Help needed.

Long story short...I was bartending at a beach bar down here in Charleston and a manager for a really nice Spanish Tapas/Wine Bar downtown called me last week and asked me to come work for him. It's a ridiculous hot spot down here and a girl I know that works there makes A LOT during the week and the weekends...so naturally I took the job.

I worked/trained a dinner shift on Tuesday night and got to try a lot of the wines by-the-glass and got a decent feel for them. I'm working/training again this Friday night and starting actually working next week. I already had a "Wine for Dummies" book and the manager told me that I should try and read the whole thing by next week. But as far as tastes/flavors goes, the book really doesn't seem like it will help me explain the wine to customers. It's got a lot of information on how wines are made, the regions they come from, how to taste them, etc...but that's really not what I'm looking for.

Right now I'm going through google and typing in every bottle of wine we have, finding descriptions, and writing them beside the wine on the menu and I'm going to try and remember them. But we've got around 100 bottles of wine and about 30 by-the-glass (Cava, Champagne, Spanish Whites, International Whites, Spanish Reds, and International reds).

Anybody got any suggestions on how to better prepare for this?? I feel like a hack doing this "google-style". But I can't try every bottle of wine we have...and I know I'm going to get this shit mixed up. Is this something that is just going to come with time?

8/24/2006 11:28:05 PM

go to barnes and noble, pick up a few books and spend a few hours browsing through them getting the info you need

then buy the 2 most helpful books for reference

8/24/2006 11:33:50 PM

^ a good solution to many a problem

8/24/2006 11:42:57 PM

THere is a really good short book by Oz Clarke called "Introducing Wine" that did a great job of conveying overall flavors, fragance, and feel of the different varietals and different regions.

I also have 2 .avi videos that are ok... one is a John Cleese special from the Food Network which is pretty basic and the other is like over an hour long and goes into great detail from how wine is made to the impact of types of glasses... its called "Wineworks - Complete Video Guide To Wine"

Honestly, there isn't much you can learn about their winelist without getting a tasting of the entire list. Once you have had a few you will pick up the common themes and be able to talk like you know them backwards and forwards... Hell, you could poor a cheap glass of Merlot to 99% of your customers, tell them its a Tempranillo Crianza, and they would never know the difference. Also, try to pick up just one major characteristic that affects what you think of the wine and that is sufficient for telling customers: "That shiraz has a great smokey flavor that I love" or "That Gewurtz is a bit too floral for my taste but still good"... too many words only distracts a person.

Oh, and those videos combined take up 1Gb

8/24/2006 11:47:09 PM

try andrea immer robinson (sp?), we sell lots of her wine books.

then, leave a huge stack of the books on a table in the cafe to piss off employees like me.

8/25/2006 12:16:27 AM

^^exactly

you can read all you want, but if you don't do some drinking, it won't amount to much

8/25/2006 12:28:47 AM

just try one or two of each wine variety. it'll give you a general flavor of each variety, and that should suffice. 99% of the people who drink wine aren't going to have discerning enough palates to pick up on the subtleties between the vinifications in each wine variety. they might act like they do, in order to impress, but they really don't. the more hotty-totty they act, the more expensive the bottle you should suggest. they'll buy it in order to maintain their wino facade. stroke their egos and profit.

[Edited on August 25, 2006 at 3:27 AM. Reason : ]

8/25/2006 3:25:53 AM

i would just learn about each bottle...the last place i worked, we had wine classes and tastings, which helped us learn about different types of varietals but we were also encouraged to learn about each individual bottle, which is what i did...we had about 120 bottles and about 30 by the glass...it seems tough at first but its really not...you wouldnt imagine how many are similar

8/25/2006 6:25:15 AM

^^ Agreed. Also, the 1% of the people that have the good palate aren't going to ask you what they want... They already know.

Get some generalizations, simple descriptions, and pick a few favorites that you can suggest when someone doesn't know.

8/25/2006 7:56:26 AM

I'm in Charleston...which wine bar are you at?

Also, ask another server...90% of the customers will order from 20% of the wines. Learn everything you can about the Chards. Even though most wine drinkers don't drink oaked chards too much (especially in the summer), people who THINK they know wine will order most chards for light dishes and want to be told about them. Just learn the region, the amount of oak used and if possible the amount of malolactic fermentation (whether or not you get a creamy taste or acidic taste).

For most wines, you'll want to be able to tell them a bit about the region, the vineyard itself (who owns it, if its a subsidiary) and then what fruits/tastes they're likely to get from it. Looking up the bottles on the internet is the best way for this...extra points if you add descriptions they don't hear often.

I just tried an unoaked Australian chard at a tasting last night and the guy introduced it as having a petrol nose on it. And shockingly enough, it did.

8/25/2006 8:27:58 AM

Quote :

"I'm in Charleston...which wine bar are you at?"

Raval.

8/25/2006 8:32:58 AM

Quote :

"Flight Night - Sample varying flights of wine, focusing on Spanish flavors. Tuesdays. $12-$25, 853-8466. "

What's that about? What makes the difference between $12 and $25? Do you work those?

8/25/2006 8:41:53 AM

You have to try the wines to fully understand

8/25/2006 8:47:46 AM

dude you should totally watch Sideways

8/25/2006 8:57:36 AM

lol, elka you wouldn't believe how many people won't drink merlots because of that movie.

More or less he just picked a wine to make fun of, and merlot sales plumeted while noir sales skyrocketed.

8/25/2006 9:14:45 AM

HAHAHA are you serious? poor merlot......i will love it til the end of time.

8/25/2006 9:23:42 AM

^means more good merlot at cheaper prices for me

You can use this aroma wheel to help you describe wine:

http://www.mywinetutor.com/images/wine_wheel.gif

It's easier to use if you print it out, on screen it's kinda hard because you can't turn it around

8/25/2006 9:41:40 AM

Quote :

"lol, elka you wouldn't believe how many people won't drink merlots because of that movie."

Its a shame too... I definitely saw this attitude from tourists when we were on our honeymoon in Napa this summer.

8/25/2006 9:50:55 AM

"Ugh, that's the worst thing to happen to wine since the movie 'Sideways'... that's right America, come get me."

anywho...back on topic.

[Edited on August 25, 2006 at 10:05 AM. Reason : ]

8/25/2006 10:05:01 AM

lol

8/25/2006 10:07:36 AM

books are good, but personal experience is irreplaceable.

use the descriptions you find googling to expand your wine vocabulary, then taste the wines and get a feel for the qualities described.

8/25/2006 10:39:05 AM

It really helped me to make a tasting sheet for each wine and then to read actual reviews of the wine afterwards. That way I could match up my tastes with correct descriptions

"Buttery" = Oaked
"Dry" = Tannic

That kind of thing.

8/25/2006 11:21:25 AM

Quote :

"What's that about? What makes the difference between $12 and $25? Do you work those?"

I don't know if I'll be working Flight Nights, but I worked this past week's Flight Night.

They basically pick a 3 types of wine; Cabernet, Syrah, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, etc. Then they get three wines from each type and serve you 3 oz portions of each wine (which is like half a glass). So you get about a glass and a half for $12-$25 depending on the type of wine...but you get to try three different types.

For Example:

Flight 1 (Cabernet):

J. Lohr, Paso Robles, '02
Mario Pirelli-Minetti, Napa Valley, '02
Viu Manent, Reserve, Cochagua, '03

Flight 2 (Syrah/Shiraz):

Shiraz, Milton Park, SE Australia, '02
Syrah, Frick, Dry Creek VAlley, '99
Syrah, Minervois, Touge Maris, '03

Flight 3 (Sauvignon Blanc):

Matanzas Creek, Sonoma, '03
Sancerre, Chateau de Sancerre, '03
Sauvignon Republic Cellars, NZ '04


It's a pretty popular night.

[Edited on August 25, 2006 at 11:33 AM. Reason : .]

8/25/2006 11:30:09 AM