Friends…

Although you could argue that any one serving any kind of alcohol is going to be pretty popular, it’s still fair to say you’re gonna make lots of friends working at a winery. The regular flow of visitors, return customers, vendors, and club members all contribute to a social platform that you can either embrace or not.

Selling wine in a high-paced retail environment for years in Portland taught me what a great thing this was. Building relationships with your clientel was not only good for business, it helped make your job more interesting and exciting. If you’re lucky, you get to meet and become friends with someone like the guy in the picture on my right (I’m the good-looking one on the left). To protect his identity, I’ll refer to him as Jeff Swafford, aka “Swaff Daddy”. In short, the guy’s a pisser. At wine dinners, we’d scheme and mess with wine suppliers, crack jokes that only knuckleheads like him and I would laugh at, and just generally have fun when he was around. Rumor has it he’s going into the wine distribution business- look out world, here comes the Joker!

Swaff’s also a very good reminder not to take this whole wine thing too seriously. I mean, if you can’t have fun with other wine lovers, then you’re in the wrong business.

Wine, more than any other beverage, is a social phenomena. I don’t care if you’re sipping a ’67 Chateau Lafite- if you’re drinking that wine alone, you’re probably gonna have a better time sharing a glass of Goat Head Red with a friend.

Sometimes my job becomes really demanding when large groups of women come into the winery to celebrate. It could be a 21st birthday (oh, darn), a bachelorette party (double darn), or just to get away from work and cut loose at a winery (man, my life sucks…).

Fortunately for these groups, I’ve got years of experience and can suck it up and focus on.. presenting our wine to these wild bunches when need be.

It’s my responsibility, after all, to ensure that our visitors are completely satisfied with their experience at the winery.

It’s a tough job, but some one’s gotta do it!

Having regular and fun interactions at the winery is great- and making new friends is truly a blessing. Here’s a little musical tribute to friendship, compliments of the best rock band of all time.

With friendly cheer,

Jared