It's the start of that annual marathon tasting for 'Wines of the Year'. Seven hundred wines!
Don't have to taste them all. There are 25 of us. Seven teams = approx 100 wines each. Can still do that. Just!
Lucky draw. My team start on champagnes. I think. (Everything is bagged up so we can't see and cheating invites severe social censure.) But champagne, well, not to difficult to guess really.
Then it's a 'flight' of Australian reds, one of Chilean - we think - reds, Spanish reds, Bordeaux reds... Some nice white and more Bordeaux.
From next door... a buzz ... every desk is manned and still the calls are overwhelming them. I'd gladly go help but there isn't a spare phone.
It's afternoon. Approaching the end. We haven't found a bad wine yet. A corked one, yes. Well, two.
I've been doing these tastings for so long! I tell the girls on my team (who were not born when I started Laithwaites) that less than 20 years ago the Chilean reds we tasted just didn't exist. The Spanish reds wouldn't have had any fruit and the Australians hadn't arrived yet.
Truly, it's a Golden Age of Wine.
We chose 300 wines to go through to the next round in Jan. I suggest one way to improve things. All the tasters bar me are young. Many customers are not young. There's age differences in taste. So... Next year, maybe round up a few older persons to come help get the balance right. I think I know where to find a few volunteers!
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