Ernest Gallo, true pioneer, cannot be pleased.
Wine sales are high and climbing in Southern California. Never mind that you know nothing about wine, you too can be a wine boutique owner with no more skills than the ability to make change for a dollar.
I wonder if it’s a coincidence that wine pioneer Ernest Gallo’s obituary (cause of death not mentioned) runs in the LA times on the same day as the story on the new wave of wine bars and wine retailers. Remember you heard about the wine jukeboxes here first.
I can just see EJ rolling in his grave as wine bar proprietors are saying they didn’t like stores where they were “made to feel stupid.” Their solution: open a wine store decorated and upholstered "like a 1960’s basement rec room where they grew up." Okay. Their wine store owning peers, self-described wine neophytes, are opening stores with names like “Wine Styles” and “Luscious Lips”.
Talk about reminiscent of basement rec rooms. Why not name the store “where’s the liquor cabinet” or “what time do your parents get home.” Seriously, these proprietors (like Best Cellars here on the East Coast) group their wines not by region, country of origin, or even grape. They group their wines in categories such as “bold” or “mellow”. Like the jock or the stoner on the other side of rec room sofa, perhaps?
Maybe the fact that the Southern California region consumed 46 million cases of wine in 2005, more than any other state and twice as much as New York, explains why something more complex than bold or mellow on a lable might make one feel stupid.
So the proprietors with no wine knowledge and the buyers with less are lining up to buy wine in a dumbed down rec room social experience setting. They’re buying by the quarter from the new wine jukeboxes so as not to be undone by something as complex as a label.
Ernie, we hardly knew ya.
