09/10/09 - My life as a working Sommelier

Although Thursdays, for me, are the beginning of the work week, I look forward to the end of this official week earnestly. This is historically one of the slowest restaurant weeks of the year- parents spend money on back-to-school stuff, not dining out. The restaurant I work at doesn't feel the crunch of the economy the same way the rest of the restaurants do (more on reasons for this later), but this week is still dismal for us.
I closed the place down tonight and never once had more than 3 tables at a time. I still managed to showcase Willakenzie Estate. I really support this winery, I like that they're OCSW certified sustainable (oh, you didn't know I was green? I won't berate you for your views, just drink good wine and we'll be cool), I think their winemaker is really on top of his game, and they hit some great price points- fairly and accurately. There are so many products that they produce, it's hard to talk about them briefly, but I showcased their intro-level Pinots (both Noir and Gris) to different tables tonight.
Towards the end of the evening I had resigned myself to making no headway towards my deficit in the contest, but my last table asked for a juicy spicy red, and some Yangarra Estates McLaren Vale Shiraz '06 is on the list. Not a huge bottle, but a little bit here and there helps.
Oh yeah- why don't we feel the crunch of the economy? Well, it's not entirely fair to say we don't feel it, we just absorb it better than many. The place I work is a showcase restaurant- we're 30 stories up in the sky for craps sake! Now, for you big city readers, 30 floors might not seem like much. However, those of you here in Portland know that there's only 1 building in town taller than Big Pink, and it doesn't have a restaurant in it... So! We get anniversaries. We get birthdays. We get celebrations of any and all sorts. We get business meetings. We also get tourists- people from all over the world. We still do over 200 covers on a slow night, and that's darn respectable in my eyes.
As always, if you would like more info about any of the wines that I talk about, feel free to shoot me a line or comment, and I'll get back to you.