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I just ordered some wine from Gary V's WineLibrary.com. Actually, I ordered a lot wine - three cases to be exact. And although I was thrilled to open open the FedEx boxes, I think that Gary missed an opportunity to continue the conversation with me.
Specifically, I bought the wine from him for a reason. He's a bit of a web celebrity - I hear of him and from him fairly often - and I tend to enjoy his commentary. More to the point, I had purchased 3 cases of various wines without having tried them - because he had recommended them to me through his email newsletter. Each newsletter talked about the wine, letting me know where it came from, how many points it had, etc. and it was punctuated with a quote from Gary V., himself.
For some reason, I had expected to receive a printout data sheet for each type of wine that I had ordered. I had thought it would have the same exact information that was sent to me in the newsletter - no new content. I was planning on keeping this data sheet with my wine, so I could easily reference it and discuss it when sharing the wine with my friends. And I can say that I was left a bit disappointed when all I received was the wine I had ordered... ;(
In thinking about this, my expectation comes from a wine subscription that someone had previously purchased for me from wine.com. It had the data sheets, a folder allowing me to organize all of them, and labels for the bottles so that I could record when I drank the wine, for what occasion, what I thought of it, etc. - and more importantly it allowed me to keep a record so I could easily re-order the wines that I liked. The conversation was continued.
In the end, I'll probably end up going back into my email and printing out the emails on my own, but it sure would have enhanced my experience if I had received this from winelibrary.com directly, with my shipment. Something that I definitely would have appreciated...
