Day Two! Oy, my aching feet!

Day two, in which Vina learns several new things.

Firstly, standing on your feet for nine hours a day on hardwood floors HURTS! Even though I bought special flats with Dr. Scholl's gel insoles built right in, I am literally hobbling from my truck to my house at the end of the day. I suppose this is just more incentive to lose some weight, because all that extra I'm carrying around these days is just extra agony for my feet when all's said and done.

Secondly, some people are easier to work with than others. Some people are friendly and willing to acknowledge that when you have been doing a job for only, oh, say, TWO DAYS, you're bound to make a minor mistake or two on the odd occasion. These easy-going types are happy to point out that you might want to try doing things another way, but they also express their support and understanding that starting a new job is stressful and that one is likely not to be good at everything right off the bat.



Some people are not. Some people hover around waiting for you to make one little blunder, and then they point it out to you in the most rigid way possible, and in a way most designed to make you feel like a complete idiot. Some people think they are so perfect that they must intrude on any little task you are trying to complete, and show you how much better they do it. They are faster, cooler, and better at everything than you are, and how dare you even try to accomplish anything while they are present, because you have no hope of ever being as good at it as they are!

Lucky for me, I have already discovered who is the former and who is the latter in my new workplace, and can therefore conduct myself accordingly so as to garner as little attention from the latter as possible.

The tasting room got really busy today - lots of wine got tasted, and lots of wine got bought! It gave me a chance to stretch my wings a bit and practise giving the wine list description to more people. I am getting more comfortable talking about the wines because at the end of the day, Barbara lets me taste one or two of them. Now I know what "notes of coffee and chocolate" mean in a merlot. I also know what "a flavor that is more reserved" is like, compared to an "aggressive" flavor. Another bonus is that more people = more tips! Yay!!!

I am also discovering that I don't hate white wine. I always thought I did, and now I realize it's probably because all the white wines I have tasted previously were oak matured, which gives them a flavor that I don't like. All the wines we make are fermented in stainless steel only, so the flavors are bright and crisp and smell very fruity, even though they are dry wines. I like this!

Another thing I learned today is that red wine contains histamines, which come from the skin of the grapes. Often, when people get a headache from drinking red wine, they blame the added sulfites when actually it is the histamines that are causing it. In the 1970s and '80s, winemakers in the USA were pretty heavy-handed with sulfites, and it did cause a lot of headaches. But now they are realizing that using only minimal sulfite additives still protects the integrity of the wine, and isn't migraine inducing.

Tomorrow is Friday, and that is supposed to be a "BIG DAY" for wine tasting. I can only imagine how loud my feets are going to be screaming by tomorrow night!