Trusted Hands

My phone rang yesterday morning from a wine industry friend from Dallas who I haven't seen in awhile. Our friendship goes back to 2004, I was managing the wine department at Central Market up in Plano and he was one of the hardest working distributor managers I dealt with, I could totally count on him to help make my wine selections shine.

He called yesterday to share a story about his visit to Austin with his family over the holidays. Being a wine geek that he is, he told me that he spent a healthy amount of time visiting many of the accounts I work with in Austin. While shopping for a "good bottle of wine" he was shown LIOCO and Davis Family Vineyards within seconds of asking the wine steward for suggestions. He told me this with a smile on his face, I could feel it over the phone, "job well done Ali".

And that's what it's all about. Mission accomplished after countless hours (ie: supply chain - distributor pitches, pitches to the account, distributor inventory management, distributor staff training, account education & support) of making certain "good bottles of wine" are placed into the right kind of accounts and left into the trusted hands of "good wine ambassadors".

I appreciate him telling me the story, created a smile on my face. Another year, see on you the TexaCali Wine Trail. Cheers - Ali