97 Robert Craig Zin

[Thomas]

CCK, you say it right. I have spent the past sixteen years trying to undo the damage (on a small scale of course) that wine gurus and magazines have done to retailing. So many retailers just sit there; they buy what the distributor touts and they sell what the mags rave about. But the customer learns little, if anything, except what the others like and what he/she is supposed to like.

Whenever I find a retailer who is also a wine drinker and passionate about it, I latch on, for that is where I shall find the best bargains and the best people with which to talk about wine.

I plan to make the shop in Manhattan a unique place to shop for wine, and that is one reason it took so long to sell the idea to the community and to the liquor authority. One of the authority's commissioners, upon asking me to come back with more information, actually said the following: "you have to forgive us old timers, we do not understand this twenty-first century retailing."

I responded with: "let me be your bridge."