More adventures on the sales road
Saturday afternoon, in-flight on United, somewhere above Iowa
Returning from my four days back East on a sales trip to the “DMV”—my friend Liz Kitterman’s acronym for the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia circuit she covers. I’m struck by the many kinds of people I interacted with as part of the job. Some were somms or other buyers for upscale restaurants, like The Capital Grille. Some were buyers for supermarket chains, like Wegman’s (and wow, what a foodie paradise that is), or for their own small wine stores, like finewine.com, which despite the dot-com is a bricks-and-mortar store, and a good one.
Some whom I met were floor staff at restaurants; some were “just the public,” people who don’t work in the wine, food or hospitality industries, but love wine and are curious enough to go to an event to learn more about it, like the lovely people I met at the chic and genteel Chevy Chase Club,
where we showed six wines over a nice dinner that included a first-timer for me: Maryland soft shell crab.
Each of the people I met is different, and yet each is motivated by the need, or desire, to “up” their level of knowledge of wine. As the educator (I don’t really like that word, it sounds school-marmy, but it’ll have to do), it’s my job to have a mastery of all the information pertaining to the wines we’re tasting and talking about, but that’s not all, because the amazing and delightful thing is the unexpected questions people ask. You have to be able to think on your feet. For example, Friday night, at Chevy Chase, for a while there I felt like I was on the witness stand with the D.A. cross-examining me. Afterwards, a couple people came up and said, “Man, they were really grilling you,” and I replied, “I love it!” Because I do. There are two ways to go about this job. You can memorize a set of talking points, like a politician giving a speech, and hope they don’t ask you tough questions, or you can encourage people to use their noodles and think; and if that means they ask you tough questions, then great, because, let’s face it, honest people have nothing to hide, smart people like to have their intelligence put to the test, and sociable people like to engage. Tough questions are enlightening, not only for the asker, but for the askee.
Not that I don’t have my talking points. I’m out there to work: there are certain Jackson Family Wines that are being emphasized at any given event– the ones we’re pouring for the people–so I have to pretty much know everything about them. I always ask my colleagues at JFW to please tell me in advance what wines we’re going to be pouring, because JFW has more than fifty wineries on five continents, and I don’t think anyone, not even a Jackson, not even someone who’s worked there for thirty years, not even a Master Somm, knows everything about every SKU: history of the winery, elevation of the vineyard, age of the vines, fermentation regime, alcohol level, barrel type, precise nature of the soils, weather at harvest time, the blend, the clone/s, the latitude of the vineyard/s, how many acres of that particular variety are grown in France, or America, or wherever…that sort of thing; and all of those things have been asked of me. So you have to do your homework before you leave the house, and that’s why I ask my colleagues to please tell me which wines we’ll be pouring. (And, yes, I do have cheat sheets!)
We had long days and nights, and I got tired, especially with the jet lag, and sometimes, before a particularly big or important presentation, there’s some stage fright. But I’ve learned two things about myself. One is that, no matter how nervous I get right before I go “onstage,” it’s natural; the nervousness immediately disappears once “the curtain rises,” and I feel like the seasoned trooper I am: you have to have a bit of the ham in you to do this, and I am perhaps an actor manqué. Besides, there’s something strangely familiar and comforting about public speaking, which I did a lot of at Wine Enthusiast and when I wrote my books. Another thing I’ve learned is that fatigue can be illusory: you may think you’re tired, when in reality you’re really not, but instead you possess hidden reserves of energy just waiting to get out. After the big Friday night event (which followed a full day of things, which followed an equally busy Wednesday and Thursday), I was ready to hit the sack at my hotel, having already been sleep-deprived for most of the week, and needing to wake up at 5 a.m. the next morning to catch my flight back to SFO. Alas, my colleagues prevailed upon me to go with them to Black’s Bar & Kitchen, a supercool nightspot in Bethesda. I begged off; they insisted; I went, expecting to have just a quick nightcap and then go back to the hotel and blessed sleep. But such was the energy at Black’s, and so restorative were the oysters, and the fried clams, and the charcuterie, and my Ketel One Gibsons, and our server, not to mention the delightful company I was with, that I suddenly felt no fatigue at all; on the contrary was happy; and when confronted with the certainty of yet another sleep-deprived night, I thought to myself [rhymes with “bucket”], laissez les bon temps rouler. You need to savor the good times when they come, for they may not come again.
So now (Saturday afternoon), maybe over Nebraska, feeling sleepy yet peaceful, I write these words. I’ll catch some zzz’s here in seat 25-A before we land, then it’s a taxi ride home for a much-awaited reunion with Gus.
