How do we decide what wines to carry?

“You must have the best job in the world!”

I hear that a lot from people, usually under the impression that I taste wine all day. While running a wine store is much more than tasting wine, we do get to taste our share of wine. But tasting wine in the store to decide if we want to carry it in Bridgewater Wines is very different than sharing a bottle with friends or out at a nice dinner. So how actually do we decide what to sell in the store?

There are a lot of wines on the market; something like 40,000 different wines are available in the US. When I started with wine nearly 20 years ago, it was easy to reject many wines immediately as many were just plain bad. With advances in technology and ambition, there are really no technically faulty wines anymore, so our job is to critically taste and decide if a wine is true to its type (ie, a Cabernet should be full-bodied and rich) and if it’s worth the price we’d have to pay for it. Fortunately we have an amazing roster of sales reps who help us out!

Our reps have the same passion for wine that we do, and they like nothing more than bringing us wines from their portfolios that they personally are excited about. We can be sure that when they bring us a wine to taste it’s because they’re excited about it and think that we will be too. Talk to them when you see them in the store and you’ll immediately feel their enthusiasm!

When we taste wines, we always think not of what we like or want to drink, but about what we think customers would like. We all have wine styles that we don’t personally care for but we can recognize a good one in that type. I’m not a fan of the color red but I still turn my head when a Ferrari goes by! So all this is a long way of saying that we buy wines that we think best represent wines that you will love, and at a great price to match! Cheers!
Pics to add:

The entire world of wine under one roof; ProWein is an annual show in Dusseldorf, Germany that brings together producers, importers and retailers from across the globe. This video shows the scope of the show, it’s me walking from the entrance to my first appointment at the 2017 event.