In these Amazon days, retail customers need a good reason to enter any brick-and-mortar store. When you can buy anything and everything you want online, you need a reason to get up off the sofa. Especially when spending discretionary money, people want not only good products but good experiences. What better way to improve the experience than to provide a little lubrication?
Combining hi-fi with wine, beer, or spirits is hardly a new idea, but such events may be growing more frequent. Last year, I attended an event that combined tasting rare whisky and the launch of some new speakers at Boutique Audio Gallery near Toronto. More recently, I was invited to—but was unable to attend—two events on consecutive evenings at Stereo Stereo, a hi-fi dealership in Warrendale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. The first event was "Vino & Vinyl," a wine tasting combined with a hi-fi listening event. A selection of wines was curated to "match" musical themes. A sommelier was on hand to provide wine expertise. (The second event had a different theme: It featured Philip O'Hanlon of hi-fi distributor On a Higher Note telling music stories and demoing analog gear from Wilson, Moonriver, and Otta, a new phono-cartridge brand.)
A recent visit to an event at a local specialty wine shop and tasting room under-scored just how much the two industries have in common both as hobbies and businesses. In both wine and hi-fi:
• The retail space serves as a showroom for demos and sales, with frequent opportunities to taste the wares.
• Employees are expected to have both expertise and a passion for what they're selling, and a customer's experience depends critically on who assists them.
• There's much to explain about the product, and customers often have much to learn. Explanations must be kept clear and free of judgment, without snobbery or condescension.
• Products must be offered at a range of prices, from entry-level to high-end. People outside the hobby are prone to sticker shock.
• Different people inevitably have different tastes and preferences—yet personal preference and quality are not identical concepts.
• It follows that both hobbies emphasize refining sensory skills, either listening or tasting.
• Producers are often multigenerational "boutique" businesses that produce their products in small quantities and with great care.
• Both hobbies can get expensive, but more affordable products can provide pleasure—and possibly just as much pleasure.
A while back, I had made a reservation for a champagne tasting event with an independent winemaker at a local specialty wine shop and tasting room. The shop, Hart and Cru, appropriately located on the edge of Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine district, sells specialty wines, mostly from Europe, along with a small menu of house-made light bites.
The shop also had a good hi-fi system, anchored by a pair of JBL L100 Classic speakers, positioned higher up than expected in a high-ceilinged room, and a Rega turntable. The proprietors like to spin vinyl. While the focus is on the wine and food, the music system helped produce an ambiance in the room that's far beyond what one experiences in most stores.
Someone spun The Cars—Candy-O. After that, fittingly, French music predominated, from Daft Punk to a band called L'Impératrice, specifically their most recent album, Pulsar. The room was quiet enough that the music could be enjoyed at a nondisruptive volume. Conversation was easy and pleasant.
Most readers will be familiar with a New Yorker cartoon that has made audiophile rounds, in which one guy tells another as they stand in front of a hi-fi system, "The two things that really drew me to vinyl were the expense and the inconvenience." (footnote 1)
In this wine shop, there was a corollary, a cartoon in similar style framed on a wall. Two people are browsing bottles at a wine shop, and one says to the other, "I'd love to learn more about wine, but I'm barely tolerable as is." (footnote 2)
It was interesting to be a novice and ask questions of the shop's employee and the visiting champagne expert. It felt like I was in a universe parallel to hi-fi. The featured champagne selections came from the Michel Gonet vineyard and villa located in the Champagne region epicenter Épernay. Diane Signolle-Gonet, granddaughter of the champagne house's founding patriarch Michel Gonet, was on hand. She breezed into the store casually and began stopping by tables to talk to the champagne drinkers about the Gonet champagnes. Diane seemed friendly and down-to-earth as she explained to me a few details about each of the four varieties and their differences.
I'm a champagne novice, and I ordered one glass of "entry-level" champagne ($18/glass). Signolle-Gonet never made me feel inferior. She mirrored the champagne's effervescence, present yet understated. No pushiness or upsell.
I left with a pleasant feeling—not a bubbly buzz, but rather a feeling of warmth, of wanting to stay longer to enjoy the music and atmosphere. I learned some things. My interest was piqued. I decided to learn more.
It was a positive, welcoming, and memorable experience. Hi-fi stores take note.
Footnote 1: The cartoon appeared in the May 25, 2015, issue of the New Yorker. The cartoonist was Alex Gregory. Footnote 2: This cartoon, by Guy Richards Smit, appeared in the February 7, 2022 New Yorker.
A while back, I had made a reservation for a champagne tasting event with an independent winemaker at a local specialty wine shop and tasting room. The shop, Hart and Cru, appropriately located on the edge of Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine district, sells specialty wines, mostly from Europe, along with a small menu of house-made light bites.
The shop also had a good hi-fi system, anchored by a pair of JBL L100 Classic speakers, positioned higher up than expected in a high-ceilinged room, and a Rega turntable. The proprietors like to spin vinyl. While the focus is on the wine and food, the music system helped produce an ambiance in the room that's far beyond what one experiences in most stores.
Footnote 1: The cartoon appeared in the May 25, 2015, issue of the New Yorker. The cartoonist was Alex Gregory. Footnote 2: This cartoon, by Guy Richards Smit, appeared in the February 7, 2022 New Yorker.
