I had the first session of my wine course last night

[xiphias]

The best Hannukah present Lis got me (she claims it's not a present, but is rather a professional development course, and she's half right -- it IS a professional development course, and it's ALSO a present) is a four-session intensive wine course which will lead to an Intermediate level certification in Wine from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust, an internationally-recognized professional certification. The WSET is an organization based in London which is more-or-less the successor to the London Wine and Spirits guilds, so you can think of this as a guild test. It's also used as a trade school graduation exam.

This course is usually taught as eight two-hour sessions; we're getting it as four four-hour sessions. Plus homework, of course. The Intermediate level test will be fifty multiple-choice questions, but they're hard questions. . .

If I ever decide to take the advanced test, that's harder -- longer multiple choice section, essay section, and tasting section. And the advanced course is like forty or fifty class hours, not sixteen. Plus homework.

Still, the sixteen hour course ought to give me a decent foundation in wine. It won't bring me up to jehanna's level, who's had a subscription to Wine Spectator since she was sixteen years old -- no matter how good the instruction, sixteen hours won't beat sixteen years -- but it will give me three related but distinct benefits: enough knowledge to handle any routine wine question in a bar or restaurant (wine suggestions, pairings, and so forth), enough confidence to feel comfortable doing these things, and an independent professional certification stating that I can do this.

Last night, besides a lot of background knowledge (grape growing techniques, soil characteristics, climate effects, wine producing regions and their characteristics, national standards and what they mean, wine fermentation) and theory, we also tasted eleven wines. I'll have to look at my notes to remember all of them, but they ranged from a $50 Barolo (which I really didn't like that much -- I could taste the complexity of it and so forth, so I could tell that it was high quality, but I didn't like it) to an $8 Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon, which I hated. Everyone else in the class seemed to consider it fine for $8, including the instructor, but I couldn't stand it, and had trouble taking multiple sips to evaluate it.

Does anyone else have that reaction to the Yellow Tai Cab Sauv? Most people I know like it -- they don't think it's an amazing wine, of course, but they think that it's damn fine for eight bucks. Me, I think you'd really have to pay me two bucks a glass to drink it. Sure, I'd drink it to be polite, but it doesn't seem enjoyable to me.

The one I really liked was the $18 Pieropan Soave Classico. As far as I'm concerned, that's a little on the high end for a bottle of wine, but not terrible. $20/bottle is about the most I'd feel comfortable paying, unless it was an AMAZING wine (which the Barolo wasn't).

The cheapest wine that I liked was the $10 Protocolo Rosada, from Spain.

I also need to, I guess, learn more about what makes a good or bad wine, because the instructor rated the Beaujolais Villages as not quite "good" -- between "acceptable" and "good", because he felt that it was too simple, with not enough flavors in it, but I really liked it.

I clearly am a Philistine -- I like a wine with two or three notes that I like better than one with half-a-dozen that I don't think match.

(Okay, I'm being snarky here -- in truth, there is a deliberate distinction between the quality of a wine, and how much you like the wine. We're really being taught to determine quality, and qualities, and the question of whether we, personally, like it is secondary. This is a class for people doing this professionally -- our personal preferences are not as important as the preferences of the people we are selling to. We need to be able to accurately describe what a wine is, and know how to sensibly use the wine, but our goal is to give our customers the wine THEY like, not the one WE like. We need to be able to figure out to what extent a wine is a good example of its type, and how complex and interesting the wine is, and how to accurately describe it. Once you can do that, you can say, "Okay, I like wines with THESE characteristics, and dislike wines with THOSE characteristics", and, if someone can accurately describe the wine, you can make a decision about whether you, personally, will like the wine.)

I am really having fun with this class, and am learning a lot. I think I came into the class with one of the lowest levels of knowledge, which is fine; that just means that I'm learning the most.

Most of the folks in the class are in the wine industry, as importers or distributors; I'm a bartender, which also puts me "in the industry". A number of other people are considering switching to wine-related careers as second careers, and two of the people are enthusiastic hobbyists.

Comments

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

What a fascinating course!

Yellowtail makes me itch. Literally.

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

Dude. I want to go! This sounds like the awesomest ever class. :)

(And the Yellowtail is probably something I would prefer to make Ypocras out of, not drink straight.)

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

Explicitly, do you have contact info on the class, or a link or something, so I can see about signing up for a future session? :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

http://www.grapeexperience.com/wsetprograms.html

The thing is, this is a professional certification class, and is priced as such. It's $678.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

If you're a Philistine, then I'm a bloody Sarmation. I like sweet Rhine style wines. Or a nice bitter beer.

Sounds like you have to approach each wine as a blank page and just assess what's there. Weird!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's more or less it, yes. Except after you've asessed what's there, one thing that you grade it on is how it measures up to what it ought to be, as a whatever-kind-of-wine-it-is.

So, you note appearandce (clarity, intensity of color, description of exactly what color it is), nose (whether it smells "off", how strong it is, and then actual notes you smell), and palate (sweetness, acidity, tannin, body, what actual notes that you taste, how long the flavor lingers on your tounge and what the characteristics of that lingering flavor are), and then you make a judgement, based on those things, whether the elements are in balance with each other, whether the elements that are supposed to be characteristic of that kind of wine are there, and what the quality of the wine is.

Now, as you do that, you can ALSO make a judgement, in that last step, as to whether you personally LIKE what the thing is doing, but that's separate.

So, yeah, you do have to pretty much approach each wine as a blank piece of paper.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Oooo! Enjoy!

(and what you wrote isn't *quite* true...it was my dad's subscription and I just read a bunch of his old issues. The thing that taught me the most was trying things with him from an early age.)

You will probably end up knowing lots more than me about various types of wines at the end of this. We'll have to compare notes!

And yeah, I tried the Yellowtail cab also, and I thought it was gross. You are not alone.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Also, I've been reading lately as how there's a shortage of qualified people to be sommeliers, and I bet you'd be really good at that once you had the background squared away. There are a lot of people who have the wine knowlege, but are bad with customers and front-of-house work, and a lot of people who are good at front-of-house but know nothing about wine. Get some of each and you'll probably never want for work.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It had a very long finish, though.

Like, half an hour later, I STILL had to keep rinsing my mouth out to get the taste out.

Long finish is good, right?

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Ah, had the same experience siphoning gas. Just kept telling myself: And this too shall pass.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

THAT'S what it tasted like. THANK you.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm thinking I'm going to have to try this Yellowtail stuff. Knowing my tastes, I'll probably like it. Wonder if it tastes like green chilies and beer?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Um, according to my tasting notes, it tastes like ashtrays and crap.

. . . that may not have been my most professional tasting note, come to think of it.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Years ago, while spending a delightful evening (day after getting married) drinking beer and mead, someone passed me a glass of Merlot. I was already a bit into my cups at this point and internal censor had wandered off. I took a large gulp, thinking it was sweet mead or some such, and did a real life spit take.

"What is this?" I said, eyeing the glass in my hand like it might belch flames.

"Merlot"

"Merlot tastes like crap!"

Ever after, my friends (who like dry red wines and such) refer to it as 'crap wine'.

They're also much more careful about letting me know when they're handing me something new to drink.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Depending on what Merlot they handed you, you may have been 100% correct.

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

and just how do you know waht "ashtrays and crap" taste like?

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

This post makes me really want to dust off my bartending certificate. And maybe take such a wine course in another 6 months or something.

[marquisedea.livejournal.com]

I am totally taking notes from your notes because I'm always interested to hear about wines ^_^ Also I think Spanish wines are really interesting.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I only tasted one so far, but it was interesting and good. And $10, which doesn't quite make it as "cheap", but is certainly not expensive.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you about Yellow Tail. I've never liked any of their wines that I've tried.

I really like Soave, too. It's not the most popular varietal, but it's very nice if you can find it. If you like that, I bet you'll like Viognier, too.

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

Oh, d**n my alcohol allergy! I would love to do a little wine-tasting with you. Did you know that dad and I took a wine-tasting course while I was pregnant with you. (Still have our wine label journal, I think.) Perhaps that's why you like wine and other alcohol so much. Perhaps that's why you became a bartender. Perhaps that's why you were 6 weeks premature. Hmmm....