Wine Merchants or Life-Style Consultants?  Add/Read Comments

"Not everyone has wine knowledge, and the reason people come to us, in many cases, is that they don't know about wine, but they do know about life and food. They're grown-up, sophisticated people who walk in and say they want some advice about finding a wine to go with a particular meal. We don't get bogged down in educating them about how the wines were made - we're more lifestyle consultants than technical consultants"

Sounds like a great encapsulation of Spittoon's 'aim' - but is it a viable basis on which to run a wine merchant? Or should more independent merchants take this approach rather than being just 'sellers of wine and spirits' with an encyclopedic knowledge of the 1855 classification and vials of soils from the vineyards of the Barossa? Perhaps all those delicatessens with a half-hearted wine selection should position themselves more as a 'life-style' advisor rather than... well, what-ever they are positioned at now?