I don't really drink but if i did.....

Every job has it's little benefits, it's little bonuses that make it special. Wine tasting day is without a doubt my favourite day. Saying that, I'm not sure a busy Friday is the best day for it. I was just clearing up from lunch when the Glorious leader appeared looking like Edward Glasseshands with a smile on his face. One of the wine reps had arrived and had brought a half dozen bottles of very lovely wine with him for sampling. The restaurant was abandoned......like a child on holiday.

Here are the highlights....

1. Lois Grüner Veltliner - at about 11% it wasn't this Austrian number that did the damage. This is light, as dry as comedian Steven Wright, and as refreshing as a politician telling the truth. The bottle is hideous though, it appears lime green with a modern minimalist label. Very "cool" I'm lead to believe. I like wine labels with castles and chateaus etc....Beautiful wine, get it in til ye as they say on the banks of the Danube. You should be able to get this for about £6 to £8 and twice that in a restaurant.....(Waiters don't come cheap) (Actually they do...)


2. Weingut Burger Donaghadee Riesling Classic 2004 - when tasting wines you are meant to take a mouthful, roll it round your mouth and absorb it's flavours and aromas and what have you. You aren't meant to go back to the bottle 3 or 4 times and knock it down your neck like there is no tonight let alone no tomorrow. But this was just so beautiful it was hard not to. It has an Irish heritage as the name suggests. The lady who owns the vineyard moved to Germany from Donaghadee naming part of her new enterprise after her home town. I love little stories like that. The label has a picture of Donaghadee harbour. It's drier than you might expect and has hints of citrus and apples. It's just beautiful on it's own or, if you have to eat, with light salads. You should be able to get this for under a tenner and for what it's worth I recommend it highly.


3. 2006 Noble Dragon Shandong - As the name suggests this isn't French, hell it's not even European or American or from Australia or South America, it's Chinese. Say what? Oh yes it's from China. As one wag put it yesterday, "Them Chinese will make anything!" But if we all drop out preconceived ideas you will actually find that these wines are comparable with anything else in it's price range from anywhere in the world. The red is spicy and dry and to be honest it was a bit of a shock at first. There are lots of flavours going on in your mouth. It's blended from Cabernet Sauvignon and Syra as well as some of the local grape Dragon's eye. Good with peppery and spicy food, as you might expect. Once you get over the whole, "it's from China" thing you can really appreciate this. It's available for about £10.00, well worth a try.


4. Godolphin Shiraz - if this wine was a boxer it would fight in the heavy weight division. Good grief it packs a punch. You would be madder than a bag of badgers to drink this without food. And by food I mean a cow, a whole cow at that. It has a strong blackcurrant and licorice flavours, it doesn't do "hints" of anything, it's far to hard for that. My god it's good. But it comes with a price tag to match. Expect to pay £30 or more in a restaurant and about half that off the shelf. Well worth every penny......

There were others too, well there might have been others I don't know. I'm sure there was more. What I do know is that Friday night at work was more fun than normal. I wasn't pished but was very merry. Then I got a headache and wasn't so merry. And it was the first busy Friday night of the year so far! Where was the wine when I was struggling to make the night go in? Eh? Where was it when I was counting forks just for the bloody hell of it?

We tried about a half dozen wines after lunch then about a dozen or so at 4pm. I'm not bulit for this. Roll on the next wine list change! Yippee! All Fridays should be like that!

In other news it appears I'm not being sold into white slavery or being romanced by the Supreme leader. We are up for another award and he has asked me to join him in facing the interview panel. Which is nice........I can't say I'm not disappointed, I hoped he was taking me shopping.....

I have seen my own death, there'll be brandy....

On Friday I mentioned a report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that shows bar workers and those who work in the hospitality industry as a whole are most at risk from suffering an alcohol related death. As the ONS put it,

"The findings largely reinforce earlier research regarding those occupations with the highest indicators of alcohol-related mortality. In particular, it is very clear that those with access to alcohol at work are more likely to die from alcohol-related causes, compared to the population as a whole."

Some lovely graphs...





We are twice as likely to die from liver disease or pancreatitis as the rest of the population. So that's something to look forward to!

There isn't a bar worker, chef, waiter, bar/restaurant manager I know who doesn't enjoy a drink or fifteen. Right now even I am clasping a lovely big mug of Gin*! It used to be chefs who were the worst/best, depending on your view, for drinking. Some would arrive to work drunk, some got smashed during shift. But they all got very nicely marinated after work. You could spot the chef's with the drink problems quite easily. They would ask for 4 brandies from the bar for a brandy sauce that would never materialise. And when they are using a case of Schnapps a week to make fruit salads you have to assume there is more being consumed in the staff toilets than going into the dessert. But chefs aren't as bad with the alcohol now as they were years ago. Now they are stoned most of the time. Still doesn't chill them out though...

Bar staff though, still love a drink. And you can understand why. The hours are hard, the work can be tough. When you finish at 3am on a Sunday morning and all your friends are either drunk or getting it on what else are you going to do? The people you work with become your new family, your new best friends. You go to a colleague's, hopefully a fit and sexy colleague, house with left over wine and a carryout you procured earlier on your break. Parties are always planned during the shift. It's the best way to get things done quicker at the end of the day and it gives you something to look forward to. Most bar staff are young and have the energy and will for late night partying. For the most part it's just young uns being young uns.

Most of them slow the drinking down as they get older or settle down with the fit and sexy colleague. Some don't. Some fill up pint glasses with what looks like water but is actually vodka and lemonade just to get through the night. Some arrive to work with the sweats and the shakes and yet still can't go home without having another drink. Would they be any different if the worked in an office or as a bricklayer? Well if they were a bricklayer they might just get stoned all the time.

Times have changed a lot though from the days when my father worked in a kitchen. Drinking was not only tolerated during shift by the chefs it was sort of expected. But now there are organisations like Hospitality Action who offer help and advice for those in the business who are having problems with alcohol etc. In the olden days (70's) you would have been given a pint of shandy and told to get over yourself! We are surrounded by drink and by people drinking. It is understandable that bar workers etc want a drink at the end of our working day, just like everybody else in society does. It's just unfortunate that we finish at 3 in the morning!

As I was leaving work tonight word reached me via the Glorious Leader (General Manager) of an alcohol related accident in the restaurant were his fiancee was dining. It appears a waiter was heading to a table with a flaming brandy cocktail, you can see were this is going, and tripped on his way. The flaming brandy hit another waiter who's shirt burst into flames. A quick witted customer enjoying a bottle of Champagne saved the day by chucking the contents of his ice bucket at the flambéing waiter. Not sure if this would be covered in a ONS report but definitely another indication that alcohol can kill. Sounds like a scene from a Mr Bean movie. Hope the guy is OK and all that. Thoughts are with you comrade.

So the next time you are in a bar or restaurant be nice to those who are serving you for we are not long for this world....

*actually it's a big mug of tea....

everything is ready for the next staff party...