days of wine and hosers
Jul. 30th, 2017 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanBefore Axel decided to spice up my life by scaring the living shit out of me, I had a pretty good weekend.
A while back I had mentioned to BC that I wanted to research wine-making because one of the stories I'm writing has a vineyard as the setting. This gave her the brilliant idea that we should go on a wine tour. So bright (OK, maybe not so much with the "bright" on my part) and early (very, very early) on Saturday morning she picked me up and we drove to Niagara-on-the-Lake. There a bus picked us up and drove us around to a selection of four different wineries.
So have done a wine tour once before. I'm pretty sure that it was when I lived with BC and Ldot, so we're talking over 12 years ago. I remember it as a handful of people following somebody around who guided you around the property and talked about the wine making process before delivering you to a cool shaded barn where you could have a few glasses of wine and maybe buy a bottle or two. Every once in a while a new car would pull up and after a while, or when there were enough people who were interested, they would start another tour.
So things have changed a bit since then.
The first winery we visited was the biggest in the area and it was the only one that actually walked us into the vineyard and through the fermentation rooms. They ran the tours like we were at Disneyland. There was 23 in our group, and there were multiple groups all following in each other steps about 15 minutes apart, it was well-organized and very tightly timed. The "barrel" room where they do the tastings had over a hundred people in it.
The second winery had multiple tasting rooms, and our group was brought into one where a bartender taught us how to do proper tastings with little plates of meat and cheeses - and when our time was up we were hustled the hell out of there stuffing the last of the crackers into our cheeks because the next group was waiting. Wineries three and four were straight to the tasting and buying things.
Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun. We got to drink some really nice wines I wouldn't have otherwise tried out (including some very tasty and very expensive ice wines.) The people who served us were all super lovely. I guess just didn't expect it to be quite so much of an industry as it is now.
The other thing that was noteworthy about the event was the other people on the tour bus. We were picked up in two stages, most of the people getting on the bus on at the same time we did. There were about 15-18 women and one man, and the guy was so uncomfortable. He kept talking about how he was the only man there and at one point he said, (I shit you not) "Where are your husbands?"
When the bus picked up the remaining half-dozen people at a second hotel there were three men in the that group and then he made a big deal about that, greeting them very loudly and talking about how relieved he was. BC and I are watching all this, and I kept turning to her and hissing, "Straight people are so fucking weird".
Then when we were walking through the first winery the men were competing with each other over who could hold the doors. Seriously at a couple of points one door were being held open by two guys at the same time, both of them going, "I got it," to each other over and over.
Then at the end of the day on the drive back to be dropped off a bunch of the women were singing loudly along with the radio, which was tuned to some station playing top 40 songs from 20-30 years ago. Think Bryan Adams and Neil Diamond.
So, you know. An educational day even if I didn't get to ask a lot of questions about wine making. I forget sometimes how socially insulated I really am. I almost never hanging out with normal people and their ways are strange and mysterious to me.
A while back I had mentioned to BC that I wanted to research wine-making because one of the stories I'm writing has a vineyard as the setting. This gave her the brilliant idea that we should go on a wine tour. So bright (OK, maybe not so much with the "bright" on my part) and early (very, very early) on Saturday morning she picked me up and we drove to Niagara-on-the-Lake. There a bus picked us up and drove us around to a selection of four different wineries.
So have done a wine tour once before. I'm pretty sure that it was when I lived with BC and Ldot, so we're talking over 12 years ago. I remember it as a handful of people following somebody around who guided you around the property and talked about the wine making process before delivering you to a cool shaded barn where you could have a few glasses of wine and maybe buy a bottle or two. Every once in a while a new car would pull up and after a while, or when there were enough people who were interested, they would start another tour.
So things have changed a bit since then.
The first winery we visited was the biggest in the area and it was the only one that actually walked us into the vineyard and through the fermentation rooms. They ran the tours like we were at Disneyland. There was 23 in our group, and there were multiple groups all following in each other steps about 15 minutes apart, it was well-organized and very tightly timed. The "barrel" room where they do the tastings had over a hundred people in it.
The second winery had multiple tasting rooms, and our group was brought into one where a bartender taught us how to do proper tastings with little plates of meat and cheeses - and when our time was up we were hustled the hell out of there stuffing the last of the crackers into our cheeks because the next group was waiting. Wineries three and four were straight to the tasting and buying things.
Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun. We got to drink some really nice wines I wouldn't have otherwise tried out (including some very tasty and very expensive ice wines.) The people who served us were all super lovely. I guess just didn't expect it to be quite so much of an industry as it is now.
The other thing that was noteworthy about the event was the other people on the tour bus. We were picked up in two stages, most of the people getting on the bus on at the same time we did. There were about 15-18 women and one man, and the guy was so uncomfortable. He kept talking about how he was the only man there and at one point he said, (I shit you not) "Where are your husbands?"
When the bus picked up the remaining half-dozen people at a second hotel there were three men in the that group and then he made a big deal about that, greeting them very loudly and talking about how relieved he was. BC and I are watching all this, and I kept turning to her and hissing, "Straight people are so fucking weird".
Then when we were walking through the first winery the men were competing with each other over who could hold the doors. Seriously at a couple of points one door were being held open by two guys at the same time, both of them going, "I got it," to each other over and over.
Then at the end of the day on the drive back to be dropped off a bunch of the women were singing loudly along with the radio, which was tuned to some station playing top 40 songs from 20-30 years ago. Think Bryan Adams and Neil Diamond.
So, you know. An educational day even if I didn't get to ask a lot of questions about wine making. I forget sometimes how socially insulated I really am. I almost never hanging out with normal people and their ways are strange and mysterious to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-30 07:43 pm (UTC)Also, if you ever get to visit a champagnery, it's a completely different process, and an interesting one.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-07-30 08:40 pm (UTC)