It is up to all of us to send the Canadian fishing industry a message they cannot ignore: Stop the killing of defenseless seal pups, or we’ll put you out of business. Thanks for helping save seals!

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In this crazy world, there’s more than enough noise for you, if that’s your cup of tea. The ability to filter is of utmost importance for a number of reasons, perhaps mainly for sanity maintenance. If you can keep your head clear, you can accomplish just about anything. Picture Neo dodging bullets with that far-off look on his face, like either a Boddhisattva or an idiot savant. Be that, and your efficiencies will come into line, and you’ll swat your emails, your problems, your projects off course like so many horseflies. (note: Trust me – East Coast horseflies in particular don’t give up after one swat – but the analogy was invigoratingly satisfying).

It bears to reason that in your job, product knowledge has a relative component to the point above because when you’re peddling wares or ideas, you have not only boatloads of extracurricular data in your head fighting for airtime but scads of information you’ve picked up to help you perform your task as best you can. The way to handle my husband just texted me that the water heater has died in tandem with this microprocessor does not run on biodiesel despite what a blogger told me is fairly simple: read a kajillion self-help books on meditation and organization. Right? Naw, not necessarily. One answer among several, though, is to wake up in the morning with a firm grasp on what one does for a living and embrace getting better at it.

It’s not about the cache of where you work (location, location, location) but rather what you do and improving upon it (vocation, vocation, vocation). Do you have a gig as a host at a shi-shi bistro? Will you ignore me, the guy who tips 30% because I hate math and would rather just round up to the nearest ten buck increment, or will you dispense with the iPhone and greet me like it’s the last conversation you’ll have before being interred in Gitmo? I’m not a good employee because I aspire to rule the world a bottle at a time, but I got to CEO by bull__ing with the best of them, acting like there would be no other place I’d choose to while away a shift, including bed. And 9 of 10 customers surveyed afterwards preferred this saccharine antic. The 10th was a masochist and preferred rudeness (see iPhone texting, glazed-eyed apathy, etc.).

I was on the other side of the hill today (Napa) taking an exam under the watchful eyes of the Society of Wine Educators. Wish me luck, and if you can mentally manipulate ScanTron readers from a distance, feel free to bend to your will the reader inclined to mark any of my answers as incorrect. Cheating is OK if it employs Star Trek techniques. Anyway, I came back to the Sonoma side and idled into a very famous tasting room.What do I have now, 5 or 6 wine business cards? I ask about industry comps and upon acceptance, deal her the Jack in my poker hand. She’s been around, 20 years my elder, and by default earns a great deal of my deference. I’m just genteel like that. But it starts to go haywire from an informational standpoint, and you’ll see the impact of her ‘tude as we go along here. I remark that the driveway was the longest one I’d seen since Highway 128. She glowers. I was just sayin’. I wasn’t sayin’, you know? I say that the place is just huge, huger than I’d expected, and that I was there to taste some wine from a renowned winery after having opened one of their early-’80s zins and being impressed with its ageability. She’s nonplussed by my proferral of props. I’d expect some warmth on that one. She says this is a multi-generational, tiny winery. I ask how much they produce. She says 250k cases. M-hm. Tiny.  She takes the spit busket away from me and offers a stainless steel martini shaker, saying that they don’t allow spitting into spit buckets. Not in those words, but hence another disconnect. She pours a pinot for me, and here it gets good. Q1) “Pinot noir is a Rhonal varietal.” Come again? I asked thrice for clarification/verification and nearly got a spanking. nkay. Who the hell took my world away? Then Q2) “How does this compare to your pinot?” Apples/oranges? Whaddya mean? (And she’s wont to repeating her questions without rephrasing, which is like reasoning with the Headless Horseman.) “I mean, is the finish spicy?” So you’re asking if my pinot has a spicy finish? Well, yes. Erm, I use Dijon clones, and this is clearly of Pommard, and it doesn’t make sense to compare dissimilar pinots except on their own merits, and your question about spicy finish seems to be one of quality and I’m just confused by this line of questioning…. More silliness ensues, but she’s really a rude person. I taste an ’08 cab franc, and we go on to, as she puts it, “the reserve”. What does that mean? From a technical standpoint, what – oh, this is a totally different varietal, OK – so anyway, back on the rails, are we talking about barrel selection, time in oak, bottle ageing, what connotes “reserve”? Answer: “From a technical standpoint, it means this is what the winemaker wants to call reserve; it’s his special wine.” (repeat the Q & A, seeking a rephrased answer – to no avail). She hands me a receipt, even though it totals $zero (comp), and wants to know if I’d like to take a brochure.

I hightail it out of there, never to return. But not without telling her that I’d diligently seek out the heritage of pinot noir as indigenous to the Rhone Valley!

Education is key. If you’re going to carry the overhead of a tasting room, you’d better hire people that know wine. Your visitors can absolutely slay your winery by word of mouth in the blink of an eye. I don’t care how many hundreds of visitors you get every week. Let’s understand what’s in our own backyards and promote California wines to visitors in a knowledgeable and professional manner. That will keep the numbers where they need to be, rather than be subsumed by the $5 South American plonk taking over our marketshare. Vocation, vocation, vocation.

So with a mix of the grim, the grave and the laughable, there’s a quick glimpse of our beloved 3-tier system’s goings-on in terms of taking matters of finance in hand. There are ways to wrest such control from the hands of distributors, HOWEVER, let us be mindful that while HR 5034 has been reworded, hairs are still being split. The legislative conversations about direct shipping are far from resolved, and the heat is turning up in increments nearly undetectable by most. In my opinion, looking at the pending legislation through lay glasses is nearly akin to fighting a panther with a plastic spoon. Farella, Braun & Martel do have a good handle on what’s happening, and as a legal firm focused on the wine industry, they’re offering periodical interpretations of very important issues, framing the information in under 4 syllables per word. No comments on the bill as yet, but I expect something from them soon.
In the meantime, why not use Wine Societies as a sales platform?
Humbly yours,
Christian Lane
Director of Marketing & BizDev, Winery Focused
Vintner, Simple Math Cellars

The transcript:

___________________

I don’t know if you got my last e-mail but am resending it again due to the problem i had with my mail account. please respond as to know how to proceed.

Hello, My name is Philippe Langner an American .I live and work here in Thailand . Actually when I was home last time in NY, I got a bottle of one of your wines from a friend as a gift and I loved it, Since then I have been planning on getting your wines for my wedding coming up soon, here in Thailand ,I got your contact through your website and I want to know if you will be able to supply me some cases of those wines.I will be making my payment via my American based credit card . I am registered with a shipping agency in USA, which has other representatives in USA .So you are not to get the wines shipped but the wines will be picked up at your location by this licensed shipping agency. The shipping agency have all the appropriate exportation documents and permits, Therefore concerning the shipping of the wines , I will refer you to this shipping company that will come for the pick up of the wines in your location once I have made my payment .They have got like items shipped to me here twice without any delay .Kindly get back to me so that I can make my orders.

P.S send all replies to ( PhilippeLangner@gmail.com ) for fast response.
Thanks.
Philippe
PhilippeLangner@gmail.com

______________________________

Right, Philippe, you betcha. Or is your name Ngebwe, or is it Nikolai? Or perhaps Xiaoyang? Most likely not, according to officials at Western Union, CG Insurance, Mastercard and VISA. See, this is what could happen:

The email comes in and looks mighty tempting to a winery hungry for a sale. So an email contact is made. The sender may or may not capture your IP address, but the ramifications of that range from small to worse, depending on your IT security. Chances are that the sender, having sent the email from a public ISP like gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc., is as mobile as necessary. Perhaps even held at gunpoint and being coerced to write the message by the orchestrator of the scam, whose fingers probably never even touch the keyboard. The pawn may be a teenager who’s copying the master text and sending it out to a list of “info@_____” addresses attributed to wineries. The pawn may not even read English.

Next, regardless of what investigating you do (gee, who was it that poured my wine for you?), (say, maybe whowhere.com or Google can indicate who this sender is?), (how much does he want, which wine, how fast…time to make a contact), the scammers get prepared to answer questions in as aloof a manner as they must in order to get the deal underway. This, if you email your questions/concerns (remember, no phone number is provided), may quickly engage a person who can smooth-talk you into an emotional investment. Classic victimization. So if you reach out and ask “Who’s the shipping company and what’s their contact info?” you’ll learn that the shipping company is just setting up a new office and doesn’t have a website  or phone system set up yet. You’ll learn that your Philippe has done business with the shippers numerous times without fault and that your preferred shipper cannot compete at all. You’ll learn that the person who just may call you back (if you’ve insisted they do prior to your lifting a finger to proceed with the logistical arrangements), has the uncanny ability to call you from a cell phone with spotty reception that belongs to a friend. You’ll get no contact with the principal of the freight company, even if you request it, because that person is perpetually busy. Philippe will also be hard to reach, out shopping with his wife as a subterfuge for connecting with the right people to handle these unreasonable requests for information. At last, if you decide that this is a deal you’d really like to make, you find out that Philippe will pay you with several credit cards. See, his CC company will refuse transactions if they’re too big, and the wedding is JUST AROUND THE CORNER. No time for delay!) These funds will clear, and whether the processing is cumbersome is just up to you and your systems. But you’ll see funds go straight to your bank, and all seems well. Now, the next day, Philippe tells you that his wedding guest list has tripled, and he therefore needs much more wine. “Run the same cards, and if any decline, let me know,” he warmly tells you. Some cards will decline, and there may be a contact from the owner of one of those cards telling you that this transaction was never authorized. What to do? Must be a mix up. There are, after all, 16 digits to every credit card number, right? So, Philippe apologizes and gets you yet another card to run. Hey, the funds clear again. But wait – the shipping address doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t exist. Clear that up? “It’s a new office location, so it doesn’t show up in a Google query yet.” Hm.   Alright.   Oh, Philippe sends a little extra to take the edge off of the credit card processing fees. Very thoughtful. Bundled up, ready to go. Send the money to freight company? Why doesn’t Philippe pay the freight company himself? Oh yeah, no time. All that wedding planning. He’d appreciate you doing it yourself with the money he’s sent you. You have to wire it. So you do. There’s a recipient of the money. It’s traceable. But who is this person? She’s in Thailand and her name is Clara Johnson? And hey. Philippe? I mean…Philippe? So Clara gets the money. Who’s she? Oh, she’s purportedly an employee, but you know what? She’s a patsy. She’s been hired to make a few extra bones but running errands, picking up money, delivering it to the scammers, and who know what will happen to her? Will she continue to enjoy this super-easy, very lucrative job? Will she disappear? Will she take the fall if the criminals get caught? Yes. She’ll be the one the FBI or the Interpol will find. Local authorities won’t get involved in a cybercrime unless the stakes are related to matters of state. But there’s an overriding jurisdiction problem, so don’t bank on anyone helping over, say, a pallet of wedding wine.   But I get ahead of the game here. You’re wiring money, it’s received. It’s time to arrange for the hurry-up shipment. You make the plans with your warehouse. They pull and pack it, and bill for you this. If you’re still feeling lost over who’s who and what’s what, you may have opted to see this bill of lading through with your own two eyes. Guess what? You’re going to either hang around for hours to no avail, or you’re going to see an unbranded truck with your wine up and take it away. In the latter case, not so bad, right? You just sold a boatload to some weirdo – who may even have offered you a seat at the wedding – in friggin’ Bangkok! But in the former case, your time has been wasted, and call your new customer and the shipping company all you want but nobody will answer. The phone may even at this point become disconnected. Then, the funds you’ve secured ALL turn out to be from stolen, lost or cancelled cards, or – even better – generated by a $50 piece of software! The money you’ve pulled in must be returned. But wait – what about the money you’ve wired to the shipping company? Gone. Irretrievable.

There’s really not a lot more to say. This has happened numerous times to California wineries. It really need not happen again. I don’t have the time to offer a full, in-depth investigation but I’ll just keep it simple. Don’t be taken in by this crime. The emails are still circulating, and there’s a reason for that – somebody’s taking the bait. Let’s stop the madness. Please feel free to share this piece, and go ahead and Google the term “wine scam”, where you’ll run across some wonderful pieces written here and there.

Yours truly,

Christian

With the economy in crisis and the stock market still taking a nose dive in many areas, where do we turn? Experts say, fatten up your wine cellar if you are in a position to do so. Many Collectors and Investors are liquidating their cellars and you have an opportunity to invest in some rare, hard to find wines today, for a fraction of what they may have been priced at 2-3 years ago.

While you are at it, pick up wines from the small up and coming wineries, who may not be in the limelight just yet, but some will most certainly become the “Cult” wines of the future.

You can add this to your private “stash” or add it to your financial portfolio, either way, it is a great investment and fun!

Worst case scenario: the economy continues to falter, at least you will have some fabulous wines to share with your family and friends to ease the pain!

The moral of the story:

Invest in rare hard to find wines today! It will fatten up your portfolio and only increase in value almost immediately

http://tinyurl.com/2527qdv

JoAnn Chisholm-Dueno