Day two was even more intense: action, chills, thrills and a few (unfortunate) spills--not to worry: there was more wine on hand.

Wow! I'm blogging this from my soundproof suite at the fabulous Marriot Hotel in Napa. The conference is over, most of the stragglers are gone now and all that remains is a mountain of empty wine bottles many happy memories. 

Day two was a wacky-tacular one for me. Due to a change in the conference schedule my two sessions were set up back to back on the same day. No problem! Count on me! Ha ha, sometimes I'm too accomodating. It all worked out in the end, however, and my first seminar, 'Wine Kit First Aid: Troubleshooting Your Kit' went very well, and I met and made a lot of new friends and I'm hopeful that I answered a lot of burning questions.  After that I raced off to set up and present my component tasting seminar. This involved setting up seven samples for each attendee. The references were an unoaked white and an oaked red wine, and they were tasted against solutions of acid, tannin, oak, sugar and alcohol. The purpose was to help understand the flavour profile of each wine and how the structure was formed by each compound in turn, and how it affected the balance.  

But pouring all those samples ( seven times 400 is 2800 glasses!) took time, effort and discipline. Fortunately I didn't have to demonstrate any of those qualities--I had helpers.

 Everyone got into the act, and we started only a few minutes late. I did my usual stand-up-comedy-with-wine routine, and folks seemed to get a lot out of the concept. A lot of them had tried aromatic component tasting before, smelling samples and and comparing them to wines to pick out aroma and bouquet, but few had ever done the basics of flavour balance. I love it when a plan turns out! 

Must run for now: apparently there are several wineries in the Napa area that have a serious oversupply of wine that only I can help alleviate. Also, I'm informed by my wife that a similar emergency exists at the outlet malls . . . that sounds suspicious to me,  but she's the boss.