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NEW NORMAL

restricted to only a couple people at a time shipped, to many cases shipped daily! Of cour-
and restaurants, well, where do we even start se the in-person sales dropped significantly
there? That experience is so highly regulated and we juggled weeks of complete closures
that it hardly looks the same. each month, but the shipping saved us. Social
At first I took the lockdown as a strange media became a conduit to help the little guy
forced staycation, many of us did. Somehow that needs to keep their business going and
we were thinking the death tolls and fear ri- people responded in a big way; we were lucky
sing around us wouldn’t reach us personally. enough to be one of those stories. We watch-
I threw my schedule out the window and slept ed as many did not have success and friends
when I wanted, stayed up and danced to my with restaurants or wineries, wine shops and
favorite music at 4AM and I drank wine all the tourist trades were forced to pack-up, it was
time. At the end of the 2 weeks, the stay at crushing, in fact it was terrifying. In our case,
home restrictions didn’t ease much and I felt with a fairly robust social media to begin with,
the first true pricks of panic as my calendar we saw people, very thirsty people, rise to the
was turned into a scribbled out mess. As much call to support and with a little creative shove,
as I love day drinking, would our little wine- we started down the path to becoming pan-
ry hiding in the obscure hills of a place most demoholics.
people don’t realize even exists survive? In order to stay relevant, we needed a voi-
I turned to trusty old social media to inform ce, a sense of humor and a “co-worker plant”.
me of what people were doing to cope. I ne- Perhaps you saw the videos or memes with
eded to know how to relate and connect and someone at their home office desk talking to
fast. Turns out they were doing what I was their houseplant? It became quite funny for
doing, drinking! It was as if the world had de- everyone to decide that their pets or plants
cided the pandemic was more than any of us were their new co-workers and we didn’t want
could take in and the only thing we COULD do, to be left behind. It used to be said “have you
was drink. In the United States, for many, they been living under a rock?” when you didn’t
discovered that wine can be shipped directly know about a popular culture element or re-
to your front door, something that became ference. During a pandemic, when everyone
a clever distraction for so many, our online bu- felt like they were actually living under a rock,
siness jumped from a few cases a week being everyone shared a common world that was
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