Tuesday, July 31 2007

Gone Drinking

I've been doing the same job for fifteen years, so I may have forgotten how other people's work days go--doesn't everyone have to drink for a couple of hours in the middle of the day?

Seriously, we have to do a bunch of tasting for the upcoming Limited Edition candidates tomorrow. We'll be tasting some early prototype kits against commercial wines, and also some commercial wines that are candidates for further LE's, and some for the next Limited season.

It's actually less fun than it sounds. When I'm drinking for pleasure I'm usually sitting in a comfy chair with some music playing, there's good snacks, my wife is there to talk to, and the cats are in the background folding laundry or arranging music, or whatever it is they do on their own time.

But in the lab not only do I sit in a hard chair at a conference table, there are no snacks (someone keeps forgetting to bring crackers--Susan) and not only do I spit all of the samples out (yes, even the ones that taste good--when you've got 20 wines to taste, if you swallow a half-ounce of each, most people won't want to go back to work) but I have to have a critical opinion. You can't just say, 'I like this' or 'Ick, did I accidentally drink the hand-sanitiser?'. Nope, when you're doing a critical tasting you have to keep in mind your audience (rather than your own preferences) and you have to empathise with their taste, and choose the wine that best represents what they will like.

Am I saying that you should feel sorry for me because my job is to sit and drink wine? Well, no, because after all I could be out there digging ditches or selling vinyl siding. But it's actually a demanding activity, and not all the wine is good. Surprisingly, when you start drinking a very wide variety of commercial wines you realise that not a few of them are less-than-optimal, even some very expensive wines. The last time we were tasting Italian Amarone de Recioto della Valpolicella (for our Selection International Italian Amarone kit) we had five out of seven bottles with serious brettanomyces contamination (this is a bacterial infection, often attributable to infected barrels) which smelt like barnyards and horseblankets. Phew!

Anyway, off to drink those Limited Candidates. Anyone want to know what they are?

Posted by Tim AT 8:21PM

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