Have you ever heard anyone refer to something as a “virtuous cycle?” This was a new one to me, and yet I have encountered it no fewer than half a dozen times over the last couple of weeks. It’s as though some mystical authority decided that the well-worn term “vicious circle” needed a friendlier counterpart. It turns out that, according to Word Spy, the expression is not so new after all and has actually been in use in government and economics contexts at least since the Seventies. (As an aside, let’s all start incorporating “gurgitator” and “anti-griddle” into our daily conversations as soon as possible.)

Virtuous Cycle, quite obviously, refers to a “situation in which improvement in one element of a chain of circumstances leads to improvement in another element, which then leads to further improvement in the original element, and so on.” As such, it’s the first expression that popped into my head when I read about this brilliant wine retailing tactic. A new gizmo out of Italy let’s wine store customers build up frequent-buyer points on a stored value card that, in turn, entitles them to mini-tastings from a kind of self-serve temperature controlled wine bar. Different wines will “cost” you more or less to taste — just swipe your card and sip. The hope is that customers will, be more interested in buying a wine, having had a chance to sample it. Hence, a Virtuous Cycle: the more I buy, the more points I earn, the more wines I can taste before buying them. Another angle: your points allow you to taste a wine that you could never afford to buy — like a bonus sip. Buy 3 cases of ordinary red wine and earn enough points to try a 15 milliliter taste of vintage Bordeaux…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 1:52 pm and is filed under General, Finds.