I know Tex-Mex and I know wine. I’m wondering the same thing.
A wise and insightful assessment. I’d expect nothing less from a Texas Longhorn! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
“At that level of wine quality and the audience, he probably wasn’t too far off the mark in there being very little if any difference. But, from an ethical standpoint, should he have made the effort to tell the server of he outage and also inform the customer. Even in this situation, I would have let the customer know so that he/she could make an informed decision”.
“Having lived in Austin and in California, I think Mexican food in California is much better food, but I think the experience of going out for Tex Mex is generally a much happier and more fun one than going out for Mexican food in California. That’s a very general statement, and of course there are loads of exceptions.
Since I’m in sweeping generalizations mode, I’ll continue my roll. California is a much nicer place to live than Texas on paper – weather, geography, cultural events, fine dining, etc. Yet Texas is stronger in intangible things – what your neighbors are like, how much fun it is to go out on the town, the way people interact. I like both places, and I make no call on one being better than another, but it’s one of those “quantifiable versus unquantifiable” things that I find interesting.”
I arrived late in this thread; I don’t know from Tex-Mex food as I’ve been in California some 40 year. I suspect however, based on the lay of the land hereabouts so far in this thread, that not only is the food better in the Bay Area but you can’t find a better place to Shazaam in, and maybe it’s just a longhorn belief which states it otherwise.
And oh the question? No, it is not all the same, and the clientele should be treated with respect.
Maybe only in a fools paradise but I live in it; I’m a wine lover and I bring wine everywhere, be it no corkage or a $50.00 tarrif. I like to drink well with dinner and I know what I like, and have a wine cellar. I won’t be drinking most of the best in any case, can’t live long enough, and it’s in my will to be auctioned for the charity of my choice.
Oh, and I do enjoy great grub and I’ll have wine with it no matter what it is. Beer bloats me.
so he cracks a Merlot and states that it’s all the same, right. Wine is delivered to the customer without issue.
At that level of wine quality and the audience, he probably wasn’t too far off the mark in there being very little if any difference.
I don’t think the level of quality or audience has anything to do with whether they’d be able to tell you if you poured them Merlot or Cab. If you drank a lot of cheap Merlot and a lot of good Cab, you have some guideposts, but if you’re drinking good stuff, they’re pretty hard to tell apart blind.
So in that sense I don’t think it matters. Moreover, if one suggests that “at that level” it doesn’t really matter, how informed a decision would the person be able to make? My guess is that the person couldn’t tell.
If he could, they should have hired him on the spot as their wine consultant.
The main thing is that the customer was happy with his choice.
Now if the guy would have opened a Pinot Noir or Sangiovese instead of Cab, the story would be a bit different. But at the end of the day, it all goes into the sangria anyway doesn’t it? So why not just order that to start?
It would be very, very interesting to see whether you could reliably [reproducibly] identify the varietals in even a single-blind tasting, with a completely fresh palate.
And trying to correctly identify the varietals double-blind*, after a couple of jalapeno or habanero peppers, in the middle of a noisy stinking mayhem-driven Tex-Mex restaurant?
Fuhgedaboudit…
*Don’t know how we’d arrange for double-blind, at this point. Maybe in five or ten years, when you’ve forgotten about the incident.
Leonard, we are blessed with incredible and distinctive food in the Bay Area, but having spent a lot of time in Texas and Northern California, I wouldn’t be so dismissive of regional food from other locals.
Sake – enough said!