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Last night, I was called for an event held at the MIT Faculty club. Which is a function space -- things held there need not have much connection to MIT. As always, I had no real idea what I was to do until I showed up, and as is normal, the function hall only knows what's on the function sheet.
Remember: the HOSTS know what's going on and why; the rest of us don't, nor do we entirely care. We make functions happen; to us, it makes no difference if it's a business meeting, an anniversary party, or whatever. Personally, I do try to find out as much as I can about that sort of thing; it rarely makes a difference, but it sometimes does.
So, we read the sheet, and it said that the bar I was doing was sherry only, which is something I'd never seen.
Well, if it was only sherry, I figured I could do this right. After all, part of my WSET certification in wine knowledge includes knowledge of fortified wines, such as sherries and ports. I went into the back of their liquor closet, and found that they had six different types of sherry, so I took them all. It was a good range, actually, from a fino to a Pedro Ximenez.
See, in the United States, people think of "sherry" as one thing -- a sweet dessert wine. And that is ONE kind of sherry. But it's far from the only one.
The sherries that they had were a Manzanilla fino, a dry sack, an Oloroso, two cream sherries -- Harvey's Bristol Cream and one other brand whose name escapes me at the moment -- and a Pedro Ximenez. (Actually, they also had an amontillado, but the beverage manager didn't want me to use that one because it hadn't been opened, and he figured I could do enough with the other ones.)
I lined them up on the bar in that order, and made a display at either end, with a glass of the Manzanilla on one end and a glass of the Pedro Ximenez on the other, so that people could visually see the range of choice they had. Fino sherries are a pale yellow, crisp and dry, while Pedro Ximenez is as dark and sweet as molasses. And the rest of them form a pretty smooth spectrum from one to the other. A cream sherry is a mix of Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez; dry sack is a mix of Oloroso and amontillado (and amontillado is, itself, darker than a fino and lighter than an Oloroso), so it formed a good range.
People were impressed. It turns out that it's just a tradition, dating back a hundred years, that this particular annual meeting always has sherry.
But this was the first time that someone had actually WORKED with that to make it INTERESTING, and people's socks were knocked off. For seventy people, I went through six bottles of sherry (I had backups on most of them -- so I did 1.7 bottles of Manzanilla, 1.2 of Dry Sack, 1.4 of Oloroso, 0.5 of of Bristol and 0.4 of the other, and 1.2 of the Pedro Ximenez). At $140/bottle (served -- that's not the price of the ALCOHOL, that's the price of the bottle, the setup, the liquor liability, the bartender, the glassware, and so forth), I did pretty good business for the Faculty Club. And the guests were impressed, most of them coming back several times to try different varieties and compare.
Sometimes, people luck out. Sometimes, luck of the draw means that people get me as their bartender. There is no other bartender they could have gotten who could have done better, and only a few that could have done as well.
Remember: the HOSTS know what's going on and why; the rest of us don't, nor do we entirely care. We make functions happen; to us, it makes no difference if it's a business meeting, an anniversary party, or whatever. Personally, I do try to find out as much as I can about that sort of thing; it rarely makes a difference, but it sometimes does.
So, we read the sheet, and it said that the bar I was doing was sherry only, which is something I'd never seen.
Well, if it was only sherry, I figured I could do this right. After all, part of my WSET certification in wine knowledge includes knowledge of fortified wines, such as sherries and ports. I went into the back of their liquor closet, and found that they had six different types of sherry, so I took them all. It was a good range, actually, from a fino to a Pedro Ximenez.
See, in the United States, people think of "sherry" as one thing -- a sweet dessert wine. And that is ONE kind of sherry. But it's far from the only one.
The sherries that they had were a Manzanilla fino, a dry sack, an Oloroso, two cream sherries -- Harvey's Bristol Cream and one other brand whose name escapes me at the moment -- and a Pedro Ximenez. (Actually, they also had an amontillado, but the beverage manager didn't want me to use that one because it hadn't been opened, and he figured I could do enough with the other ones.)
I lined them up on the bar in that order, and made a display at either end, with a glass of the Manzanilla on one end and a glass of the Pedro Ximenez on the other, so that people could visually see the range of choice they had. Fino sherries are a pale yellow, crisp and dry, while Pedro Ximenez is as dark and sweet as molasses. And the rest of them form a pretty smooth spectrum from one to the other. A cream sherry is a mix of Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez; dry sack is a mix of Oloroso and amontillado (and amontillado is, itself, darker than a fino and lighter than an Oloroso), so it formed a good range.
People were impressed. It turns out that it's just a tradition, dating back a hundred years, that this particular annual meeting always has sherry.
But this was the first time that someone had actually WORKED with that to make it INTERESTING, and people's socks were knocked off. For seventy people, I went through six bottles of sherry (I had backups on most of them -- so I did 1.7 bottles of Manzanilla, 1.2 of Dry Sack, 1.4 of Oloroso, 0.5 of of Bristol and 0.4 of the other, and 1.2 of the Pedro Ximenez). At $140/bottle (served -- that's not the price of the ALCOHOL, that's the price of the bottle, the setup, the liquor liability, the bartender, the glassware, and so forth), I did pretty good business for the Faculty Club. And the guests were impressed, most of them coming back several times to try different varieties and compare.
Sometimes, people luck out. Sometimes, luck of the draw means that people get me as their bartender. There is no other bartender they could have gotten who could have done better, and only a few that could have done as well.