I don’t understand why some of these places don’t acknowledge our existence when we are the only customer in their shop. We are the wine buyers of the future.

The wine mine is where I do most of my shopping these days. Ever since my first time shopping with them, the wine mine has always acknowledged me as a wine drinking human being and provided me with excellent customer service. Even when they are extremely busy (at a Saturday tasting), I am acknowledged and feel like a valued customer.

I can’t tell you how many people have shoved their wine glass into my face in an effort to get a taste. Those same people tend to forget to say please and thank you.

Perhaps I should invite my grandmother to these events. Stern looks at those with poor manners might make a huge difference.

Here’s the blog post where I found that paper:

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2009/01/27/wine-tasting-datapoint-of-the-day#blogComments

In the comments there, someone links to a post by the freakonomics guys, who conducted an experiment of their own, and also links to another paper that is (i think) a bit less harsh on the sommelier crowd:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/cheap-wine/

I thought this was interesting because it was a bit of a different twist on the whole “experts really can’t tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine” argument. I like that instead they focused on the issue of consistency. Namely, how likely is a wine judge to rate the same wine similarly over several tastings? And the answer appears to be, not very likely (with the notable exception of wines that they really didn’t like!).

Personally, I don’t find that very surprising or even really a bad thing. The way that food/drink taste to us humans can be highly context dependent. I seem to recall a story you told me once about Snapple Raspberry Iced Tea, Levi!