friday wine tasting

There's a benefit to having a Rosenblum on the same floor you work in, Friday afterwork wine tastings. I heard about them a few months ago, but I finally have a Friday free. The theme of the party was wines that stain since we are in the new building with its pristine carpeting.

I brought the Milan Ruz from Dobra Zemlja which people enjoyed along with screwtop, with a real cork inside.

People were mixed on a Pinot Tage Kumani from South Africa. One liked it, then again, he brought the bottle, 2-3 folks disliked it and sent it to the slush cup. It had quite a kick going in, and took my mouth in a million directions not quite knowing where to take it. It was very confusing. Like a bad ballroom lead, who doesn't quite know what move they want to do, so you just stand there. Much of this got to the slush glass.

General good consensus also went to a Rosenblum Reserve Zinfindel from Rosewood Valley. There was also a very nice California Sangioviese. And I'm going to have to ask my friend about the French wine he brought that was black as night.

Of course, being the university, there's always someone around who will bring something just cuz he knows it'll rile someone up, thus he brought Charles Shaw 2-buck chuck which never got opened and was declared banned from returning to future outings.

For those who didn't drink wine there was Ginger Gingerale, and lots of munchines from veggies and dip to a platter of shrimp cocktail to so delectable chocolate dipped strawberries.

To push along the conversation there was a monthly question. Whoever got closest to the answer won a prize provided by some tech company hoping to woo the lead director into buying their product. The correct answer was 2000. The question was how many people in the Office of the President. 2000 is apparently 10 times the size of any systemwide office for any university in the nation. Can we say bureaucratic? But, it does includes tons of these universitywide collaboratory research groups, which my group happens to services, from the people who run the library catalog, to doing statewide public health research.

It was quite an eclectic group of wine drinkers all the way from a few directors to folks no longer working at the university to me, who I think was the youngest of the bunch. Our head honcho is retiring this year so who knows how many more of these they'll have. It's rather informal and they try to have them once a month but with the move to the new building it had been 9 months since the last one. They'll try to see if they can have another one in time for summer solstice.

As for the staining, the slush glass tipped and streamed to the new carpet. I madly slapped as many napkins onto it as I could. Fortunately the carpet was that generic square patch pattern meant to hide any indiscretions. And we can all say that the building is now officially blessed.