Vino Tales

I know why people like consulting - it’s like a high of another level. Which honestly thinking about it now it makes sense why it’s filled with a bunch of bros and over-opinionated people and loud people with no filters and oversharers and perfectionists…

My time in wine sales has taught me a lot of things. It taught me what I was willing to do to make a sale and most importantly, what I was not willing to do just to meet my monthly sales goals.

Working a 12-hour night shift in a wine cellar is bound to make anyone temporarily insane. I’ve been living the 7pm to 7am night shift life in Napa as a wine harvest intern for the last few weeks now and I have a few tidbits to share on how to make it to the other side with your wits in tact.

So you’re working your first wine harvest! You’re excited and doe-eyed and can’t wait to (figuratively, hopefully) get in there and stomp those grapes with your bare feet. If you Google “wine harvest attire” it will return a plethora of semi-useless results. Take some lessons from me, a current first time harvest cellar worker, and learn from my infinite wisdom aka all the mistakes that I made in packing.

For those of you not in the wine world, workwiths are essentially forced day-long blind dates where you are expected to take a supplier representative from a winery or producer around with you to all your best accounts so they can present their wines and hopefully (fingers crossed) make some sales so they can go home happy.

Here’s how to handle the trials and tribulations of wine sales rep-dom (aka how not to cry in your car during your first weeks on the job). Step 1: Suck it up, buttercup.

Screw caps are great for so many reasons and these days are definitely not an indicator of bad or even cheap wine. Don’t be surprised next time you’re in a wine shop and you see a 30-plus dollar bottle of wine with a screw cap on the shelf!

Luckily, a new era has begun. A time when rosé wine can be enjoyed not just by fancy bougie women sitting poolside in the Hamptons with their teacup-sized puppy beside them, but year round by average Joes, bros, and even with Thanksgiving dinner.