Here’s Our Caramel Apple Version

The sixth glass smelled like the midway at a county fair, that sticky stretch between the Tilt-A-Whirl and the funnel cake stand where everything is sugar that got a little too close to the fire.

The first five came with biographies. Where it started, who made the call, why it tastes the way it does. She told those stories the way a good bartender pulls a tap, without looking, every word worn smooth from a few hundred tellings. You could hear the grooves.

Then she poured the sixth and said, “Here’s our caramel apple version.”

That was the whole biography.

So I wrote one for her. Maybe it started as somebody’s dare in the back room and sold out before anyone could take it back. Maybe it’s the bottle quietly paying the electric bill for the rest of the list, which would make it the most important wine in the building and the one with the shortest introduction. (Occupational hazard. I can’t taste anything without writing it a positioning statement…#sorrynotsorry)

None of that came from them. The strangest thing they make walked out the door wearing whatever biography a stranger stitched together between sips, and they don’t get a vote on which one I keep. (My story was also different than my buddy’s story who had it next to me)

Familiar things arrive already introduced. You know roughly what a dry red is supposed to do before anyone sets it in front of you, because the category has been doing the talking for a few centuries. Caramel apple has no category to borrow from. It was the only glass on the table that genuinely could not speak for itself, and the only one asked to.

She had five stories because somebody gave her five stories. Somebody poured those wines for her, walked her through the decisions, let her taste why they mattered. Nobody sat her down with the caramel apple. The person pouring is the last link in that chain, which makes her the first one blamed for a gap she inherited. Invest in her and the customer hears your story. Skip her and the customer writes one for you.

Stay Positive & Hand Them The Sixth Story