To Mark Norman's Email/ Blog Posting Today Titled : " Today's Wine Education & Wine Consumer " , Thursday June 5th, 2014 I ( Anthony Quinn ) Respond Here Now With Stories About Steve Mostow, Andrew Webber, RNDC Distributors, VAN DUZER Winery, Willamette Valley, Oregon SUTTER HOME Vineyards & Much More! Cheers!!

To Mark Norman's email blog : " Today's Wine Education & Wine Consumer " I respond : Mark ...RNDC is very large and there are several issues involved here. A store has to have a salesperson like Andrew Webber that loves wine and it helps that he worked in the wine business before at BOORDY Winery in Hyde, Maryland so he already knows a lot with practical, hands-on experience and not simply academic, paper knowledge. He knows to bring us the people that matter like the recently the winemaker at VAN DUZER Winery on Oregon's Willamette Valley , and so now we have the excellent 2008 Dijon Blocks Pinot Noir here once again having tasted it with the winemaker himself. Thrilled to have it. Andrew did his job really well. What I might suggest Mark is that RNDC gets theri sales people to spend some time working in a wins tore to get some practical, hands' on experience to put under their belt to know that, at least here in Washington D.C. there are many very qualified and talented individuals working for small distributors doing their jobs really well and making it hard for RNDC to compete. I might also suggest that RNDC get their salespeople to come into smaller stores like ours here and sign up for wine-tastings and not just send talented and attractive individuals not in the business but hired to come in and taste their products. That would be very helpful. I have not had an RNDC salesperson do an in-store tasting in I can't remember the last time. Funny to think of this now as an old-timer that's retired now but that worked for Forman Brothers that became National Distributors that became Republic National Distributors was here yesterday and he used to come and do in-store tastings for SUTTER HOME and many other vineyards years ago. he even, for old-times sake brought Santos Rivera and me ( Anthony Quinn ) a coffee and a cookie from Firehook Bakery to share yesterday as he used to do when he serviced our account so well way back when. That counted, still does for so much : caring, hands-on personal service and time spent in the account working and helping. Cheers, more on all this later. TONY 6/5/2014