Merlot's Journey to Brooklyn to Buy a New Vehicle

As we took for lunch three, well salted, leftover cold chicken legs, drawing just two glasses of boxed white Chardonnay, our thoughts turned to the harvest moon, the changing seasons, our younger days, and and great changes ahead, as our dreams are made real by Fernando's cash infusion to our boxed wine enterprise. Our neighbor George who sleeps in Morningside park stopped in and helped himself to a cold leg, and a glass of boxed wine without a word, as is our custom.

We continued to reflect on the many kind people who have stood by us, giving us the kind of moral support that is the life blood of our journey to put a box of wine in every "fridge", if you will. Naturally, our thoughts turned to how we shall ever repay them. Surely regularly feeding George cold chicken and boxed wine could not be our only way of "giving back" if you will.

Our mind races and we think of the many contacts we've made on Wall Street, the bankers and financial experts who have made their way to the Boat Basin for our numerous boxed wine tastings. We shall look into ways to offer these kind people shares in our Initial Public Offering, which shouldn't be long after our premium blends meet the taste buds of a good cross section of the American public.

Next we contemplated how we will generate demand, not only for our wine, but for the shares of our public company. We calcluated the more cost effective ways to distrubute our private lable boxed wine, Gershwin's Gulp, not only to the public, but to the many Wall Street traders who will "make a market" in our shares, if you will. How can we make them farmilar with our product well before the IPO, if possible? We recall reading about the brilliant direct sampling method employed by the Krispy Kream company, as they delivered countless boxed of their doughnuts to stock and bond trading desks throughout the tri-state area many months if not years prior to their wildly successful public offering. Krispy Kream bought there place in the minds of major securities buyers well before a single share was bought. Krispy Kream approached trading desks as shelf space in a supermarket, and it worked in spades, if you will. I believe adopting this method will entrench us in the conscious and unconscious minds of these influential personages, and make our boxed wine company an historic IPO, iike Boston Chicken's historic one day, 20 dollar rise from its offering price.

And so, I decided that we should purchase a suitable automobile to deliver our boxed wine to traders from Boston to DC each week, as we gear up to take our enterprise to the public with an eye toward going public, if you will. To that end we hopped a ride on the back of George's cycle to visit his uncle Primo in Brooklyn, at his place of business. It was a rather bumping ride, and got worse as it became clear that riding on the handle bars was necessary. Nevertheless, our trip across the storied stone bridge, made somewhat easier by the two extra glasses of wine we took before departing.

In seeking expert advise, we realized a professional car seller would be a good resource for information, which is where Primo came in. Primo as a rather gregarious chap, with several amusing anecdotes regarding his recent trip to Madison Square Garden to watch a boxing match. Of course, he made several good points about our size requirements, gas mileage, the year and number of miles on on the car, by seemed to want to talk about anything but cars, and so we listened. Apparently Primo elected to take a bus from his home on Avenue U in Brooklyn, with several friends, and a large group of Japanese tourists.

Before we could point out the irony of a man who would make his living selling cars electing to travel to Manhattan by bus; Primo related that his bus was subjected to robbery by a group of men at gunpoint. Primo's long pause seemed to beg the question, which George put to him at once: "who did it?", to which Primo replied just as quickly in turn: "I don't know but there were 9,320 pictures of the crooks", winking at me as he put George on the spot, if you will, in a rather spot on impression of Rodney Dangerfield.

It was at this point, we suggested a sample of a new of boxed wine sent to us by our friend Christopher Bloache from the state of Vermont. We had carried it on our lap the whole ride to his car lot. The wine has been released in a rather small test batch by a Christopher, who once cycled from Montauk Point to Denver Colorado on a dare. Christopher had since gained 600 acres of prime Vermont farm land from the death of his father in law, and decided to produce various organic Jams, Jellies, Cheeses and now boxed wines. He is that sort of chap, and one of our dearest friends from another life, when we raced cross country together over the hills and dales of New England, defeating some of the most talented runners at leading private high schools. Christopher has left it to us to name his wine, believing we are in the best position to position his new wine, if you will. Having come to see Primo for his view about our best options for a automobile to power our efforts, it occured to us that Primo may be a good source of inspiration to name Christopher's new blend. As it turned out Primos grand father was a wine maker at a time when alcohol was prohibited in the United States. Primo's grandfather eventually migrated back the Italy, with a rather forced hand, where he would go on producing his own wines undeterred by the authorities until the end of prohabition, when he would return to Brooklyn to produce his "Dago Red," as Primo put it. And so, Primo appeared to know quite a bit about wine. After being told a little about our client, and tasting Christopher's blend, Primo offered us a few brand names for consideration. His first suggestion was "White Vinegar," which was amusing, but not much help. It was clear Primo did not prefer Christopher's cask to say, a bottle of White Bolla. When pressed, he said he'd rather not say, and that he would rather not insult anyone he didn't know.

The ride back to the Boat Basin was bumpy indeed.