A Little About Me

Welcome back, oenophiles!  After my first two posts I thought it may be a good idea to introduce myself and tell you a little about my background.  I was raised in a household where wine was served with every dinner (for my parents, at least...).  As wine was always there on the fore-front, it wasn't a big deal to me when my parents eventually offered up a glass of the grape.  I remember it to this day, it was a Beaujolais, and I was less than impressed.

Heading off to college in Arizona, I tended bar for a living in a little dive that actually had a pretty nice clientele.   One of my duties was to deal with the sales reps from the various wholesalers who called on the bar.  One of them was a guy named Greg, a very well dressed and well spoken gentleman who made it abundantly clear that he'd rather push fine wines than booze.  I picked this poor man's brain every chance I could to learn about wine.

'Greg' went on to give me a lead, that a wholesaler in the area was looking for a salesman in their wine division, and that he'd noted my borderline fanatical interest in wines.  I was hired by that wholesaler and continued on with that company for five years.

After leaving Arizona (from an unpleasant divorce, and that's putting it mildly...) I packed up my children and moved to the Virgin Islands, where I've been living since.  While there,  I worked for two different wholesalers, one selling the company's entire gigantic catalog, the other co-running a wine division of a major wholesaler.  Both were great jobs where I learned massive amounts of information. The second, though, was the job of a lifetime, co-running the wine division of a large wholesaler.  There, I did purchasing, tastings, marketing and merchandising, writing wine lists, etc., all this on top of the day-to-day sales!  But I loved it, the money was good, and my life happy. 

And then--truly, horror of horrors--Hurricane Hugo blew into town and devastated EVERYTHING, the building, inventory, delivery trucks, right down the line.  (And that's just business-wise, my/our personal lives were coming apart at the seams, as well).  And just to make matters worse, what the storm didn't decimate, the looters did.  These people had the gall to actually set up road-side stands, selling cocktails right thereon the street  as well as "package goods,"  that had been stolen right from the warehouse.

Sick and tired of post-hurricane life, I relocated to the states (Florida) for a year and a half.  I worked for a wholesaler there in their on-premise wine division, where again I worked my patoot off but enjoyed the work.  On a terrific job offer, I came back to the V.I. where I worked for a year and a half for a rather awful group of people, who eventually forced out/downsized pretty much the entire company, then went on to hire  folks for half of what they paid us.  Hmmm, THAT makes a lot of sense.  Pay them half, they'll work half as hard. 

Anyway, being 'done' with sales, I was approached by the editor of our local newspaper to do a weekly column on wines.  I branched out from there to papers around the U.S. and now I'm writing blogs as well, just for your amusement and entertainment!  I truly hope you enjoy reading my postings and please continue to look out for new and interesting topics I'm writing about, and of course to respond to my blogs.

Salud!
Topics: Beaujolais