Making a Toast Without Dropping One’s Guard

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/16/business/16drink.html?ei=5007&amp;en=b4c621ae36c94d21&amp;ex=1386997200&amp;partner=USERLAND&amp;pagewanted=all&amp;position=">Business Travel: Making a Toast Without Dropping One&rsquo;s Guard</a>: &ldquo;Ovid Battat, who owns a wine and olive oil importing company in Freehold, N.J., vividly remembers the faux pas he committed on one of his first trips to Italy, in a restaurant in Tuscany with a group from a winery. &lsquo;I was pouring wine tilting my wrist backwards over some glasses,&rsquo; Mr. Battat said. &lsquo;The table just came to a halt &mdash; people almost jumped out of their seats, and started pushing their chairs back. Two or three people made me stop, and said we had to get rid of the bottle. Nobody would drink from that wine.&rsquo;



&ldquo;In Italy, he was told, it was bad luck and a sign of disrespect to pour wine that way. &lsquo;I never did get business from that supplier,&rsquo; Mr. Battat said.



&ldquo;Were his hosts overreacting? Apparently not. &lsquo;The wine was poured in an unnatural way,&rsquo; a spokesman for the Italian Government Tourist Board in New York said. &lsquo;An Italian waiter would die if he did it, and in an Italian restaurant everyone would freeze and wonder where the person came from.&rsquo;



&ldquo;American executives abroad often find that liquor is a much bigger part of the business equation than at home. But ordering, pouring, toasting and drinking in a foreign land can be fraught with pitfalls for the unwary. What seems trivial may provoke reactions from mild irritation to acute horror.&rdquo;