An event I look forward to every year, for more details check out the post last year at this time.
This year was a little more tricky than previous years, as our organizer/sommelier eagerly pushes the envelope for us to be a 'world-class wine event'; the focus was France, and some of the winemakers were especially particular about the presentation of their wines in lectures, and often disagreeing with the sommeliers who we take our orders from. When they say pour, we pour. One princess even made an offhand remark over the mic to a full audience that the wine should have been served cooler if we were more organized... I missed this as I was focused on the task at hand, but it bothered my superiors and that bothers me, since they take especially good care of us without fail. I'll withhold naming and shaming here as he doesn't deserve promotion on my blog, and if he wasn't such a famous and sought-after winemaker I'd say just not to invite him back! No one needs a prima donna to rock the boat.
On one event we had all hands on deck for pouring 12 sparkling wines while the audience was seated - not only can we not call to our teammates while the speaker was speaking, but we were stepping in narrow aisles around people and coats and bags and everyone would notice if we spilled! Of course that sets a precedent that we can pour wines well-chilled, and we did that for at least one on every event I poured. Our team is awesome and rose to the challenge shining. Hopefully next year's host country can be a little more gracious of the little people that go into executing a festival.
My personal focus this year in the tasting room was on the Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume from the Loire valley, some exploration of Alsace, and some west coast American wines from Oregon and Washington state, which for me are as a far-off country as any other.
No comments:
Post a Comment