Day 17: Blue Collar Wine, An Other Face

Yesterday I was in Boston for a series of events related to my new book, one of which was hosted at the BRIX wine shop in the South End by co-owners Klaudia Mally and Carri Wroblewski. This was a big deal for me — Carri and Klaudia have steered the BRIX stores into the sphere of the most highly-regarded, highly-respected purveyors of wine that I’ve ever come to know, and it was a thrill to be included on their Events list as an author.

I’d arrived a few minutes early, and had a moment to connect with Carri. I told her about this Blue Collar Wine project, and asked her about the best-selling mass-market wines she carried. Carri, who tastes hundreds of wines a week and selects a fraction of those to be included in BRIX’s inventory, looked around at her shelves and the wines that are carefully stocked there.

“We don’t really have mass-market wines,” she said.

I tilted my head.

“None?” I asked.

“None,” she said.

Hmm, I thought.

As the evening went on, I watched the flow of visitors come in and out of the store. Some of them seemed to know exactly what they wanted, and went directly to the small refrigerator section to pull an already-chilled bottle, presumably to take home for dinner and open immediately. One man walked in and asked for wines that are “artist priced.” Some people brought their dogs. Some brought their young kids.

Each of them was approached by the staff — this is important — and was spoken to and interacted with. I realized that these, too, were conversations about wine that I write about so often, even though normally I write about those conversations over the bottle once it’s open rather than during its purchase.

These conversations are with customers, that is, people outside the wine industry who are interacting with wine and enjoying wine on a daily basis. They are also the “blue collar” counterpart to the “wine collar” I’ve tried to identify (that is, those who work within the wine industry), and they are another face of people whose shoes I’m trying to stand in during this month-long project.

Just because they aren’t buying mass-market wines doesn’t mean there’s no wine for them. At “artist prices” too.

BRIX — and Carri and Klaudia in particular — are toeing that line, and it’s their line in the sand, so to speak. I respect them for it, tremendously.

Quick Background Note: The Blue Collar Wine Guide is a 30-day, 30-wine experiment that looks at some of the world’s most popular, consumer-friendly wines. The idea is to take off my wine-writer shoes and stand instead in the shoes of Jane-and-Joe-in-front-of-a-wall-of-wine. Thank you for reading today’s post!