Sometime in the mid-aughts, let’s say 2004 or 2005, I made one of the most memorable sales of my wholesale wine sales career. The buyer ran a shop on the north side of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg section, a small spot wedged into a street-front mini-mall composed of some half dozen other stores. It was a heady time: young, creative people were flooding into the neighborhood, formally a dour, working-class Polish quarter of three-story buildings clad in aluminum siding. The only other area liquor store was protected by bulletproof glass, its mom-and-pop Polish owners struggling to make themselves understood through the half-inch partition.

I was presenting a red from France’s Languedoc region made by a winemaker named Didier Barral. His wine hailed from the obscure Faugères appellation and was pricey, selling for about $13 a bottle wholesale. This meant the wine would need to retail for at least $20. The bottle had...

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