Today is my older son’s 13th birthday and we are currently out in California, which means that close to my wife’s entire family will be here to celebrate. Which also means that I need to get to the store at some point to stock up on wine.

Speaking of wine, most of the week I was over in Sonoma, as I had several appointments, met a bunch of great people, learned a ton, laughed a lot, and, of course, tasted a bunch of good wine. I visited a few wineries on my own as well, unannounced, just popping in. I realized during one such visit that I might have a new project: I would like to do a series of articles on tasting room staff.

From my experience, there are all kinds of people who work in tasting rooms: from the recent college graduate to the recently retired, the level of experience varies greatly, but the vast majority of them are engaging, interesting people who love wine.

Unfortunately at one winery during this trip, I ran into two different types of tasting room attendants: an attendant who knew very little about the wines poured and an attendant who was determined to show me that he was far smarter than me when it came to wine.

What made this particularly unfortunate was that the two types were embodied in the same person.

Here are a couple of announcements:

1. The new theme for the Monthly Wine Writing Challenge is “Pleasure” and you can find all the details HERE.
2. Perhaps my last Sip and Spin ever will be on April 15th at 7:00. So if you are going to be in Philadelphia and would like to attend my Spinning class followed by a wine tasting (I am thinking Loire Valley wines), better call Lifesport at (215) 236-0763 and reserve a spot!