the Italian wine trade get worked up over such matters, unless it is just some form of argument they use when trying to justify the Italians ascendancy on the world wine stage.

OK, so the Italians had me at Buon Giorno. But along the way, tasting the different wines, I am struck more by how similar they are than their differences. Maybe it is my baseline from an early time being brought up drinking the local wines of my area (California) that makes the wines from Italy and France seem more alike than not. I don’t think I have a California palate, as I prefer the wines of Europe, generally.

But lately, as if to coax myself out of my stubborn preconceptions, I have been popping red and white wines from California. Last night we opened a 2005 Chateau St. Jean Les Cinq Cépages. Out of the bottle into a quick decanting, and straight into the glass. I was drawn into the seductive quality of the wine. Fleshy, woven with aromatic ripeness. I was 15 again and looking more at the young girls in bikini’s on the beach than the waves.

Did the California wine take me back to my youth? I remark to my companion that this would make a fine $25 bottle of wine. The wine, though, sells for three times that in a store, $75. That would make it $150+ in a restaurant. And out of my league.

Not that France or Italy doesn’t have similar wines that seem to be overpriced for the current state of the world. But in agriculture, the planning of these wines is made in advance of any economic downturn. And once we get into these waters, what are the wine growers supposed to do?

In the wholesale (and retail) business, if you can’t sell a product at the price you had planned on and if the product sits in a warehouse or on a shelve eventually one must make way for more viable products. Discounting, close-outs, bin-end specials. These are part of the toolbox that keeps the machine cranking along. Restaurants know this too. They have happy hours, special menus (we’re starting to see specials now that aren’t just overpriced entrees) and ways to fill seats.

One thing that doesn’t seem to be working: The overpriced wine dinner. When a restaurant tries to sell, let’s say, an Opus One dinner for $395 per person, I'm thinking the message is: We have too much inventory let’s make an “elite” wine dinner up and get our best customers (and investors) in to help us clear some of this stuff out. It’s an out-of-touch idea that suggests the establishment has run out of ideas. Makes me wonder about their food, too.

Meanwhile the cycle of the vine begins in a new year. In quiet little towns all across Italy and France, people are preparing their vines and their cellars for the work to begin. From the greatest crus to the humblest plots, the love and the care for the land, that these people who care for them have been entrusted, makes me shudder. We have to go forward, the earth doesn’t stop. The cycle, the cycle, the cycle.

So, here we meet. A producer in the Côte d'Or, or Rabajà, over these cold dark nights, must consider how they are going to approach not only their land, but their clients across the world. Does one lower their price and compromise their stature? Does one march on ahead leaving their loyal supporters in search of newer and maybe more elusive ones? Or does one do nothing and hope the economic cycle moves eventually upward?

To my way of looking at it, to do nothing is the height of the grand cruelty to the land. The land did not proclaim itself greater than another, that was something man has decreed. And as that assertion is more symbolic than substantive, to punish the land is to only repeat the endless sins against the earth that we earthlings have been perpetuating for many, many years.

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Jumping the Snark

I’ve been away from the home fires for a couple of days and seem to have landed in a Dantean Purgatory for journalists. As I mentioned to a friend earlier today, I am back in the Invisible Man character. Knowing I don’t live in NY any longer (not any longer than I had to), but when one meets a person a handful of times, you’d think they’d at least try to pretend to remember you. Give it the old Hollywood try. These are folks who are writing about wine and the hospitality business? Seems they could stand to take a cue and become a little more hospitable. Not to mention the benefits from actively working with contacts like we do mulch. The new network? Meh, a lot of these folks are from the dead tree school of writing.

We're sittting in a press conference. Basically a bunch of weary Italian speakers spouting banalities about Brunello and how great Italy is. Along the way a writer (one whose book on Italian wine up to this moment I had recommended to everybody) asks the panel a question. No one on the panel answered that person. So I decided to open up my “no good deed goes unpunished” toolbox and reached on in and tried and help this writer out. After all, we’re colleagues right? Oh wait, the PR firm didn’t get my request for the luncheon so they would allow me to come to the press conference but not to the press meal. I guess they only had so much swag to go around. Not to worry, the merchant’s luncheon was much more fun.

Anyway, I turned to the writer and asked, “Did you get an answer to your question?” The reply, a curt “No.” So in my innocence I volunteered, “Well, you should look up so and so, he’s a professor at the University of Torino and a pretty well known enologist and he is looking after the analysis of the wines of Montalcino. He can do this kind of analysis with any wine and he is the best in the business.” I know this because he consults for a handful of wineries I do business with for many years. He’s a real person.

This expert writer now scowls at me. “I am not talking about anthocyanins; everybody can get that kind of information.” At this point I am really regretting being a nice person from The West who was raised to be polite to everybody, even those afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease. I drop-kick the punt. “It appears you don’t want my information to provide you with the answer. But even if that is not what you are looking for, that is the answer.” And I turn 180 degrees and remove this person from my field of sight.

We have folks in a dying or dead industry. Journalism and book publishing. And we are attempting to exchange ideas, bring them up to speed. Remember? I am the Invisible Man, I don’t exist.

This is where bloggers are the tsunami that are just rolling up over the dead tree scribes who are still waiting for the 9th wave to come take them to some ink-fraught Valhalla. Well, there is no free ride. If you were famous then, if you don’t reinvent yourself again in today’s world, you will truly become invisible.

My point? Other than the endless frustration with the old school media who I have to keep reintroducing myself to at seminars (a very humbling and tedious ritual for a normally shy person like me), I think it is that you think you are going to engage in some brainstorming with fellow colleagues and what you have really done is to have landed yourself in the cockfighting ring. And for some reason, it seems to be worse with females. Maybe they have had to scratch through all those glass ceilings all those years and they are just wary of another white middle-aged male. If that’s all they see, I pity them for their apprehension. I’m not a threat. I have a day job. I don’t want their gig or their assignment or their spotlight.

So where was I? Tonight at a grand dinner, where all kinds of awards were being given out like candy at Halloween, I happily sat next to a young Italian who works in promoting the products of one of the regions of Italy. We talked about some of the things I have wanted to talk about to some of the press folks. But here, we managed to cut to the chase and dig into the idea of what an Italian producer of wine needs to comprehend, and quickly. We have a whole new culture of young people from 22-40 who don’t care to listen through a rash of white haired old speechmakers spouting platitudes and non answers. These are the up and coming generations, who are looking for info in under a minute. They want the message to be cool and hot at the same time. And short. The Italian wine marketer who can talk to that group and keep the lines of communication open will build their business across this country and "land it in the Hudson."

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Clogging & Crypto-kibitzing

Change. Yeah, everybody’s talking about it. From what I’ve seen and heard this week, though, my takeaway is this: Everybody wants everything around them to change, as long as they don’t need to be doing any of the changing themselves.

So, a different era, but the S.O.S.? Good luck with that one, people of earth.

Now we've got all these newbies on board, some of ‘em who want to serve man, and already folks are trying to figure out ways to snake out of the commit. Tryin’ to make it real, compared to what?

OK, I’m ready to change, or else. Straight on down the line, folks. Down-size? Will do. Figure out how to sell wine to a society not driven by consumerism? We might not sell 20% more a year for the next seven years, but I bet we will give the wine drinkers a better experience. It’s already going in that direction anyway, so we might as well step out of the showers and break out of the camp. It’s going there.

A while back I wrote that I was scaling back to two posts a week @ On the Wine Trail in Italy because of another blog-gig in development. Well, it’s up and running, called The Blend. Right now I’m doing a bit of “repurposing” on it, but the (self-imposed) parameter is to provide pertinent wine and spirits info to my colleagues in the day job, as well as anyone else who’d like to surf on by. So now, I’m a clogger too. We’re still getting our legs, but the reception (and the traffic) has been way over my expectations. I guess we done had us another baby, ma. Anyway, check it out, The Blend.

I seem to be obsessed with older television and motion picture themes lately, sorry about that. My sidekick in Austin, Dr. J, ("Hutch") has been passively encouraging me to run this out of my system. Like it has been said so many times before, it ain’t dogma, it’s just a blog, ma.

The V.P.'s and general sales managers have been streaming out of the office to California for the end of year sales and performance reviews with the wineries, and some of them have been coming back saying we here in Texas have been showing the rest of the country how important tenacity is in these times. Having lived here all these years, I’m not sure if it is just plain stubbornness or perhaps not buying into the bicoastal American dream. You know, lots of credit, other people’s money, buy low, sell high. Or don’t even buy, just take the money and tell folks how great everything is, and don’t invest a penny. Well, we here in flyover country probably have a retinue of sins, venial and mortal on our bloodied hands, but for the time it looks like we made it through the year with only flesh wounds. We’re talking sales now folks. But 2009 is barreling past us and things are s.l.o.w.i.n.g. d.o.w.n. Duh.

I don’t mean to rant, but last week I was in two steakhouses and two Asian restaurants. The Asian places had food that seemed to be more serious. Smaller portions (and prices) higher sourcing and quality. I had a Carbonara at one of them that was better than any Italian place nearby. And I had a Bolognese at an Italian-inclined (?) concept that had nothing to do with Bolognese. So, go figure. I’m crazy. Hey, while my Austinopoli co-conspirator wants to make the world safe for Italian wine, I just want to serve man. With as little salt and garlic as possible.

I had a Petite Sirah from Seghesio and a Zinfandel from Pellegrini Family Vineyard this week and I loved them both. This week over a corked bottle of 2001 Brunello ( it said it was 100% Sangiovese on the label, I kid you not! ) and a better 2004 Sagrantino I chatted with Robert Pellegrini about the history of Italians growing wine in early Californian and the impact it has had on the industry. It’s part of research I am doing for a presentation in July in Sacramento for the Society of Wine Educators Conference.

So, that along with folks in Washington getting to keep their Blackberry to communicate with the outside world, that’s about all these is in my little Kanamit Cookbook tonight.


Buon Appetito!

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

A Period of Adjustment

It was Tuesday at 11:50AM, Eastern Time. I got a call from someone wanting to know about a place to stay in Italy. I asked them if I could call them back after the new president took his oath and gave his speech. “What you’re listening to that used car salesman?” was the reply from the other end of the phone line.

No matter what your political leaning, we were witness to a rare piece of history that wasn’t cataclysmic. A new era, a time when the torch has been passed to a new generation of leaders. But no, my caller wouldn’t have anything to do with that.

Yesterday in the office, I was overhearing conversation after conversation with our programmers (folks who deal directly with the wineries and importers about their mutual business). I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We just finished a very difficult quarter for sales and January is traditionally a slow time. A time to catch our breath. To analyze our year and to plan our new year. But no, these well-rested (and well-tanned) winery folks wouldn’t have anything to do with that. They wanted to send palate after palate of overpriced wine into already bulging warehouses. As if they have been taking a siesta these last six months and think things are just as they have been. Business as usual. What a rude awakening they are in for.

The blatant reality is out in the streets. For two nights this week I have been in high-dollar Texas steak houses. And they have been empty. No one is picking up $150 Napa Cabs. They just aren’t. Sorry folks, but if you were to get away from your computer screen and go out and see for yourself, we wouldn’t have to push back so often.

Oh, I get it; the owners want to move their inventory. They’ve made big investments. We have to find a way.

Yes we do. But no we cant. Not right away. Not this time. If those same folks who were mocking the events in our nation’s capital had been listening that day, they would have heard that we all are going to have to make sacrifices. All of us. Well, the end of the line consumer already is making sacrifices and they still want to drink wine. But they want to be able to afford to pay for it. What is so wrong with that and why as marketers, do some of our colleagues not “get it?”

I sat in a few meetings lately and my mind wandered off. I wasn’t hearing any new ideas. I wanted to think we could brainstorm, but I seemed to be picking up the feeling of desperation from people who have run out of ideas and just wanted us to take their products off their hands. Or else.

Or else what? They’ll take their products to another house? As if the conditions on the other side of the road are any different? Large or small, these times are calling for new ideas, for folks willing to sacrifice their margins, or their pride, and get on with the show. Make ‘em laugh.

I heard the story of an uber-wealthy Napa Valley wine producer. They make a red that sells for $80-90. So already you can surmise their business isn’t tearing it up. But sitting in a second floor office with a 360 view of the vineyards on a beautiful winter day in Napa Valley, how can the sale manager not think the rest of the world is equally blessed. “Just take your allocation. Or else.” That’s the extent of his strategy?

Or else what? You’ll surprise all of us with an original idea? You’ll come down, off your lofty perch, and get on the dance floor? You’ll actually talk to a front-line retailer or one of those struggling steakhouses and make them see the sense of your argument? The evil of their ways?

And importers, too. They’re thinking Obama is going to save their world? Obama is drinking Prosecco, so now Prosecco will outperform Champagne. Poor, poor Franciacorta.

Or the Tuscan producer whose basic Chianti Classico has been designed to sell for $25? Now it’s not selling so well. But of course it is the fault of us here in America for not understanding the value of their product. Value is not the driving force. Money is. And money has dried up. Disappeared.

The French and the Italians, too, are being unbearably thick about this situation. This is not the time to cast a deaf ear. Don’t believe me? Just walk around Manhattan and see all the empty restaurant spaces that cannot sell your wine anymore, for any price.

The game is still the game. Folks still gotta want to be receptive. Ya dig?

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy