My Current Metier and What It Involves

I suppose I have been rather reticent and somewhat obscure regarding my job description up to this point. I shall expand upon “what it is I do” for those of you out there who (I’m sure) are dying to know.

Here is a typical exchange in many social situations when I am surrounded by strangers and must make small talk:

Stranger: So, what do you do?
Me: I sell wine.
Stranger: Like, at a restaurant or wine shop or something?
Me: No. I work for an Importer/Wholesaler/Distributor.

At which point the conversation usually branches off into one of several possible directions including:

So, can you get me wine on the cheap?
OR
Do you sell two buck chuck? I love that stuff! You know it is the best Chardonnay in America, right?


Or else people proceed to tell me everything they know about wine, including the wine they use to drink in the 1970s, and do you think you could get me some? I don’t really understand this response. I mean, if you told me you were a podiatrist I wouldn’t try to tell you everything I know about feet.

Actually, most people are usually curious and ask more legitimate questions and I give them the rundown:

I work for a Company called Dionysos Imports (yes, that’s the Greek god of Wine and Revelry). We started as a Greek Wine importing company in 1991. Luckily, my boss soon realized that he wouldn’t be able to make much of a living in Greek wines alone and got into France and soon expanded to most of the other main wine producing regions in Europe and the new world. We definitely have a European focus. Our strong points lie in France, Greece, and Portugal. We work mostly with small, family owned wineries. Most everything is of artisan quality and by default is small production.

I basically go “door to door” to different restaurants and retail stores with select samples and taste the wine buyers at each establishment on these various wines. If they like one or think they can sell one, they buy it. Sometimes it’s as few as three bottles and sometimes as much as 40 cases. I make more money if I sell 40 cases.

That’s it. Pretty easy, actually. Kind of boring sometimes too…