those goods certainly will not appreciate your thriftiness. Try buying something else from Southern, for example, if they catch you buying Gaja from a wineshop in Florence. Second, your customer may end up screaming mad at you for unwittingly selling spoiled wine.
In the worst case, the wine you buy isn’t just poorly stored, it’s completely fake. Everyone seems to know someone who’s been had. I recall reading about a broker, Everett Love, who was burned by a gray market purchase of fraudulent wine. In 2007, he bought six bottles of 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild from a Los Angeles broker, who’d in turn bought it from a broker in the Bay Area. Love sent the wine directly to a client in China. The client found a loose capsule on a bottle and discovered the cork was stamped 1981, a vintage that sells for a quarter of the price of the 1982. Last I heard, Love was irate and still trying to get back his money.
My nixing of the pursuit of the gray market irritated Janet. More and more, she was slinking in with dry lips and hoodedeyes. After one particularly rough binge, our wine director decided to do a master cleanse, and for ten days she swore off drinking. In place of food and wine, Janet sipped water spiked with cayenne pepper and maple syrup. Her mood faltered. More long nights followed. She tried another cleanse. And another. While fasting, Janet no longer let out loose whoops over sales of $150 Cabernets. She just looked unhappy. One day I bought her a spa treatment and told her to take off the afternoon. The next day she complained about the pedicure.
She needed a break. We did, too. As a bonus for her holiday dedication (and a little breather for Becky and myself), we gave Janet a round-trip ticket trip to her favorite place in the whole world: Burgundy. But Janet never made it back on the return flight. Her cell phone was off. Two days after she was supposed to have been back at work, I got a cryptic message that said our Pinot Noir–loving manager would be back in another two weeks: “There was work to do.”
I wanted to hide her maple syrup. I wanted to break those red glasses. I wanted to let her go. But we were afraid. Given our headaches in finding good people, what was I going to do in the interim? Suddenly become the wine buyer/manager?
The low point was the day I came upon Janet crying at the cash register. The night before, she confessed, she had had a terrible fight with Jude. They had both been drunk. Jude was history.
Meanwhile, Jude’s career was taking off. He was promoted to head of operations. The auction business, arguably the most legitimate gray market source, was skyrocketing. What had been a $5 million a year business when I attended that auction at Cru in 2005 had ballooned to $80 million by 2010. The venerable Upper West Side Manhattan shop found its substantial $5 millionannual retail sales dwarfed by its auction revenues as it became the world’s largest fine wine auctioneer. And all this out of an unassuming storefront sandwiched between a Jamba Juice and a Foot Locker.
Jude attributes part of their success to luring sellers with no premium (while whacking buyers with a 22 percent surcharge). But the most compelling reason for the store’s growth can be summed up in one word: China. Jude quickly recognized that the gravitational center of wine was shifting from London and New York to Hong Kong. The “Las Vegas of wine,” Jude calls it. Flush with cash, these buyers were aching to spend it on bigticket bottles.
Jude was, and remains, the perfect guy for the job. As lieutenant to the chairman, he got front-row access to the persuasive powers of this legendary bon vivant. According to Jude, the pot-smoking wine expert relishes late nights with clients, dishing inside stories at famous wineries as they toss back magnums of 1921 Cheval Blanc.
What set Jude ahead of his slightly stuffy competitors is that he was an outsider too, albeit one with his nose pressed firmly against the
In the worst case, the wine you buy isn’t just poorly stored, it’s completely fake. Everyone seems to know someone who’s been had. I recall reading about a broker, Everett Love, who was burned by a gray market purchase of fraudulent wine. In 2007, he bought six bottles of 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild from a Los Angeles broker, who’d in turn bought it from a broker in the Bay Area. Love sent the wine directly to a client in China. The client found a loose capsule on a bottle and discovered the cork was stamped 1981, a vintage that sells for a quarter of the price of the 1982. Last I heard, Love was irate and still trying to get back his money.
My nixing of the pursuit of the gray market irritated Janet. More and more, she was slinking in with dry lips and hoodedeyes. After one particularly rough binge, our wine director decided to do a master cleanse, and for ten days she swore off drinking. In place of food and wine, Janet sipped water spiked with cayenne pepper and maple syrup. Her mood faltered. More long nights followed. She tried another cleanse. And another. While fasting, Janet no longer let out loose whoops over sales of $150 Cabernets. She just looked unhappy. One day I bought her a spa treatment and told her to take off the afternoon. The next day she complained about the pedicure.
She needed a break. We did, too. As a bonus for her holiday dedication (and a little breather for Becky and myself), we gave Janet a round-trip ticket trip to her favorite place in the whole world: Burgundy. But Janet never made it back on the return flight. Her cell phone was off. Two days after she was supposed to have been back at work, I got a cryptic message that said our Pinot Noir–loving manager would be back in another two weeks: “There was work to do.”
I wanted to hide her maple syrup. I wanted to break those red glasses. I wanted to let her go. But we were afraid. Given our headaches in finding good people, what was I going to do in the interim? Suddenly become the wine buyer/manager?
The low point was the day I came upon Janet crying at the cash register. The night before, she confessed, she had had a terrible fight with Jude. They had both been drunk. Jude was history.
Meanwhile, Jude’s career was taking off. He was promoted to head of operations. The auction business, arguably the most legitimate gray market source, was skyrocketing. What had been a $5 million a year business when I attended that auction at Cru in 2005 had ballooned to $80 million by 2010. The venerable Upper West Side Manhattan shop found its substantial $5 millionannual retail sales dwarfed by its auction revenues as it became the world’s largest fine wine auctioneer. And all this out of an unassuming storefront sandwiched between a Jamba Juice and a Foot Locker.
Jude attributes part of their success to luring sellers with no premium (while whacking buyers with a 22 percent surcharge). But the most compelling reason for the store’s growth can be summed up in one word: China. Jude quickly recognized that the gravitational center of wine was shifting from London and New York to Hong Kong. The “Las Vegas of wine,” Jude calls it. Flush with cash, these buyers were aching to spend it on bigticket bottles.
Jude was, and remains, the perfect guy for the job. As lieutenant to the chairman, he got front-row access to the persuasive powers of this legendary bon vivant. According to Jude, the pot-smoking wine expert relishes late nights with clients, dishing inside stories at famous wineries as they toss back magnums of 1921 Cheval Blanc.
What set Jude ahead of his slightly stuffy competitors is that he was an outsider too, albeit one with his nose pressed firmly against the
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