Never stop imbibing education: this reporter goes to a class conducted by a wine buddy comparing Old World with New World varietals, and learns (or re-learns) a thing or two.
Off to Class
Do you need to know about wine in order to enjoy wine? I think the answer is yes, that the more understanding you have, the more you enhance the pleasure of drinking wine. The less certain question is whether you need actual instruction.
I could take the autodidactic view and argue—convincingly I hope—that some familiarity with grape varieties and some attention and thought while you are drinking will give you the knowledge you need, and that your own taste is the ultimate bottom line in wine knowledge. It should be possible to increase your understanding every time you get out the corkscrew.
But if you are to judge by the number of classes and seminars and tastings and courses and books and websites and newsletters currently available, many people want structured and formalized wine education. The result perhaps is the same: defining personal tastes more exactly and giving us a basis for understanding why we prefer specific wines.
I do a lot of research in the course of writing this column but until last week I had never attended an actual class. It was an interesting experience. The class, the first in a series taking place on Wednesday nights, was held in the dining room of the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. The wine school is organized by Fait Accompli, a Sag Harbor based event planning business owned by Kate Mullane. The class was conducted by Chris Miller, a director of the Sommelier Society of America and a wine writer and consultant. I’ve participated in tastings and other wine events with Mr. Miller for several years, and without exaggeration I can say he knows more about the world of wine than anyone else I’ve met.
The class was organized in a straightforward way, contrasting Old World and New World styles of winemaking using four different grapes. We began with a sauvignon blanc (2004 Palliser Estate, $20) that was highly expressive of the New Zealand expertise in creating fresh, crisp, fruit forward wine from this grape. This was matched with a bottle from the famed Sancerre region of the Loire Valley (2004 Domaine Hippolyte-Reverdy, $25). As expected, the French white expressed some of the same qualities in a more refined and complex way. Each was excellent in its way.
The differences were parallel when we a matched a white Burgundy (2002 Domaine des Deux Roches Macon-Davaye, $20) with a California Sonoma Coast chardonnay (2002 Hartford, $26). Both good but in different ways.
The same message came through with pairings of a classic red Burgundy with a Californa pinot noir, and Bordeaux from the Medoc region with a California cabernet sauvignon. Not only did we get an accurate sense of the Old World/New World divergence, we discussed the various grape varieties and the differences a cooler or warmer climate makes in the character of a wine. (Cool climate grapes, with a shorter growing season, have less sugar and more acids than their warm climate cousins.)
The audience asked interesting questions that focused us on the techniques of tasting wine and some of the terms used to describe wine. It turns out that sometimes the best way to describe a Chablis is to compare the aroma to a wet stone.
