Proliferation Massale

Long before the gang of four and its leader Marcel Lapierre there was Jules Chauvet and Pierre Overnoy. While I've never had the pleasure of drinking a wine made by Jules Chauvet I have, on the rare occasion, sampled superlative Poulsards from Overnoy. When Pierre Overnoy retired his estate was taken over by Emmanuel Houillon who continues to make wines in the Jura according to Overnoy's practices of completely natural winemaking. Eschewing sulfur additions these wines are like microcosms in bottle. Much like very old wines, the occasional failure is outweighed by the glorious successes so every time you open an Overnoy you're in for a surprise.

I was organizing the books in my study while listening to a playlist of music comprised of Wilco, Neko Case and the New Pornographers when the demo version of At My Window Sad and Lonely shuffled up. More familiar with the version on Mermaid Avenue I was struck by the sparseness of the arrangement and I stopped to listen. The combined effect of harmonica, organ, voice and acoustic guitar not only stripped the song down but echoed the meaning of the lyrics.

I had no idea what to expect from my first tattoo and while I always knew I wanted to get one I had no idea what and where. A few months ago one of the blogs I frequent posted some anatomical tattoos and I was instantly hooked. I mentioned this to my heavily inked salonista Carrie the Death-Metal drummer and she recommended a place nearby called Deluxe Tattoo on Irving Park between Ashland an Southport. I met with one of the artists, Jason, who luckily had an opening a few weeks away (normally most of the artists are booked at least three months in advance) so we discussed possible designs and placement.

my heart.jpg

I chose to get a heart tattooed on my forearm. This was one of the many ideas I was kicking around and while some thought the obvious reference of having a heart on my sleeve was rather trite I like the ambiguity of the idea. Besides it is also just a kick-ass design.

The experience itself was interesting as well and desite the fact that I've undergone some rather painful procedures like having asphalt removed from my flesh with tweezers nothing quite compares to the pain of a tattoo. The unique combintaion of cutting and burning made me want to punch someone or burst out laughing. I asked Jason if people ever confessed their deepest secrets while being tattooed. Not surprisingly most people are just as boring in the tattoo chair as out of it.

I confessed nothing, that is what my other blog is for.

"Do you think I'm drinking too much."

-Bitches

This Tuesday I didn't have time to get to my container consolidations so I woke up in a semi-panic Wednesday morning. A container consolidation is a list of purchase orders aggregated to fill an entire forty-foot refrigerated container (also known as a refer, box, or tin). I place orders with our importers or directly with the property and copy our freight forwarder. The orders then get sent to the wineries so the wines can be labeled and boxed and staged for pickup. The freight forwarder keeps in contact with all the properties and begins to stage the wines at a warehouse near either Marseilles or Fos-sur-Mer if we are talking French wines, or Barcelona or Bilbao for Spanish shipments. At every point in the process the wines are refrigerated which adds significant cost to the shipping price we pay. Once enough cases arrive in storage, anywhere from 1000 to 1200 nine-liter cases, they are packed onto a container ship for the seven to ten day voyage across the Atlantic. Arriving in port, usually New York, Philadelphia or Montreal, the wines must pass customs and a security screening before being put on rail for Chicago. Once in Chicago the container is placed on a rig and delivered to our warehouse. Assembling consolidations is like putting together a puzzle and if you do it well you can drastically reduce your shipping costs. Do it poorly and delays and cost over-runs pile up making your life miserable.

Sounds simple eh?

Hardly. Each step of the process is fraught with potential obstacles. This year alone I have had to deal with labor strikes that shut down the ports of France for two months, producers running out of labels and thus holding up 900 cases of wine for a month so they could get their shit together, a misplaced container, a container that was stranded on the dock when the ship left. And those are just the macro-problems. Some wineries, being small family operations will just up and close for two weeks for cousin Edith's wedding in Nancy thereby delaying your container by two weeks. Or better yet the bottling line broke down at the estate and they are waiting for a repair man to show up- not a problem if your winery is located in California but remember France has a very different definition of the word "urgency." Once the container arrives every piece of paperwork has to be exact or customs impounds it for a closer inspection. 

You may be asking yourself, "What's the big deal waiting an additional two weeks or a month for your shipment?" The simple answer is capital. The wine business is capital intensive and inventories are taxes as an asset. Properly run businesses try to maintain the lowest inventories possible so as to maximize profitability. Sometimes I cut things really close so there is usually a couple items on any given container of which I'm in desperate need. If I run out of a wine customers get angry and sales people start thinking about parading my head around the warehouse on a pike. Get it wrong and order too much and my boss thinks my bonus would be better spent elsewhere.

This is my life. My sanity and mental stability is completely in the hands of others so when things work out I try to make it look like I planned it that way and when they get completely bollocksed I look for scapegoats. Luckily the French frequently provide them the Spanish less so.

So it is natural that I woke up in a panic Wednesday morning because looming on the horizon was August- the month everyone goes on holiday in Europe. Trying to get wine shipped out of Europe in August is like try to get our troops out of Iraq. So I submit my final POs and then start to deal with the ensuing problems. Concurrently I have two high profile appointments in the city, deal with the training needs of two new reps for the company, put together a tech sheet, review a proposal, get a two hour work-out at the gym (keeps the mind nimble), visit three additional accounts on a social basis, network about a new opportunity in the loop, set up a date, then another, make dinner once and lunch twice, take my dry cleaning to the laundromat and lock myself out of my apartment. And concurrent with the concurrencies are a constant deluge of telephone calls asking me where the Morgon is and when does the Marcoux VV arrive (and no you cannot have any), do we have a Rully, why did we get stiffed at this new account and why haven't you got to the website yet.

Needless to say I'm looking forward to a long weekend without any logistical nightmares.