The Guest Who Came for the Company

In December, the guest who decides how long a group stays in a tasting room is often the one who didn’t want to come.

Between now and New Year’s, a good share of the people at a tasting room counter didn’t pick the winery. They came along with the office party or a visiting sister-in-law, and most of them couldn’t say what neutral French oak is and have no interest in finding out that afternoon.

On a busy Saturday the easiest thing for a tired host to fall back on is the tech sheet, harvest Brix and barrel regime and clone numbers, because reciting it feels like doing the job. For a guest who drinks beer at home it plays like a quiz nobody warned them about. That guest starts checking the time, and before long tells whoever is holding the credit card that they’re ready whenever everyone else is.

What to teach before the holiday rush

The fix for the season is small enough to teach in a ten-minute pre-shift huddle. Ask hosts to look for the person at the edge of the group who has gone quiet, and give that guest one thing about the place that has nothing to do with chemistry, like the bear that got into the fruit bins three days before harvest or the reason the founder bought the hillside instead of the valley floor. Two sentences is plenty. Then ask something anyone can answer, like where they drove in from or what the group is celebrating.

Here is what that can sound like, at a winery with a bear problem: “Three days before harvest last year a bear got into the bins out back and ate a couple hundred pounds of Zinfandel, and the winemaker has a picture of him taped above his desk. He swears that’s why this year’s is a little lighter.” Nobody needs to know what Zinfandel is to laugh at that, and the next question from the quiet guest is usually about the bear, which is a conversation the host can have all afternoon.

Every host should walk into the shift with one of those stories ready, and it has to be true. A manager can gather them in a single staff meeting by asking each host what they would tell a friend who had never been there, and writing down the answers that make the rest of the room lean in.

Give the quiet guest something to hold

A guest who isn’t drinking still notices whether the room made space for them. A glass of water poured without being asked and a stool pulled out when the counter is crowded tell that guest the host saw them. If the tasting includes food, explain the cheese or the chocolate to them first, since it’s the one thing on the counter everyone in the group can talk about.

If the winery makes a nonalcoholic option, a sparkling grape juice or a verjus spritz, hosts should know it by name and offer it the way they would offer the reserve pour, with a story behind it. The designated driver in particular has been handed the least fun job of the day, and a host who notices that tends to find an ally when the group starts talking about the wine club.

What to leave alone

The wine people in the group still want the details, and hosts should give them freely. The only change is who gets the first story, and the person at the edge of the group usually needs it more than the one asking about clones.

A guest who stops feeling like an outsider usually stops checking the time, and the host gets another pour in with the people who came to buy. Sometimes the quiet one walks out with a bottle of olive oil, or a wine for the neighbor who fed the cat.