When I began my wine explorations two decades ago, one store in DC I regularly visited was Mayflower Wine & Spirits, on M St NW. The store specialized in Italian wines, but it had a great selection from around the world, and a very helpful staff. A lot of people who currently shape the DC wine scene spent some time working at Mayflower.
One of Mayflower’s attractions was its monthly sampler. Each month, the store owner, Sidney Moore, would send out a self-published newsletter (a lot of work back then in the pre-email era) with various sale offerings, including a six-bottle sampler. These would be wines that she wanted to feature for one reason or another, sometimes following a theme, such as Tuscan reds, or northern Italian whites, or two whites and four reds from Piedmont, or syrah from around the world – whatever struck Sidney’s fancy that month.
When we visited the store, there would be six-pack wine boxes, the type wineries use for their tasting room sales, stacked on the floor, filled with that month’s sampler selections. They were typically priced with the case discount, and Sidney had printed fliers with her descriptions of the wines.
I didn’t buy the samplers regularly, but once in awhile when two or three of Sidney’s descriptions caught my fancy, I would splurge and lug a box home. The wines may not have been ones I was eager to run back and stock up on, but they were good, and I learned about wine as I explored different grapes and styles. And the sales staff – the same people selling me wine today at various stores or working for importers and distributors in the region – got to know me better and help shape my wine palate because of my reactions to these wines.
Mayflower is long gone, and Sidney Moore (now Sidney Margolis) is retired from the wine business, happily making furniture in DC. But I wonder - why don’t more stores offer samplers today? Many still do in-store tastings, allowing customers to try a wine before purchasing, but the samplers offered something else, a sense of experimentation and exploration, a hope that in that last bottle, the one I never would have purchased if it wasn’t part of the pack – part of Sidney’s recommendations – I might find a real gem.
Bin 604 in Baltimore does a wine case of the month for $99 ... usually a 20% savings ... in this month's case are a Sauvignon Blanc, Oracle 2008 (South Africa), a Grenache Rose, Cote de Hayas 2007 (Spain) and a Bonarda, El Fogon 2005 (Argentina) plus nine others ... always fun to try different wines without much risk ...
Posted by: fotorules | March 16, 2009 at 08:35 AM
Glad to hear it! More stores should do this type of promotion. Any idea why
they don't? Do customers not take advantage of the opportunity to try new
and interesting wines?
Posted by: Dave McIntyre | March 16, 2009 at 08:38 AM