It started innocent enough when I was a kid. I would snatch up the latest box of 1984 Topps trying to find a Strawberry or Mattingly rookie. My mother would always tell me how great it was to learn the math involved with the stats on the back and, later, how the Beckett Guide was teaching me sound economic lessons. Twenty six years later I still have all those cards and to my chagrin they haven't quite reached the stratospheric values of a Honus Wagner card. Like most things in life the thrill of the hunt was the true intoxicant and not the worth of the cards years down the road.
Again, it started innocent enough when I was about twenty years old. There were rows and rows of labels each giving a little glimpse into the mysterious elixir inside the bottle. The early years of college were spent wishing I could drop a hundred dollars on Opus One just to lay it down and educate my beer drinking buddies on the sophisticated depth of conversation a bottle of wine could bring. Our (my wife and I) first expensive bottle was a 3L of 1994 Silver Oak Napa purchased with school loan money because we couldn't pass up such a rare offering to be signed by Justin Meyer. Bordeaux came next with my uncle's generous gift of a 1975 Chateau LaTour, my birth year. Dabbling in the Aussie Shiraz boom and a fascination with Riesling and Pinot Noir I found myself moving passed connoisseur and straight into wine collector. Within ten years of turning twenty one I had put together a 400 bottle collection of wine and it was time to slow down.
The collector mentality has followed me my whole life. While I'm far from a "Hoarder" I find that having something to hunt makes me happy. I buy wine more these days for drinking and very little to lay down for the long haul so I had to find something to fill that void and winery SWAG was there to keep me going. Walking into tasting rooms just isn't the same without a little swag to pique my interest. One would be hard pressed to argue the beauty of Rochioli's vineyards but is it as much fun as Sebastiani's tasting room? Not for me. Give me laser etched cork screws and tumbled marble coasters. Let me have a shirt for the wife and some soap for mom. I'll take the estate olive oil, the etched wine glass, the free label sticker, serving plates, magnets for the fridge, a poster of the vineyard, and the hoodie with the logo. I want swag, need swag, and simply GOTTA have some swag.
On second thought it might be less expensive to start collecting wine again. How much is a Strasburg rookie going for?
With Coleman Nicole I'm following my own mentality of collecting and have started our swag section with the 2010 vintage tees. We have a style for men and a style for women. As our Pinot Noir library grows so will our swag library.
Link to Coleman Nicole Swag
