Friday, December 14, 2012

Tales from a Wine Merchant

Tony and I went out last night for his office Christmas party – and we had a fabulous time!  I wasn’t expecting fabulous, no.  I was expecting good, because his coworkers are all very nice people, and the company knows how to put on a nice party with unlimited wine & beer and good catering, but we really had so! much! fun!

 

I’m thinking it was all due to the people we sat with.  Well, and us, of course.  I mean, Tony and I are pretty awesome. 

 

One of the guys at our table is a wine & beer merchant in addition to being a CPA.  He’s young (-er than me, probably by at least five years), so he has the energy to own his own business and also have a demanding full-time job.  I thought I heard him say that he was also an IT consultant to a gated community?  Can I even remember a time in my life when I had enough time and energy to do that much stuff?  Well, yeah, I can, and it was definitely before kids.

 

Anyhow, we were talking, and you know how sometimes you get into the groove with a group of people and the anecdotes are flying and the comments are apropos and everyone is laughing?  That was our table of eight last night.  I’m pretty sure we were the loudest in the room.  And I’d like to relate to you my favorite story from the evening:

 

Someone, at one point, started in with the “I don’t always do X, but when I do…” and I mentioned that for the longest time, I thought Dos Equis was non-alcoholic beer (obviously, I was confusing it with O’Doul’s).  So then we started talking about non-alcoholic beer and what a waste of space it is.  And then I said something about non-alcoholic wine.

 

Wine Merchant: You mean, grape juice?

 

Me: No, non-alcoholic wine.  It’s a thing.

 

WM: No!  I’ve totally had people ask for that in my shop, and I was always, like, “you mean, grape juice?”  I didn’t want to be an ass, but really, non-alcoholic wine?

 

Me: I know, it’s ridiculous!

 

WM: The best thing anyone ever asked for, though, was this one guy who came in and wanted “grape flavored wine.”  I just looked at him, and then pointed to the whole rack of wine.  “Take your pick.”

 

Tony: Right, like, not so much this part over here, because that’s the window, but this whole wall of wine here, that’s grape flavored.

 

Me: Choking on wine because I’m laughing so hard.

 

End scene.

 

Oh, gawd, you guys, grape flavored wine.  I’m still laughing.

 

Maybe you had to be there.

2 comments:

Liz said...

A CPA AND a Wine Merchant??? I hope you gave him my number!

Unknown said...

He's an IT guy and a Wine merchant. A CPA knows better than to get into that industry. They would drink all the potential profits.