Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/142283
FROM THE EDITOR Margin Call It's baffling. I went to a big trade tasting last week. The distributor had gone to great expense to showcase close to 200 important wines. They had rented a lavish exhibition space and filled it with crisp, white tablecloths, and carefully designed graphics. They provided tables, piled high with cheeses, charcuterie and preserved fruits. They supplied rows of crisp tasting glassware, convenientlyplaced spittoons, many well-located water pitchPHOTO: CATHY TWIGG-BLUMEL ers and tubs of chilled bottles of water. They employed a phalanx of attractive young women for check-in, to collect business cards, politely answer questions and direct guests to the restrooms. It was a highly professional and well-organized tasting featuring many rare and expensive wines. Then, sort of as an afterthought, they handed each attendee a single sheet of paper—a price list with all 200 wines listed in tiny type and crammed onto the page with a ¼-inch margin. In attendance were key retail and restaurant wine buyers, important journalists and others whose assessments could determine the market success of the wines on display. Why would the distributor not provide tasting sheets or a tasting booklet that would allow those in attendance to write descriptive notes that could be referenced later on? Do they think that buyers will commit to large dollar purchases based on a check mark or a star in the margin? Do they think that journalists are going write glowing descriptors from memory? Do they think the wine trade is illiterate? What are they thinking?? Unfortunately, what I just described is not an exception; it has become the norm. Tastings of this sort are an important way for me to identify wines that I want to feature in my writings. Basing my judgements on notes hastily scribbled in the margins of price lists is unreliable and inefficient. In most cases, it's easier not to write about them at all. 4 / the tasting panel / july 2013 TP0713_001-33.indd 4 6/24/13 5:33 PM