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It was well-written this article of Freedom Du Lac's entitled : " Where Wine Meets Wealth ". Appearing on New Year's Eve DEcember 31st, 2011 in Satuday's Washington Post newspaper on the front page. I did not read it until Sunday as it was a really unseasonably beautiful and warm Saturday in the sixties I believe and I was appearing on NBC4 and being interviewed at 9AM about some of my favorite bubbly/champagne and sparkling wine selections ( as well as a sparkling wine cocktail of my selecting ) to celebrate New Year's Eve a bit later. It was all so much fun and after the interview I rushed off to work to show and taste our customers on some of the bubbly that I had selected and already shared on NBC4 earlier. There was not time : people would be rushing soon to the store to buy their last-minute needs to finish off 2011 and to ring in 2012!
I liked Freedom Du Lac's story once I got over my initial shock that and article had been written about Pepi Almadorov and the store Calvert Woodley ( up the street from ours : Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits on Connecticut Avenue N.W. ) and my first thought that the article had been largely procured by all the weekly advertising dollars that Calvert Woodley pays yearly? It did occur to me, really it did. However, once I actually got over this and actually read the article I liked how Freedom Du Lac approached it and wrote as much about Washington D.C. now and in the past and how things have changed and evolved. It became for me a human interest story, a history story, too. It spoke much more of simply Pepi and one store.
I also liked that the story had been written about an actual wine store : one that is in Washington D.C. where so much started first and which has paved the path for so many other wine stores and stores that simply include wines as one of the very many things they sell to get their start and their foot-hold in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. I liked this a lot. Like us at Cleveland Park and many of the other excellent wine stores in Washington D.C. ( MacArthur Beverages, Chevy Chase, Schneiders. Burka's Fine Wines, Bells, Wide World Of Wines, Cairo ) and more we started as beer, liquor and wine stores and we have continued as such. We are small family-run operations here in Washington D.C. like Calvert Woodley and we have been around for a very long time and we have survived so far all the larger retail operations that have simply added wines to their inventory to increase their profits, even like places like Wallgreen's pharmacy a block away from us that claims they want to simply answer their customers requests and be more for them ). I say and have said already to the lawyers of Wallgreen's : " Then why don't we start being more to our customers, too and start selling some drugs to make up for the revenue that you take from us by selling really inexpensive beer and wine? They did not know how to respond to this question of mine. So bravo to Freedom Du Lac for actually picking a true beer, liquor and wine store to write about. That pleased me enormously. It also pleased me to see that a fellow Washington D.C. retail wine expert like Pepi Almadovar was given some time and attention for a change. Too often if not always it is someone in a restaurant setting ( a chef or a sommelier, doesn't matter if the chef or the sommelier has paid their dues yet it seems )gets all the lime-light. Don't get me wrong : fair is fair : and they deserve some of this attention but certainly not all. Again in my humble opinion I believe firmly that it is the beer, liquor and wine stores where most people learn and get advice on how, when and what to serve depending on their events. So bravo to you Pepi : you deserve this article and I am thrilled for you. Happy New Year to you and to your family. Yes, it's true, I have known Pepi for years having sold to him for many of them when he worked at Schneider's Fine Wines on Capitol Hill.
I liked Freedom's keen observations like when he wrote : " With New Year's Eve approaching, most of the customers dodging one another in the family-owned store's aisles carted off champagne or tiny bubbled alternatives. One man picked up a bottle of $110 Barons de Rothschild Blanc de Blancs. Someone else asked for a 2004 Cristal For nearly $200 : 12 percent alcohol by volume for the 1 percent ". The " 1 percent " that can or choose to buy/ afford it as you can buy a case of our MONTELLIANA Extra Dry Prosecco from Veneto, Italy ( that's 12 bottles ) for $144 that includes tax and still have $56 left over to buy a bottle of the POMMERY N.V. brut champagne for $47 a bottle : 13 bottles for the price of one really expensive one!
Freedom Du Lac continues : " Most of Calvert Woodley's 52 employees take home less per week than the roughly #1,500 it would cost to buy a single bottle of 2005 Lafite. " Sad.
Freedom adds : " But the rage-against-the-wealth ethos represented by the Occupy movement is missing from the store. There's more awe than resentment about how the haves throw their money around here." Another sad statement in my humble opinion.
I also love how Freedom quoted other of the CW staff like Dillon William, 51 a Jamaican immigrant and Fogle. About Phillip Fogle, 43 Freedom writes : " He lives in Ward 8 , where the unemployment is around 2o percent, and he's surrounded by poverty. ... For New Year's Eve, after working the 9-7 shift, Fogle said, he's going home to listen to jazz and open a half-bottle of Ben Rye, a sweet wine that sells for $32. " These are really keen inclusions by Freedom. They help to paint a much bigger picture and it's interesting to read and to learn from it. I certailnly did,
I am sorely sorry that he did not include Tom McKnew that has been at Calvert Woodley for as long as I can remember and that has helped make it what it is.
Freedom continued to write : " Multiple bottles of Andre Cold Duck wound up in shopping cart Thursday ( the bargain sparkler sells for $5.99 ), people were loading up on $9.99 bottles of Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay and bagels were outselling caviar ( $69 an ounce ) by a wide margin . ... The store also is selling far more bottles of prosecco - the budget- friendly Italian sparkling wine - than Krug, Dom Perignon and the other high-end, $125-and-up champagnes in the lead-up to New Year's Eve ".
I love how Freedom ended the article : talking to Pepi and quoting him : " I think only of satisfying the customer". I feel the same, the customer is always first. Greet them politely, make them feel welcome and give them the respect they deserve, listen carefully to them and assist them as best as you possibly can. That's doing the job right.
To Freedom I say to you : good job and think now of visiting some of the " other " quality store I have mentioned above and giving us some equal opportunity, too. With Valentine's Day approaching on the 15th of February 2012 I believe? Anyway, this gives yo plenty of time now to contact some of us and come to our stores to see the excellent jobs that we, too do, We may not have 52 employees but we are equally determined to " satisfying the customer " / our valued customers as well as they new ones we have still to meet or are just meeting today for the very first time. Cheers, Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn
