by Al Drinkle
Occasionally we're asked if there's a Metrovino "wine club”. Though we seldom discuss it and don't really give it much thought, the club exists. And if you're reading this, and have presumably purchased wine from us before, you're already a distinguished member.
We’re committed to travelling extensively and tasting critically and we hope that the former will become part of our lives again someday. But in the meantime, our alignment with some of the most impassioned and talented winegrowers on the planet means that the latter will temporarily suffice. When we're selecting wines, the most important consideration is what we ourselves want to drink. After all, we're wine lovers, not salespeople, and we’re not capable of selling something that we're not ecstatic about.
We get excited by the confluence of hallowed vineyard lands and the dedicated custodians who make them sing, preferably on a small scale. Big operators can turn out palatable wine, but when the catalyst for making wine is business as opposed to passion, the values of the pursuit are rarely ones that we share. We get excited about sense of place, the role of the artisan, the virtues of tradition, and the interconnectedness of wine with culture. We're romantics, yes, but we're also incorrigible sybarites! So if these ideals don't matter to you, you’ll be happy that deliciousness is also indispensable to us.
At their worst, wine clubs are dubious vehicles to dispose of unsellable inventory. But even if the pre-selected wine is "good", everybody has different palates and it would be fatuous to proceed as if this impregnable fact were otherwise. Imagine a clothing club whose monthly offer disseminated the same styles and sizes to countless subscribers, regardless of their body types and tastes in fashion!
Perhaps at their best, wine clubs utilize convoluted algorithms designed to both demystify wine and yourself in order to “customize” a collection of bottles that you'll hopefully enjoy. But wouldn't you rather just have a conversation with a wine-obsessed human? You can tell us which wines you've loved in the past, what you're eating tonight, what altitude you’ll be drinking at or which John Hughes film you're watching. You can ask us what we're excited about and we can work together to find something that you're going to love. Call us old fashioned, but this is our preference over the sterility of plugging your information into a computer and seeing what kind of options the program spits out. We guarantee you that the highs are going to be higher.
(And by the way, for anyone who would rather consult Vivino or whatever instead of soliciting our assistance, I can assure you that after walking the vineyards, breaking bread with the vigneron(ne)s and their families and asking myriad questions, we know our wines slightly better than some chiropractor in Wisconsin or computer technician in Butte, Montana).
So there you have it. This is our wine club - a fervent, unapologetic passion for wine, and the genuine desire to share our discoveries. We're honoured to have you as a member.
