Many wine shop owners are in the business precisely because they love wine. That’s great, but it does create some pitfalls. Like stocking what you love. [level-members]
Of course, we all want to sell what we love. And doing so is a foundation of “The Grapeseed Marketing way,” so to speak. Believing in the products you sell is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from shops who are selling mass-market brands on price alone.
But beware of falling into a myopic trap. For example, I’m pretty open about my love for wines of the Loire. And will I could slightly over-represent those wines in my shop, it would be foolish to stock them as my only French wines. People are much more familiar with Bordeaux and Burgundy. You almost have to sell them. (Unless you’re so specialized that all you sell is California wines or Italian wines or something like that.)
Listen to your customers. They’ll tell you want you should be selling. And you don’t always have to love the wines they do, but you do have to believe in them. Meaning, you may hate Chianti, but many folks love it as a cheap and cheerful pizza wine. So even if you don’t love it, you do need to stock wines that you view to be good values at various price points and representative of the varietal.
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