Farm to Glass Wine Tours is Tesla-fied! Plus my personal battle with Elon (THAT I WON!), and the power of a good, silly wine meme.

Well hey there friends from near and far. How have y'all been doing? Do you ever think to yourself, "When is this craziness ever going to stop?!".... yep... not just me? Ok great! Solidarity in crazy.... I love it.

Friends.... I have the happiest announcement to make: Farm to Glass Wine Tours is going to be showing you the best wineries of the Okanagan and Similkameen Valley in a shiny, brand new, dual motor, AWD, not-the-model-I-wanted-but-still-amazing Tesla Y!

Happy dance! Happy dance! Happy DANCE!  She's a beauty, and her name is Lulita.  

I've been waiting 15 months for the 7 seater, Tesla X and I just may have up to wait another year before it's ready. I found this out just recently (sad trombone!).

Elon Musk has even admitted that they dropped the ball when they announced they were going to stop Model X production one week after I ordered one.

You're probably wanting to ask: Jess... why don't you get a used Tesla X?

This is a very valid question and trust me, I had been seriously contemplating it this whole time. But the Model X has had some quirks about them in the past, and I didn't want to have to deal with anything that wasn't potentially under warranty.  As much fun as I love to have with y'all, safety is always first and foremost. I want the newest chip, the newest updates and if there's a problem, I just want to go to Tesla and say, "fix it pretty please with sugar on top!".

Lastly, many of the used Tesla X's for sale don't have 7 seats and many-to-most of them have white (gasp) interior. I mean I get it, white interior looks pretty but no thanks, no merci, no gracias!

Oh... and did I mention that I got ghosted by my Tesla Sales Advisor back in May 2021? (I didn't... I can see that I didn't write that yet... just creating some dramatic effect.)

It's been a rocky experience with Tesla. The whole story about the experience is something better left for when we see each other, but it came along the lines of being told and promised "price A", then fast-forward 12 months later and being told "price A" is no longer available because I had to confirm "price A" before a certain date, even though I was never told a date. (Thanks ghoster!) I had three days to confirm "price B" at a very increased cost even though I was promised "price A" or else I would lose my queue for the vehicle.

I was so upset. Starting a business is stressful enough, trying to do budgets, keeping my overhead as low as possible the first year running, constantly question whether you're doing everything the right way usually with a few tears of frustration thrown in just for fun, then all of a sudden I am told that this already expensive vehicle will have an additional price equivalent to a bottle of DRC!

My head was spinning, I was losing sleep, it was an anxiety that I had never felt before, but when it came down to the core of my soul, I feel like I needed to fight for what was right.

I chatted with a friend who's a Tesla owner, and told him the scenario, and he was very frank with me. He told me, "Tesla has 1000s of people waiting for these vehicles, they don't have to honour their word of what they told you. If you don't want the vehicle at that increased price, there is a line-up of people who will."

Fair.

But it was really eating at me, and every sales advisor I had spoken to said that there wasn't anything they could do.

So I took matters into my own hands. Did I Karen the f@#k out of the situation? I sure as hell did not. I would call it: Kind Karen-isms.

Be a Kind Karen? Hahahaha. I know that's not a thing, and I know I wasn't actually a true definition of a Karen. (BTW, every Karen I know is awesome).

But I had to go up the food chain, and pretty far up. The internet is a magical and terrifying thing and I used it to my advantage along with the help of a friend and former Tesla employee who will remain anonymous. (I owe you a tour buddy).

My emails made it to the top people of Tesla Canada, and then I got to watch magic happen and it was a thing of beauty. Also, may I just mention the Director of Tesla Canada is a woman and I think that is totally badass.

Everything that I heard about the stellar service of Tesla started to happen, I just happened to have had a bit of bad luck at the beginning, and instead of getting upset and angry, I put faith in them to do the right thing, which they did. It didn't come without a stressful few days, including communication with HQ in California, but within a week, I got the call that they were going to honour their word.

You might be thinking, "yeah that seems like what they would do!". I can indeed confirm that I am the first person they have been able to say yes to the price adjustment in all similar scenarios that have occurred these past months.

Elon gave me a discount on his new Model X that doesn't even exist yet! Who can say that?

After many phone calls and emails, I was personally thanked for my kindness and understanding in the situation. It's often that people who work in sales get mistreated, which I'm all too familiar with, so I get it. I even told them that my partner and I had it all prepared to do a "good cop/bad cop" routine if shit went sideways, and he was ready to step in... but I insisted that being kind was the way to go... there was just something telling me that this was the approach. (This should always be the approach btw)

Be Kind. Drink Wine.

It's my motto, I'll say it often: Be kind to yourself, your neighbour, and the planet.

Drink Wine that is: kind to your body, kind to your neighbour and community, and most importantly, kind to the planet (maybe just don't do this part while driving a Tesla)

Tesla, knowing that I want to build my business around their vehicle, managed to bamboozle me a beautiful Model Y in a matter of days. DAYS!  I'm just beside myself with how damn happy with how they have handled everything.

So it's happening! Thanks to the amazing team of Tesla Langley, Farm to Glass Wine Tours will be running for the 2022 season! I honestly can't thank you all enough, you are magical humans doing magical things!

So the 2022 season is going to be a smaller version of my dream, tours will be maximum 4 guests due to seating capacity. But you should see all the space to carry the wine! It's MASSIVE! I think one of my favourite features of the Tesla is that for someone like myself who enjoys buying wine when touring the Okanagan Valley, I always worry about the wine getting too hot. Well that won't happen and I kid you not, I'm so stoked!

I mean, the Tesla Careoke (Kareoke) might be a close second, ha!  Do you have your song picked out yet?  

So to finish things up, you're probably wondering, "Jess... what the hell... you mentioned wine memes, and you haven't dropped one yet? WTH?"

There's a reason to this, as it's all tied into the fact that I've been (un)patiently waiting for the Tesla X.

Memes have become a powerhouse in our culture. In fact, my partner has a whole album of memes saved in his phone for any given time when they might come in handy. Do you know how many variations of the woman yelling at the cat sitting in front of a plate of salad I've seen? About 193746272 too many.

There are some good humans making some great wine memes on Instagram. They bring me joy, they make me shake my head, they make me ponder if they have creeped my pictures from my personal account and taken inspiration... they call you out on your wine snobbishness, silliness and tell it how it is... which I adore. 

If you don't follow any wine meme accounts, some of my favs include:

@the_angry_somm
@shittywinememes
@sierrawineguy
and though he seems to have gone radio silent these days, local shout out to @bcwinememes 

We have to take ourselves a little less seriously... so I present to you:

Tesla Memes in the Okanagan! If I can't have a Model X to take you on wine tours in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valley, then I'm going to superimpose the Tesla in completely bizarre and random photos of the around the Okanagan Valley while having a good time with friends.... are they memes? I have no idea. But I had a blast creating them, so enjoy!  They get sillier the further you scroll down... I was having a good time and there may have been wine involved.