Another interesting non-client related work

I had an interesting work assignment yesterday evening - at 6 pm, one of the partners called me up and asked me to "supervise" the wine tasting activity at the office. It appears that the beverage committee for our firm anniversary requested Sommellier Selection to bring in samples of their French wine to help us decide which champagne and wine to serve at the party. Unfortunately, the partners in charge of the event where still meeting with the hotel people so they requested me to join the activity.

When I was going to the venue, I suddenly realized that I was totally unprepared for wine tasting - I was a bit hungry as I only ate a salad for lunch. But when I got to the venue, I was relieved when I saw 7 bottles of red wine in the middle of rows of wine glasses, champagne flutes and cheese boards.

I had a small chat with the french GM of Sommelier, Jerome Philippon. He happily informed me that aside from the 7 reds on the table, he also brought with him 2 bottles of champagne and another 2 bottles of white wine.

I didn't have time to panic as Jerome suddenly started the activity. We started with the champagne - Ruinart Blanc de Blanc and Ruinart Brut. I loved the Ruinart Blanc de Blanc! The Ruinart Brut seemed too vulgar compared to it. All the other "winte tasters" agreed with me.

Next came the white wines - we had Les Amandiers 2003 and Clos Verdots 2004. I'm not really a fan of white wine but I found the Les Amandiers 2003 too sweet and fruity. Most of the others couldn't decide which was better. However, since we were forced to choose one, we got the Clos Verdots 2004.

We were supposed to take a break before we tried the reds but every one of us still felt sober so we decided to proceed with the reds. We started with the regular ones - we had the Reserve Grand Arc 2002, the Clos Verdots 2001, the Les Amandiers 2003 the Mont Aureolus 2001, and another wine that was not worth mentioning here. (It wasn't really so bad but I didn't think I'd want to drink it again so I didn't bother getting the brand.) We loved the Reserve Grand Arc 2002 and the Mont Aureolus 2001. So, we tasted both wines again then decided to vote on it. The Reserve Grand Arc 2002 won. And so did everybody in that room. We were all quite happy when we were tasting the Reserve Grand Arc 2002 again.

After deciding on the regular reds, a few of us dropped out of the activity (most of the males!). So only a handful of us were left to taste the premium reds. We had the Rouge 2003, the En Sol Majeur 2002 and the Le Petit Duc 2002. We loved the Rouge 2003 and the Le Petit Duc 2002. So, 8 happy people tasted both wines again and cheerfully pronounced the Le Petit Duc 2002 as the better one.

Not wanting to waste the good bottles of wine, the 8 (6 females and 2 males, including Jerome) of us stayed and finished off every single drop of wine in the room. We had lots of fun talking about the lovelife (or the lack of it) of the lone male lawyer who stayed with us. It seemed that Jerome was also enjoying himself as he stayed until all of us had to leave.

However, Jerome's alcohol-given happiness was short-lived. When we phoned him for our order this afternoon, we found out that he couldn't remember taking a cab home and has no idea where he left his Treo.

As for the rest of us, we all had to come to work this morning and ignore whatever stomach acidity and/or hangover that we were having.

And me? I just wish that we have as much fun during our firm anniversary as we had last night.