there's a sucker born every minute

I've recently started to educate myself on wine. Although I'm most-definitely a green eonophile, I'm starting to learn that I can purchase relatively good wine that I like for less than 15$.

Last fall, my non-bimbo friend invited me and a couple dozen other friends to Tony's Wine Warehouse for a wine class. I hadn't paid a lot of attention during the class, but I thank my lucky stars that after the class, the slight buzz and slick sales pitch didn't convince me to drop a chunk of change on discount wine at highly inflated prices. I did, however, really enjoy the class. It was entertaining and just a really fun experience to have with friends.

Today, I found an article from the Nov 2005 observer on the enigma of Tony's Wine Warehouse. I absolutely laughed my head off.

Apparently, Tony's is known for being the sleezy used car lot for wine in the Dallas area: "This deeply irks many longtime professionals in the Dallas wine trade. Tony's, they insist, butters its bread by dispensing instructional swill during class sessions--preying on participants' gullibility to justify inflated prices, often for wines well past their prime obtained mostly from distributor closeout lists. This sullies the whole wine trade, they say."

... "But is Tony's retail strategy illegal? It certainly doesn't violate any law to charge whatever price the market will bear, especially if through hard work and clever marketing you've unearthed a customer base willing to pay it. "The kicker on this is everybody knows he's doing it," says a Dallas wine salesperson. "He's been doing it for years...the question is what's up with the people that buy into that. That's really more a story about Dallas than anything else.""