LOS ANGELES — He’s 41 years old. He’s just quit working at the wine shop where he’d been employed since the month before his 21st birthday. And now he’s doing something he’s never done before: He’s buying wine with his own money. As a buyer at the high-volume Wine Exchange in Orange, Kyle Meyer spent most days tasting and evaluating wines. He had a generous wine budget too, and he brought bottles home to taste. In 20 years, he never had to buy wine for himself.
When he left the store in December, he had a 100-bottle stash, and by mid-February he was plain out. And so Meyer did what most of us do and went to the closest place where he could get reasonably good wine at a decent price.
For Meyer, that was BevMo in Corona, Calif. It took him an hour to pick out eight bottles of wine, because he was still in merchant mode, he says. “No, not this one. It’s got this flaw. Not this one — American oak. Yada-yada. It was hard. I was looking for $10 to $20 bottles I could take over to the neighbors guilt-free for pesto Sunday.”
He came home with Hedges CMS red from Washington state from BevMo’s 5-cent sale (buy one bottle, get a second for a nickel). He also picked up a Bodegas Borsao red from Spain’s Campo di Borja region and a couple of whites.
Funny thing: He claims drinking the Hedges and Borsao at home with his family, the wines tasted twice as good as before.
“I’m not a super über-wine guy anymore. I am Mr. Wine Customer. And now it’s my money.”