In the world of wine karma I think my friends would say I’m more a giver than a taker. But darned if a retailer didn’t seriously one-up me.
I’ve been buying wines from Blast Vintners (https://www.blastvintners.com/) in London only since the start of this year. Normally what I buy gets transferred to a storage account but I had plans to be in London for a work trip. I ordered a bottle of 2006 Clape Cornas with the idea that it would be delivered to my hotel and I’d have something nice to bring to a restaurant that evening.
It was around 4pm when I realized the wine was not at my hotel and I contacted Joe at Blast Vintners to help figure out where it was. Joe responded to my email within about 5 minutes and started to troubleshoot where the wine wound up (remember this is just a single bottle purchase). By 5:30pm it was apparent I would not be getting the 2006 Clape due to a mishap with the delivery and a worse mishap by my hotel. Joe offered to refund me the cost of the bottle plus a bit more and that seemed to me like a perfectly fair but disappointing outcome.
As I was heading off to dinner, Joe emails me to share that he’s got a friend who is a proprietor at a nearby restaurant and that friend buys a lot of northern rhone. If I can swing by that restaurant on the way to my dinner, Joe’s arranged to obtain a bottle of 2003 Allemand Sans Soufre from his friend and he’s wondering if that might be an acceptable substitute. Of course too good to pass up and just a 5 minute detour from my original destination. This is all getting sorted out at 6:30pm by now so this has been the wine equivalent of a Global Services hotline.
The 2003 Allemand was fantastic (my first sans soufre) and went great with the meal. Massive respect to Joe Gilmour at Blast Vintners who went way, way beyond the call of duty. Buy more of this guy’s wine. Also very grateful to his friend Mike, the proprietor of Sager & Wilde in London, for being a part of the good wine karma process. I’ll be eating at Sager next time I’m in London.