By Sue Straight

Wine inspires passion, or it should, anyway. Any wine lover will tell you about lovely, wine-drenched conversations that they have enjoyed with colleagues, friends and loved ones. In my wine circles, we have solved the world’s problems many times over glasses (OK, bottles) of wine.

Now, let’s talk about passion (or lack thereof) in the tasting room – how many times have you visited a tasting room (or maybe even in your own tasting room) and heard a staff member doing a somewhat robotic introduction to the wines that they were pouring? By robotic, I mean spewing facts like clonal selections, type of oak used, malolactic percentages, awards/points garnered in major wine competitions and publications, etc. All of this information is valuable, but it must be discussed within context of the customer’s experience – he or she must be engaged first and actually interested in that type of information.  Hint – if the customer’s eyes are glazing over and cobwebs start extending from her/his nose during a factual soliloquy, the customer is not engaged and is not likely to buy.

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