Working in a Ketchup Factory--guest blog by Thomas Fuller
When did wineries start charging for 'tastings'? I must have missed that moment or simply not been there, for I was genuinely surprised by the audacity of a business model in which the buyer travels to the seller, sometimes from a great distance, with the intention of buying what the seller's selling, and is then asked to pay a fee for the privilege of sampling what the buyer intends to buy!
It's really quite remarkable. And as I was accompanied by two wine-drinking friends from France on a tour of Napa, who either buy their wine from a local vintner, filling jugs with good red and white table wine at the winery, and who also buy directly from wine estates in the Rhone & Loire Valley the wine they wish to cellar, the shock of having to pay for 'tastings' was compounded: neither of my French friends had never been asked to pay for tastings. The custom in France was to "offer" to pay--an offer that was most often refused by the winemaker--with the expectation that tasting the offered wine would lead to a purchase based upon its deliciousness.
First stop: Pine Ridge, where $45 per person gets you a 'tasting flight' of five wines. One must first check in with the wine 'concierge' who commences the only-in-America monetization process, entitling you to stand at a bar and banter with Michelle (Pine Ridge), the designated wine expert, a girl between who looked like she'd just reached the legal drinking age, as she pours out thimbles of Pine Ridge's finest.
The maiden pour--a trickle of what Michelle indicated was Pine Ridge's first Sauvignon Blanc--turned the tide. I sipped, then gave the glass to one of my companions to sip, there being just enough wine left in the glass, who nipped rather than sipped, there not being enough wine left in the glass to sip, and then made the same face I'd made: the face of horror and rejection and disappointment: the wine was more or less a species of vinegar hiding in a robe of colorization that resembled the grape for which it was named.
I placed the glass on the bar, signalling my three companions that it was time to flee lest we have to pay the full $45 to taste the four wines left on the tasting menu. We hightailed it out of there successfully.
Next stop: Stag's Leap, a mile or so down the road. We wandered around the packed tasting room for a few minutes, stopping to read the literature, blown-up to monumental proportion and mounted on padded Versailles-like walls, featuring Stag's Leap catapult in 1973 into the international wine-making stratosphere. The place dripped with self-importance, which is, presumbaly, on sale as well and can be bought for a certain price, as can Stag's Leap caps and t-shirts, wine glasses and bottle openers etcetc.
Stag's Leap wanted the same $45 per person for the same 5-wine tasting flight Pine Ridge wanted. We were out of there in a flash.
Back in the car my passengers all sang: LA did a short Aretha Franklin tribute: Henri, a ballad by Jacques Brel: Genevieve brought down the house, humming the opening chords of a Chopin nocturne. As we made our way back to San Francisco I told the story of my days working in a ketchup factory, and how I can no longer eat ketchup.
After trudging through the hot fields of wine-tasting in Napa, the author finally made it home where he soaked for hours in a warm bath, thinking about the global economy, capitalist anxiety, the penchant for monetizing nearly everything and, last but not least, the paintings of Pierre Bonnard.