Just as “a policeman’s lot is not a happy one,” the life of the common and garden wine buyer is not all glad-handing and vineyard-hopping in exotic locations and quaffing hedonistic elixirs. The more humdrum reality involves gathering quotidian information – prices from producers (and engaging in the occasional haggle), soliciting samples as necessary, asking for information (spec sheets) about the wine(s) and endless form-filling (abvs, details of additives, certificates as required). It is enough to drive you to drink – if you had but the time. Once you make that all-important buying decision, you become engrossed in labyrinthine logistical matters, by helping to ensure seamless (ha ha) communication between multiple producers, haulage companies and the shipping department of your company. You can only move as quickly as the slowest responder and the process will grind. And all the time the flapping jaws of bureaucracy demanding more i’s to dot and more t’s to cross.
You may be using aesthetic judgement in deciding which product to buy and will assist, as per above, in the birthing process (getting the wines into the bonded warehouse), but you are also just as surely engaged in selling it. Each buying decision is rightly vetted in the aftermath for its commercial realism– the stock has to be paid for in the first place – and it also needs to move out of the warehouse and onto wine lists and retailers’ shelves to justify its place on the portfolio. No single wine has a divine right to sell. To achieve this commercial imperative, you must help educate sales reps as to the finer virtues of each and every wine that you buy.
The shipment of new wine eventually lands. At this point, I always ask the office to send me a bottle to taste and assess – and pay for it as if I were a typical punter. What you taste at this stage of the process may be completely different to what you originally assayed from tank or barrel in the winery or as a sample at a wine fair.
If the wine shines, you may allow yourself a metaphorical back pat – after that initial exhalation of relief.
If the wine is not in a good place, however, time now to intercept it before it is widely sampled. Many wines are understandably muddled and require time to recover after a lengthy journey. Some, however, are goners before they even got here.
And so we come to quality control and responsiveness. It seems that every other week I am opening bottles about which concerns have been raised by customers. I taste the wine hoping for the best – and leave the bottle open to give it every chance to “come round,” as well as leaving some in the glass to allow oxygen to maximally impact on it. When I am satisfied that there is no short-term hope for it, I designate the wine as temporarily unfit for sale.
The next course of action is to check the lot number or rotation of the wine. Sometimes, flaws or faults are only pertinent to wines bottled from a specific batch or tank. It is essential, of course, to freeze the stock immediately to prevent any more bottles from getting into circulation and then to ascertain which accounts have recently ordered the wine. Finally, when all the information is gathered and feedback elicited, it’s time to alert the producer and ask them to try the wine from the same batch, whilst describing in precise detail what you (and the customers) have tasted, and what you think the problem is.
It is an imperfect quality control strategy. You’re not in the same room as the producer, tasting and reacting to the same wine. There is no verifiable proof that a wine is faulty, other than your sense of taste. But you can only tell it as you see it (and taste it) and convey your opinions and those of your customers.
The tender spot will be touched if the producer disputes your assessment of the wine in question. In such cases, the buyer must be very diplomatic and clarify that no aspersions are being cast as to the winemaker’s competence, but that bottles of wine have been returned by customers and that the wine has been tasted and [insert description of fault]. No buyer enjoys breaking bad news because of the painful financial implications for the producers.
In the end, a solution must be found, and the quicker the better. The importer is all the time paying for storage costs as well as delivery, collection and crediting stock in certain cases. The reputation of the wine and the winery itself will be damaged if the issues remain unresolved and remedial action is not taken.
Admitting that a wine may be faulty is not a matter of losing face or having your honour besmirched. Stuff happens during the winemaking process. Ideally, vignerons should taste their wines once bottled for a little period of time to see where they are at and what their importer will soon be hawking around.
The buyer’s responsibility is to ensure honest feedback is communicated. When the wine is being enthusiastically received, then the producer deserves to hear back. Managing expectations is also crucial. Any producer needs to know the nature of the market their wines are being sold in and the various “tipping points” that will materially affect the level of business.
This is not to sound downbeat about the role of the buyer. The upsides are many: connecting with passionate people who care deeply about their craft; learning more about the subject to which one has dedicated oneself; to understanding the place and the culture from which a wine hails. When you travel to see vignerons in their vineyards, you usually end up feeling good about the world of wine and want to buy everything that you have enjoyed tasting. When you return home, then you have to don the commercial hat (which is filled with a douche of cold water).
