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Just returned from a sales blitz working the Atlanta market with Georgia Crown, our distributor for OVAL vodka and Absinthe Mata Hari. After one particular day of account calls this was how Dave Stringfellow summed up my accomplishments: "So let me get this straight,...

I've been in Atlanta working with our distributor Georgia Crown on a sales blitz/kickoff Oval Vodka and Absinthe Mata Hari.Key learning 1: the pushback from on and off premise retailers we're hearing about the flood of new products, particularly vodkas, just isn't...

For those who are really into Darcy's presentation on sensory perception at TOTC (which he's now posted on his site), here's the link to the SA article (August 08 issue) on taste:...

One of the disciplines BAT has been developing expertise in is e-commerce. But first a bit of background. I've been involved in bev alc e-commerce since 2000 with a couple of startups including Drinks.com and eWinesource.com. Neither of them made it commercially, but...

I attended the "Rediscovering the Traditions of vodka" led by Steve Olsen and learned a great lesson on how to engage an audience. Throughout the whole TOTC event, Vodka was criticized, belittled, vilified, marginalized and ultimately disrespected. It's like the old...

Saturday was a day of blogger immersion. We had breakfast at Brennan's with Darcy O'Neil. Lunch at Bourbon St. with Gabriel Szaszko and his lovely wife Joanna, then dinner at Arnaud's with Jeff Morgenthaler and Jay Hepburn. Our objective was to get first hand input on...

Great presentation by Darcy O'Neil on sensory perception. I remember a lot of this from college, but clearly there have been advances in knowledge in the past 30 years. The fun part of the event was the taster evaluation. People fall into three categories: non-taster,...

I was guilted into attending the Grappa seminar led by Francesco Lafranconi of Southern Wine and Spirits. My experience with Grappa,k like so many others was with what I referred to as "lighter fluid gone rancid". We used to import some grappas from Ceretto and other...