Cornell Business

Issue date: 9/6/00 Section: Features

Five brave first years join the wine tour

Toast!

The entire group

“What, go wine tasting tomorrow? No way.” That was my initial and very incredulous reaction to Brian Thomas’ and Jared Johnson’s promotions of the wine tour at the after-JOE party. As if we first-years weren’t tired enough from endless games of giants, elves, and wizards not to mention our eagerness to get cracking on the homework assigned for Tuesday morning. Who wants to begin the first day of classes hung-over, or worse yet, unprepared for accounting? Plus, we were well on our way to consuming plenty of alcoholic beverages at the after-JOE party. More alcohol on Monday morning didn’t seem like an optimal solution to ridding an already impending hang-over. Or was it?
Jared, the one and only first-year who went on last year’s wine tasting trip refused to accept our logic. Seeking out the wavering among us, he preached: “You’ll have plenty of time to do classwork, but if you don’t go now, it’ll be the end of the year before you know it. Besides, when else in the next few weeks are you going to get a chance to meet so many second-years?” As it turned out, Jared selected his audience carefully – at least six of us first-years wanted to prolong orientation to upstate New York one day longer. (Plus, none of us had any intentions of going into investment banking or consulting.)

The trip organizers, BT and Jared, had clearly made a trip to Wegmans in preparation for the day’s activities. The onslaught of wine, assorted cheeses, and fruit began as soon as we boarded the bus at 11:30 a.m. Followed by a toast to the six brave first-years, BT explained that Johnson students are the only well-received Cornell students at the wineries. Translation: buy lots of wine. With three wineries on our agenda and over eight generous tastings at each, (yes, that’s 24 wines!) no one hesitated in putting their credit cards to good use. Chateau LaFayette Reneau, Lamoreaux Landing Wine Cellars, and Wagner Winery and Micro Brewery turned out to be the lucky recipients of the Johnson crowd.
Fortunately, we reserved our debauchery for the bus ride home and students are still welcome there. For those of us who weren’t phased by the 24 tastings, more wine was to be drunk on the bus ride back. Susie Welgos and a few other generous second-years passed around more bottles at which point my memory became somewhat clouded.

Walking into class on Tuesday morning, however, I did remember enough to recognize that a day spent tasting wines, enjoying the views of Seneca Lake, and bonding with second-years far beats a day spent in Sage.

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