Today was our office’s Christmas lunch. It was my first ever Christmas party so I was quite excited!
The company I work for only has 4 employees (including me) plus the owner so it would be a small group lunch at Gotham’s Steakhouse. We were excited all morning and we got ready to leave at 11:45am to walk to the restaurant for our noon reservation. Except the owner wasn’t ready so three of us went ahead to secure the table.
We got there and proceed to browse through the menus. I was appointed the one in charge of ordering the wine which was great as I love looking through the wine list and finding the perfect wine(s) for the meal. I settled on the Qupe Syrah as we were all having steak. Since we were still waiting for the rest of the group, we decided to order the wine first. She brought out the wine and offered me the taste. I tasted it and I had to taste it again as it didn’t taste right. There wasn’t much flavours and it tasted a little sour. It didn’t taste obviously corked or bad just tasted a little sour and flat so I asked the server if the wine was supposed to be like that. She offered to have the bartender try it and I said yes, I wanted a second opinion.
The bartender tasted it and he took a while but eventually said it was fine. By this time, a manager had shown up at the bar and he tasted it too. He immediately pushed the bottle away and the server came back and told us that he was a wine expert and he agreed that the wine didn’t have the right finish. I was glad that I wasn’t wrong about the wine! Everyone was impressed and we choose the wine that the manager suggested, Fess Parker The Big Easy Syrah. It was a great choice! Lots of flavours, delicious, easy to drink.
By this time, the rest of our group had arrive and the other ladies had fun telling them about the “wine drama”. They were all impressed that I was right about the wine. It was the first time I had to send a wine back and I was glad that I asked for a second opinion because the Big Easy tasted so much better!
I decided to switch wines when we finished the first bottle and I ordered the Holy Trinity. This was an absolutely delicious wine. Big bold flavours, jammy and just an explosion of tastiness in your mouth! I would definitely drink this again and it is now on my list of top wines. If you get a chance to try this wine, you should!
We had a wonderful lunch, with appetizers, wine, steak sides, desserts and more wine! For appies, we ordered calamari, lobster bisque, crab cake, and beet salad. Everyone got steak as their mains, from New York Strips to Rib Eyes to Filet Mignons. You think we wouldn’t have room for dessert but we did! We ordered chocolate brownie, sticky toffee pudding, chocolate bourbon cake and cheesecake.
All in all, it was awesome to hang out and get to know my co-workers a bit more. Our Christmas party was a 3-hour lunch and it was worth every minute of it. Delicious wine, tasty food and good company. Happy holidays everyone!
