The one that I am a bit ambivalent about is who pours the wine. Sometimes the pourer is in rapt conversation with someone else and I like to just take the bottle and pour for myself. Some of them take umbrage, perhaps because they need to control amounts and some wine hogs pour themselves almost full glasses if allowed the chance, but I invariably pour less than the pourers do as I hate waste and don't need more than a small aliquot to assess the wines
OTOH, I don't want to waste my time by standing there listening to them ramble on with another taster, so at the least my stab at the bottle usually gets me a pour anyway...
Another thing that does rile me (no ambivalence on this one) is a pourer despotically deciding that you can't taste their wine after tasting something else that, in their eyes, should have come later in tasting sequence than what they are pouring.
I've been tasting reds and come across a white I'd missed in a previous pass through and have rinsed my glass or got a new one in order to taste the white, only to be told that as I am on reds I won't be poured any white, so there! I feel like saying that I am quite capable of giving their wine a reasonable assessment at that stage in my tasting, or I wouldn't have asked for any. What I have FELT like saying is that I am the buying agent for X Co. chain of restaurants, and as I will not be allowed to taste their wine I guess I'll have to buy 100 cases of the white I'd rated best without giving their wine a chance....never had the gall to say that of course.
