Wine Lunch

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As the culmination of my experience in La Llacuna, I was recruited to help serve at a Wine tasting/luncheon with Anthony. As part of his work, he sets up wine-related events for a club that he runs. It turns out, none of the club members were signed up for this particular luncheon; rather, a different club of Barcelonians (Barcelonans) filled all the spots. It was a club for divorced single folk, who do things together when other people might be out as couples. Sounds like a firecracker waiting to be lit, but also a rather nice idea. One of them later told me that, once you became a couple, they kicked you out of the club. I wonder who determines the criteria for "couple".
The day consisted of a two-hour wine tasting course, followed by a two-hour lunch where wines would be paired with each course, so they could practice their new skills. I was to be the gopher and wine-server. Luckily, I'm a stellar waitress, so I wasn't too worried. Plus, in payment, I got to eat and drink everything the participants did.
As predicted, it was a motley crew that showed up, with an broad range of ages, some rather attractive women, and unattractive men. They were all familiar with each other from previous events, yet Anthony insisted on playing a get-to-know-you game, I suspect mostly to humiliate me with my lack of Catalan-speaking ability.
I missed the wine-tasting course I had planned on taking in Paris, so this would be a nice exchange (especially since it's free). Now that I've experienced it, I'm glad I didn't spend money on one. The difficulty with wine culture is that it's fertile ground for pretention. Everyone knows that if you are wise about wine, you must be better than those who aren't, so everyone is eager to prove themselves. Anthony would make a heavy-handed judgement on the complexity of one of the wines, and everyone would jump to agree. I knew I couldn't be the only one in the group that disagreed, but all I saw were 20 nodding heads. If I spoke Catalan I would have said something. It bothered me, but I got to drink some nice wine for free, so it didn't bother me too much.
I did pretty well with the serving, though Anthony thought I poured too much in each glass. However, when I cut it down, people would ask for more, so I figured I'd just do what I wanted to. I spilled only once, on one man's hand, but he was also the man that later spilled an entire glass on himself, so I maintain it was his fault, not mine.
The lunch was amazing, traditional Spanish food (chicken with prunes?) meant to compliment the wines. It did pretty well. I got to just sit and eat, and made conversation with Jesus, I semi-English speaking banker. He tried teaching me some vocab in Catalan, and I found it pretty enriching. There are some words that can't be translated into any other language, and those are always the most interesting. For example, Jesus' favorite word, ojala, which loosely means "I wish" or "I hope", but the subtleties aren't conveyed by those phrases. Cool stuff. He also gave me his dessert, so I really liked him. It was an orange-flavored cake with a dark chocolate sauce, paired with a local Cab Sauv.
It was a great end to my first work exchange, and I can't quite fathom that I have two more to go. My next one should be great, this couple in France had many rave reviews from previous Help Exchangers.
Currently, I am Barcelona for a couple days, during which time I won't be online much, then to Marmande, France.

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Comments

[brother #2]

I remember that one from Spanish class. Ojala literally means something like "if it is God's will" (catch the 'Allah' in there?). The Spanish language is full of words taken from Arabic because of the Muslim occupaion of Spain (711 - 1492?). Hey, I'm pretty good!