The sixth month

We are at the beginning of our sixth month in business and somehow we appear to be on the cusp of success. I thought we had a decent December, but we almost hit December sales in January and then in February we beat December. No small feat considering December should have had a holiday bump and of course February is the shortest month and typically fairly slow. All I can say is that I am really pleased.

The store has been humming along without any major hitches now for the last couple of months. I am still fine tuning our computerized inventory and we have crept up to more than a thousand different wines in the store. I have been able to pick up some terrific buys, such as Champagne Charlie for $99.99 and Ch Lascombe Margaux 2005 for $94.99. This seems to be a great year to have entered the retail wine business, since so many wineries are discounting there top end wines. I really feel like I ma still in Kentucky with all of the discounting that is going on.

We had our first Customer Appreciation tasting last week and it was a rousing success, with nearly thirty people in attendance and almost three cases of interesting wines from my home cellar opened for tasting. The highlight for me was a 1970 Bordeaux, which I had gotten from winebid several years ago. This wine was incredibly smooth and anything but over the hill. It may be hard to beat next year.

Next week is the Cincinnati Wine Festival and we will have a chance to try some interesting wines at the trade event on Friday afternoon. We will get a rare Friday off as well, since we will not have a tasting, to allow our customers to check out the Festival. We are looking forward to some fun tastings in the coming months. Check out our web site for further info. www.watertowerfinewines.com.