ooops

Saturday was my second shift at Masa's Restaurant, and since Alan, the Head Sommelier there, was out-of-town, I got to try my hand at quite a bit of table-side service. Overall, I really enjoyed it, and I had fun explaining the different wines which had been selected to accompany each course.

There are three different menus at the moment, all prix-fixe: a four-course, a seven-course, and a seven-course white truffle menu. The selections of wine are as varied as the menus themselves, and I really enjoyed sharing some of the quirks and special aspects of the different wines.

There were, of course, a few whoopsies perpetrated by me:

First, I was asked to bring a Coke to a woman at one of the tables. For some unknown reason, I poured the Coke into a glass, and then decided to bring her both the glass, and the bottle with the remaining soda in it.

As soon as I placed both the glass and the bottle down on the table, I knew it was wrong. It just looked wrong. When do you ever see a bottle of soda left on the table at a fancy restaurant?! But once I had put it down, I had to walk away. I couldn't very well take it back, or draw her attention to the fact that the very small glass (for which we were probably charging her $10), barely held three-quarters of the bottle of soda.

So I just had to leave it there, and, once she had drunk some of the soda in her glass, I was able to empty the bottle and take it away. Plus, it was a very small, glass bottle, it's not like I left a gigantic two-liter bottle of soda in the middle of the table so that she and her date were having to look over it in order to see each other or anything. But still....

The biggest whoops, though, came when I opened a very nice bottle of Pinot Noir which a man and his wife had brought in with them. Before I went to pour the wine for them, I was obsessing about remembering to pour lady first. So over I walked to their table, and poured a glass for her and a glass for him.

Feeling pleased with myself, I walked back to my station behind the bar. Only then did I realize that I had forgotten to do the most basic part of the wine-pour at the table: the taste. I had completely forgotten to pour a small amount of the wine into one of their glasses so he or she could taste the wine and make sure it was to their liking.

In service, forgetting to do this is tantamount to just plopping down the bottle on table, putting two giant straws in it and telling them to have at it.

I am beyond happy that Alan was not there to witness my little blunder. The best excuses I can come up with are that 1. I was nervous, and 2. I was used to doing the pourings for the wine pairings with each course, and for those you don't offer a taste, you just pour the wine directly into the glass, remembering to always pour ladies first.

Oh well. This is why I am an unpaid intern at the moment. I return for another shift this week to pour again.

The Wine Shadow

Well, I am happy to report that my first evening as a "vintern" at Masa's Restaurant went very well. The place has a cosy, sort of old-world elegance to it, without being stuffy. Luckily, the place is small, so the staff is relatively small and, I am happy to report, extremely nice. I think they fight the stuffiness by having a younger waitstaff, which brings a lightness to the atmosphere. They laugh a lot and don't seem to take themselves too seriously.

This atmosphere is definitely fostered in large part by Alan Murray, their Head Sommelier. He also seems to be manager, and does everything from serving wine and making mixed drinks, to helping to seat new guests and even taking their coats. Everybody helps everybody and pitches in to lend a hand wherever help is needed. I like that philosophy, since it them seems to avoid any notions of superiority, of "I don't do THAT, that's YOUR job".

The wine list is, to say the least, overwhelming. At 800-strong, it would be a major feat to try to memorize it, so at this stage of the game, I'm not even going to try. Since the food is French-inspired California cuisine, the wine-list is heavily French-based, with a large number of wines from Burgundy.

But Alan has fun with his wines, and he seems to enjoy presenting wines that are a bit on the funky side, a bit unusual. One such wine was a wonderful gem from the Loire region of France, a Christian Venier "Les Clos des Carteries" Cheverny 2009. This wine is made from the Sauvignon Gris grape, and if you're like me, you have probably never heard of the Sauvignon Gris grape, but here it is!

The varietal is thought to be a clonal mutation of Sauvignon Blanc, and the flavor it imparts is somewhere between Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris. This wine was absolutely delicious: delicate apple notes with a gorgeous floral bouquet of honeysuckle and chamomile. If you have the opportunity to try this wine, please do. It's a lovely discovery.

Other fun wines Alan introduced me to on my shift was a wine from Corsica, a blend of Grenache and Sangiovese; a lovely crisp white from Northeast Italy, very close to the Slovenian border; and a white from the Jura region of France (located between Burgundy and Switzerland), a blend of Savagnin and Chardonnay, with an oxidative quality that gives it a slightly sherry-ish flavor.

The fun thing was getting to taste so many wines throughout the course of the evening, since Alan himself tastes every bottle he opens. So what Alan tasted, I tasted! He also did a comparative wine-pairing tasting with me in a down moment. He had been pairing the roasted Hearts of Palm with a German Riesling, and wondered if he might try pairing it with a dry white instead. So we tasted the salad with the dry white, and decided it just didn't work. Somehow the flavors were just wrong together.

But when we tried it with the Riesling, it was like a little bit of magic: suddenly the flavors in both the wine and the salad were amplified. That's the joy of pairing, and the challenge. It really is trial and error much of the time. You don't know until you taste the two together.

One more fun fact I learned: wines, especially those that can age for a long time, will cycle in and out of drinkability. I mean, I knew, of course, that wines can often improve with age, but i always thought of it as more of a linear progression, that a wine would just keep improving with every year. But apparently that is not the case; it is more of an ebb and flow rather than a straight line.

For example, the 2005 Burgundy wines that had been tasting delicious in the last few years are apparently now "shutting down" a bit; the flavors are just not there at the moment, to the point where Alan is thinking of removing them from the wine list. But in another 3 years or so, according to Alan, those wines will cycle back around to being drinkable again, with even more complexity of flavor then they had before.

That is one of the things I love about wine: it is a living, breathing organism in its way, and it grows, changes, flourishes, and even languishes at different times in its life.

The biggest challenge of the evening was in the "shadowing" element of what I am doing. How to shadow without menacing, without breathing down someone's neck. Plus, people are constantly moving around the floor with trays of glasses, stacks of plates, etc. and it took a lot of focus to find some place to stand where I was not in the way of anybody, not right over Alan's shoulder, not making the diners uncomfortable, but was also close enough to be able to hear what Alan was saying.

I think I managed to find a decent balance; at the very least he invited me back, so it must have gone all right. This Saturday I will return, and Alan will actually not be there, so I may have more opportunity to pour wines myself and really be a part of the evening. I am looking forward to it.

Because of Thanksgiving, I will not be writing a post on Thursday (unless I find myself inspired by massive amounts of Turkey, pie and vino), but will return on Monday. In theory.

Have a wonderful holiday everyone. Let me know if you have any yummy wines with your vittles.

Wine for Starting Something New

Tomorrow will be my first day doing a "Vinternship" at Masa's Restaurant in San Francisco. A "vinternship" is a winey way of saying an internship. Restaurants will give a person like myself a chance to watch and maybe even experience service as a Sommelier in a fine-dining establishment. They won't be paying me, and I am guessing I'll be there one or two shifts a week for the next month or so.

To be honest, I am not entirely sure what this particular vinternship will entail. I will be going in tomorrow to work out the details. I am both excited and petrified. I have, of course, forgotten everything i learned in my extensive wine class, and feel that I can no longer remember varietal characteristics, or the names of famous vineyards in famous wine regions.

I have begun reviewing all of my wine notes, while imagining that when I walk through the door tomorrow, the head Sommelier will begin peppering me with questions ("Quick, name all the Grand Cru vineyards in the Cote D'Or!!"), shoving wines under my nose ("Quick, what is it??!!") and forcing me to saber open Champagne bottles for tables of thirsty guests.

Hopefully, none of this will actually happen, but I always get freaked out when I start something new, especially when I am not exactly sure what that new thing will actually be like. Plus I have the added pressure of believing that I must always immediately be perfect at everything I do, even when I have never done it before.

I think I was brought up, or else my personality just led me, to believe that failure and mistakes were unacceptable and shameful. But of course it is from failing and making mistakes that we learn the most, and get better. It's impossible to succeed without some measure of failure; and it is these initial struggles that make the successes that much sweeter.

So with that in mind, I am going to go to the restaurant tomorrow saying to myself that I am where I am, I am there to learn, and they are lucky to have someone willing to volunteer her time and services. Plus, the Head Sommelier at this restaurant was one of my teachers at my wine course, so he knows what I know as far as theory, tasting and service.

So, my wine for starting something new is a Hannah Nicole Vineyards 2009 Viognier. Hannah Nicole was a new winery to me, and Viognier is a lesser-known varietal, so it seemed an appropriate wine for this post.

Viognier is a common varietal of the Northern Rhone in France, and it also grows very well here in California. I helped pour this wine last night with my friend Mike who is one of their sales reps, and it was a big hit. People kept coming back for more.

This wine is light and refreshing, with a fruity nose and palate of apple, nectarine, grapefruit, star fruit, white flowers and vanilla. Viognier is one of my favorite varietals, and this wine is a lovely representation of it. You can buy it on the Hannah Nicole website for $20 a bottle, or if you live in San Francisco, you can buy it at The Jug Shop on Polk Street.

This is a lovely wine to drink on its own as an aperatif, or with a fruit plate, or some light cheeses. The people at the event last night were drinking it with sushi, and they said it paired really well with that, too.

Plus, if you bring this wine to share with friends over dinner, you will most likely be introducing people to a type of wine they have never had before, which I always think is fun. 'Tis the season for trying something new, I say.