Tuesday, February 13, 2007 by Ospite.


Our wine reps showed up just before 5pm, Monday, for a wine tasting involving some of our more rare selections. 9 wines in tow and stacks of 6oz plastic cups. They started the opening speech for the waitstaff and opened bottle number one.

We started with the two Pinot Grigio imports. They popped the corks and started around the room. We each snagged about a 2oz pour and listened intently to information 90% of them were going to forget and only 3 of us would actually use. It was when he saw the glazed-over look on our faces that one of your managers strolled over to get us more involved...besides consuming wine.

Several of our waitresses are young and require practice opening the bottles, so they were in charge of the upcoming wines for tasting. It was at this point (the Chardonnay) that the pours lept from 2oz to 4oz. Normally, we only pour 4oz for patrons when doing presentations at tables.

5:30 hit and customers started walking in the door. Many of us were running to and fro waiting and drinking, waiting and drinking. Needless to say, many of them were remarkably relaxed with their tables, almost giddy. One of our youngins (whom I shall now refer to as Cocky Newbie, or Cnoob for short) became all too comfortable chatting with our waitresses and I was afraid he'd start hitting on his tables...

Cnoob walked over to Kimberli as she stood at the micro. No human should ever be that close of a talker. He also looked like he'd spent the past 8 hours baking in the Sun. Clearly wine is not his typical poison.

It made me consider the level of alcohol in all of our systems. Not everyone had full tastings from each bottle. But worst case scenario:

9 bottles, 1 hour. An average of 3 or 4oz per pour. Somewhere between 27 and 36oz of wine.

I couldn't remember the last time I sat down and drank the equivalent of 1.5 bottles of wine in an hour by myself. Thank God most of us are heavyweights.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Post a pic of Kimberli's rack for us so we can see if the Bud Light story is true or not.

11:47 AM  
Blogger Suz said...

hehehe... Did the till come out right the next morning? :p

9:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This reminds me of my wine training class a few years ago. An occasional drinker, I'd never even had wine before, so all the subtlties were lost on me. My trainer gave us each HALF A GLASS of eight different wines (which we all ended up finishing), and then had us each taste about a shot of our 6 specialty martinis! All this in about half hour's time around noon. Then we were to leave and come back to shadow on the floor at 4:30. I ended up throwing up in my car in the parking lot, passing out for 3 hours there, then driving home and changing to come back. My trainer got in trouble and since that class, a manager has to do the tastings. The trainer was not happy with me.

10:48 AM  

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At your service, Ospite

I am not in the restaurant business, I am in the people business. I use every opportunity to people watch, because to me, even the most mundane is fascinating.

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