Day Six - The "One Week Review"

Give me a bowl of wine.

In this I bury all unkindness.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
in Julius Caesar

Yesterday marked my first week at the vineyard. While very few customers came in, it was still an important day for me for several reasons.

I got my first official tour of the Bed & Breakfast. Until yesterday, I had not seen the guest rooms, and only knew their names from the correspondingly etched keychains that are kept in the tasting room. I was given the tour as if I were a guest checking in, so that I can check guests in by myself in the future.



The four guest rooms are unique and lovely each in their own way. The amenities are modern and chic, yet the decor is simple and understated. There are robes and slippers, flat screen televisions, hair dryers, irons, and individual heat/air conditioning controls. Fresh flowers from the gardens grace each room, and the color palettes are rich and comforting. I think my favorite is the one with the dark teal walls...



The guest living room is stocked with bottles of wine (of course). Two are opened each evening for all the guests to share and enjoy, and the shelves are stocked with bottles for the guests to purchase. They can drink them whenever they want during their stay, and "settle up" at breakfast the next morning. It's a relaxed and friendly way to do business.



I learned how to instruct guests to be polite and not intrude on the owners' private areas of the house. (Last week, apparently, some guests wandered onto the owners' porch and were peering in their livingroom windows after the tasting room closed! Big no-no.) They are not big on posting signs, because they feel it detracts from the ambiance and they don't want the polite, conscientious guests to have to see "Don't This" and "No That Allowed" signs everywhere they look.



Brenda also gave me my "one week review", which was basically a verbal reckoning between us that they liked my work well enough to continue training me, and that I liked the work enough to commit to staying on and not wasting the time they were spending training me. I smiled when Brenda said "It's hard to call this a review when you haven't really been doing anything wrong. Usually I can make up a list of things a new person needs to work on, but you seem to be getting the hang of everything fairly quickly."

Yay!

After giving me a review, Brenda also told me the story of her and Daniel and how they met and married and started restaurants and sold them and then created the vineyard. As a representative of the vineyard, I need to be able to describe the whole picture for customers, to make them a part of the ongoing saga.



The vineyard staff are all caught up right now with thinking about the upcoming weekend, the wedding they will be hosting, and the possibility of hurricane weather coinciding with the ceremony and possibly damaging the vines! Farm life is never dull.

On my way out at the end of the day, I snapped these photos. I think even my truck likes it here. Doesn't it look peaceful among the vines?