Wine, Pleasure, Beauty

Loving Wine and Loving Your Customers, with Mat Dinsmore

For this week’s local wine culture interview, I met with Mat Dinsmore of Wilbur’s Total Beverage here in Fort Collins. In our conversation we talked of philosophy, conspicuous consumption, Champagne, and aspirations. In the video, Mat explains what’s going on with all those damned wine descriptors cluttering up the shelves in the wine section. What are they even good for? Mat explains this and more, from the perspective of the wine retailer. One of the many important hands wine passes through on its way to your kitchen table.

Mat to a customer: “Go to the shelf, close your eyes, and point.”
Mat to a staff person: “Go pick me out a bottle to try for 12 bucks.”

This encapsulates Mat’s philosophy on drinking wine and spirits. Drink what you like, but explore, don’t get caught in a rut - especially if you run the largest wine and liquor store in Fort Collins.

Mat runs Wilbur’s Total Beverage, a family-owned wine and liquor store in Fort Collins, Colorado. He grew up in the wine industry, his dad having spent his whole career in the industry in both wholesale and retail. Perhaps that’s why he always comes across to me as such a customer-service nut, without any pretensions or snobbery, who just wants people to try this stuff. It’s not that he lacks professional-level wine knowledge - he knows his red Rhones, that’s for sure! - but rather that he is super-tuned into the social aspects of drinking, and wants people to experience and explore.

“Wine and beer go back to the beginning of history. We’re lucky to live in this time of quality and depth and breadth in food, wine, and beer.” We’re lucky, he says, because we have such diversity of these products that add so much pleasure to life. We’re even luckier to be of our generation. “Since the 80s the wine industry has quadrupled. There are lower barriers to entry to other areas. Chile, Argentina, even Oregon and Washington” as compared with before. Which means variety. Hence, his desire that people explore. As he said, “Kendall-Jackson is Kendall-Jackson, OK, there are other Chards out there. New brands, price points, products, you’ve got to approach it with an open mind.” Therefore, his key aspiration for new wine drinkers is that they have an open mind when approaching the world of wine. You liked that Chardonnay? Great. Now go try one from France, and then one from Australia.

His other key aspiration for the person new to the wine owrld is that they “integrate it into their lifestyle, in moderation, responsibly. This can be enjoyed 365 days a year. These are about lifestyle, about celebration.” This is the social side of wine, that it is meant to be lifestyle, enjoyed with others, and therefore social. “It’s 80% of the experience. I’ve had customers say to me, ‘Why did that wine we had in Italy taste so great, but tastes like shit here?’ Well, you were on vacation, with no worries, enjoying the Italian landscapes and scenery, and now you’re here. Ambiance matters. The people you are with matter.”

As a wine retailer, and since he is so totally consumer-focused in his conversation (perhaps a common trait among those who choose the wine industry), I asked him what he wants for a new customer walking through his doors. It was like he’d been waiting his whole career for someone to just ask him that question, he leaned forward so far and got such an earnest look in his face. “As a retailer, I want the staff to take care of them.” He went on to elaborate about the challenge inherent in this desire, when it comes to hiring staff. More knowledge doesn’t always mean taking care of the customer best.

“There are different levels of knowledge. I hate to say this, but sometimes you have staff who are very knowledgeable about different regions, and you have a customer who only wants a basic Chardonnay, and it can intimidate them. And it’s hard becasue we have turnover, and there’s a lifetime of knowledge involved. So you try and get new employees up on the basics, but you want to have someone who can take care of the knowledgeable consumer.”

What about the relationship between price and status versus price and quality?

“On the personal side, I’m as guilty as anybody for special events. It’s the novelty. As a retailer I’m torn. There are times you should celebrate. As the saying goes, ‘may all your pains be Champagne.’ Treat yourself. But if you only drink Dom, you’re missing out on all those other things.”

This of course led to a lengthy, largely unrecorded digression about sparkling wines (unrecorded because I become much more of a participant here rather than an interviewer). Just to let you know, there was a joyful consensus: “People don’t realize, it can go with anything. A really rich, creamy, Chardonnay-based sparkling wine can stand up even to a steak.”

There you have it. Philosophy, love of this magical substance, and love of the consumer he serves. Just an inside glimpse into the world of wine, to show that the romance of it doesn’t just infect those of us who drink it, but also moves those whose hands it passes through on the path from vineyard to kitchen table.

• Disclaimer: Mat gave me a bottle of Angel’s Landing Cabernet, because we were talking about great California Cabs we’d had recently. It was unsolicited, not tied in any way to the interview, but I’ve got to tell you, it was appreciated. And it may prompt a follow-up interview :-)