I held a wine tasting at the LG today. Nothing fancy, mind you, just a sip poured into plastic tasting cups. I had a Pinot Gris from the Willamette Valley, a Rose' from Provence, and a Malbec from Cahors. The demo coordinator prepared a roast leg of local lamb that had been delivered this morning, and I chose wines (aside from the white, which was there to round out the selection) that would pair with it. Everything went swimmingly, and we sold a metric shitload of wine (not to be confused with the Fuckton, which is really the goal). There was one woman, though, who really threw us all off our game. And she is today's Customer Of The Day.
First, she was a hundred and eighty years old if she was a day. She came over to us slowly, leaning heavily on her walker. She pulled up the chair which we were using as a barrier (long story short, our department of Liquor C0ntr0l is ridiculous and requires us to rope off and area that is exactly ten feet wide in which to taste the wines. This is not even the most ridiculous regulation. But I digress.) and sat down directly in front of the table where Erika was handing out lamb samples, thereby preventing anyone else from possibly getting a sample. Fortunately at this point there were no other customers. She sat there and asked a series of increasingly irritating hippie questions about the lamb (Local? Organic? Was it happy? Did they pet it every day? What was it's name? Okay, these were not literal questions, but you get the picture.) Next, Erika asked the woman if she wanted to try some wine with the lamb. I am fairly certain that she was trying to get the woman to get out of the chair and move closer to where we were pouring the wine, thus getting the hell out of the way. She asked where it was from, and when she found out that they were French, she said
"Oh, no. Dr. Somethingorother said never, ever drink European wines. Because of Chernobyl. There's radiation and..."
She went on for a minute or two. Then she said she was sorry to break it to us, and that she was glad that there were no other customers around because she didn't want to spoil our event, but well, you know, the truth hurts, etc.
She sat there for another ten minutes, eventually tasting some of the white, but then telling us why that was also probably poisonous. Hilarious. I hope she's a regular customer.
I have another tasting tomorrow, and then a couple weeks off before we get started again. Hoping to make this a regular Friday afternoon thing.
I dropped by the Three Penny for a beer after work. It was taco night, but I was too late for any vegetarian options, so I had two beers instead. Just as filling, anyway. I get to sleep in tomorrow, then we'll head to the farmer's market before dinner at J and J's. Can't wait.