When I am doing a tasting at a liquor store I get different responses from people coming into the store.
The first is the “Determined Person”; they charge into the store with their head down and their blinders on. They know what they want and don’t have a second’s time to waste. When I greet them with a jovial “Good Evening” some are startled. Where did I just pop up from? (Even though they almost walked right over me to get to their destination.)
The second type of people are the “Happy People”; they come in, see me, head straight over to see what I have and greet me like a friend who is going to offer them some delicious free booze. Don’t we all like those friends?
There are the “Cautious People”; they are the ones who look at me like I have two heads and if they talk to me I just might try to get them to join my cult. Oh how right they are; The Cult of Great Spirits.
There are the “Curious People”; they want to be educated about Spirits, in general, and yours, in particular. They also want to know the back story of you and your business. I feel like a Zen master dropping pearls of wisdom.
Next is the “Neophyte”; they know nothing about the Spirits world and would like you to give them a comprehensive education about everything Spirits related.
The “Expert” (the polar opposite of the “Neophyte”); they know everything about Spirits (some do some don’t) and they want to quiz you on your knowledge. It usually starts off with, “So, tell me about your (insert Spirit name). Usually this is the person, who knows beyond a doubt, written in stone, that Vodka is only made from potatoes. Wrong! (That is for another blog post).
The “Story Teller” and the “Talker”; I have mixed emotions about these ones. I love to engage in conversation, but after 15 minutes of listening to a story about your uncle Bobo’s fishing trip to Florida, I have to ask you to move on, please.
Last but not least is the “Jerk”; this is the person who doesn’t like what we have to offer and loves to expound, very loudly, how horrible our products are. (See below)
Some people will taste and some won’t. It’s all good. One of my pet peeves is that on occasion someone will try one of my Spirits and not only will they not like it they will tell me what a low quality piece of garbage it is and they yell it to the whole store as if it is their duty so warn the other customers. The first time this happened to me I was mortified! I recovered and asked, “So what you are saying is that my Spirits are not your cup of tea?” Bewildered, they responded with, “Well yeah, that’s what I just said” “No”, I reply,” You said my Spirits are of poor quality.” I explain that there are a lot of different Spirits on the shelves and if you drew a line and said that above the line were good Spirits and below were bad Spirits then there would only be one bottle on the shelf for every type of Spirit and that if you took that further and said that anything above and below were good and bad then there would only be one bottle on the shelf and wouldn’t that be boring. Our Spirits aren’t bad quality, you just don’t like them. At this point they seem to understand what I am saying, give a befuddled nod and move on.
In my experience I have found that there is no Spirit out there no matter how amazing, that someone doesn’t hate it. Conversely, there is no Spirit out there that is so bad that it’s not someone’s favorite. That is why there is more than one bottle on the shelf and isn’t that a wonderful thing! Cheers!