At the risk of sounding condescending … I’m proud of you. Yes, you!
I started reflecting back on 2022—the year that just came and went in a flash—and I realized that the community of wine-lovers in this dynamic little valley is really quite extraordinary.
Many years ago, before I had a retail shop, I sold wine to retail shops and restaurants around the Coachella Valley. I represented a really cool selection of wines from small producers, both here in California and from across the globe. I would get my sample box of wines to present to wine-buyers from Palm Springs to Indio; my little wheely bag was full of vermentino from Sardinia, South African pinotage, and lagrein from Italy, just to name a few. I would be so excited to share these unique and fun offerings with local purveyors, armed with stories about the wineries’ families and the regions’ histories.
While I made some progress with a few restaurants here and there, I usually walked away without a sale. That’s not to say that the buyers didn’t love the wines—they did. But that love was always followed by something to the effect of: “ … but we would never be able to sell it.”
I was told over and over again that “these people”—their customers—just want the basics … you know, chardonnay, cabernet, pinot noir. Back then, a wine list was considered avant-garde if it included a malbec from Argentina, or a Spanish albariño. I was told the customers want to recognize the names of the producers. They need the wine list to be comfortable, approachable and not intimidating. In short, the wines needed to sell themselves, because anything more than that would take work. Convincing a buyer to adopt a more-diverse selection was almost impossible. Not only was this small-mindedness frustrating from a professional standpoint; it also made finding a restaurant I actually wanted to patronize very difficult. Let’s just say I paid a lot of corkage fees.
This idea that the residents of the Coachella Valley have braces on their brains and couldn’t possibly understand anything beyond pinot grigio seemed ridiculous to me. Our population is a mix of transplants, retirees, snowbirds and vacationers—including a lot of people who have either the time or the money (often both) to travel the world. Visitors here come to bask in our sunshine and clear blue skies, from all over the world. The notion that the wines we offer have to be dumbed down for “these people” is more than a little bit insulting.
Over time, I was able to get wines like South African chenin blancs, Austrian gruner veltliners, and Chilean carménères featured in local shops and on wine lists. I would hold retail tastings and restaurant staff-education seminars as incentives for business owners to take the leap and have faith that the customers were savvier and more sophisticated than they believed.
And savvy, you are! I was looking over my inventory list of the most popular wines of 2022, and my jaw dropped. We blew through dozens of cases of a Slovenian white wine called Pullus Halozan—a one-liter, screw-cap bottle of white with a mix of almost unheard-of grapes. One of our top-selling red wines is a blend called Silk & Spice from Portugal, followed closely by a marselan—a grape created by crossing grenache and cabernet sauvignon—from Bodegas Garzon in Uruguay. We fulfilled special orders for customers looking for schiava from Alto Adige in northern Italy; La Petite Ferme Rouge, a blend from Morocco; Terra Nostra Corsican rose; and a savatiano called Mylonas from Greece. Like, whoa!
So, after years of me trying to convince wine-buyers to get out of their own way and ditch those tired, over-exposed wines in favor of the new and unknown, it turns out I didn’t need to do anything. It’s you guys—you adventurous and fearless wine explorers—who have blown the global wine doors open in this town. It’s you wonderful wine-lovers who bring your knowledge and discoveries to us.
Keep up the good work, my desert-drinkers, and don’t settle for a wine selection with training wheels. You’ve proven you deserve better.
Vine Social: Coachella Valley Wine-Drinkers Are Showing Just How Sophisticated They’ve Become is a story from Coachella Valley Independent, the Coachella Valley’s alternative news source.