I have always loved wine. I love the romance, I love the process, I love all the background and stories that go with it. It truly becomes more than a beverage, but a story in a glass.
I also found out that the more I learn about wine, the less I know.
After 25 years of traveling to wine regions on 3 continents, schlepping up and down all the wine regions of California, and most of all, having recently lost my job as a Food Service Director, I decided that I wanted to know more about wine. So I did what many baby boomers have done and went back to school.
The question now is where to go. In the SF Bay area there are two very reputable culinary schools offering two very different professional wine oriented courses, Professional Culinary Institute in Campbell and Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. As St. Helena is 20 miles closer to my house, and the course was only 5 weeks vs. 8, CIA it was. I always wanted to go to CIA anyway.
The course is 5 weeks long and it is very intense. You start with a three day introduction to the wine business, and then you have two days dealing with the Sensory Analysis of Wine. Math for the first course and chemistry for the second. After these preliminaries you go right into the meat of the program, Mastering Wine for two weeks.
Week one is with Master Instructor Karen McNeil. It is an intensive week dealing with four of the great varietals, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon. The field trips we took totally confirmed my intuition that taking a wine program in the Napa Valley was worth the money and the time. We studied the effects of different barrels on Chardonnay with the head winemaker at Franciscan Cellars. On Wednesday we studied blending at Rudd. Thursday found us at Domaine Carneros doing an intensive tasting of Carneros pinot noirs with the winemakers from Domaine Carneros and Truchard Vineyards. The last day is was a vertical of Shafer Hillside Select cabernet sauvignon with Doug Shafer and his winemaker.
Each afternoon after lunch, Karen conducted a varietal specific blind tasting. Here we worked a learning the key signposts of each varietal. Believe it or not, even with spiting after each taste, at the end of the day we were exhausted.
Next week was Mastering Wine Two with John B. Here we looked at Riesling, the Aromatic Whites, Zinfandel and Syrah. Our field trips included private tastings with Ehren Jorden at Faila and Bernard Seps at Storybook Mountain. The Riesling day was a Revelation as I finally learned how to read a German wine label, and I learned how flexible a wine Riesling truly is, it matches well with just about everything. Syrah was interesting and I finally learned how to recognize it in a glass, think bacon.
Week four was a wine tour of Italy. Day one was Burgundy and the Rhone, both interesting and enjoyable, day two found us in Bordeaux in the morning, Champagne and the Loire in the afternoon. As I've lived for the past 17 years in California, I have drank mostly wines from California. After two days classic wines from France, I think I finally get old world wines, they tell a story of place within the glass. The winemaker in Bordeaux does not make a Cabernet Sauvignon based wine, he makes Bordeaux. That being said, I still have a new world pallet, but I can appreciate old world wines.
Day three of this week found us tasting the wines of Germany, Austria and Alsace. Again, the German wines were fantastic and truly food friendly. Alsatian wines are great as I have always enjoyed them. What I did not know until I entered this program was how hot and dry Alsace really is.
Day four was the day that turned my wine world on end and totally convinced me that I will never ever learn all there is to learn about wines, even if I live to be 120 years old. We spent the day tasting the wines of Italy.
Italy has always been a mystery to me. It still is, but I know have the clues on how to find my way out of it. Italy has their own homegrown vinifera grapes, with each region using only those grapes native to that area. There are 13 regions, all with their own varietals. Sound confusing, trust me it is.
In the morning we tasted sparkling wines of Francacortia and the reds of Piedmont. In the afternoon, the wines of the Veneto and Tuscany. I am sold. I will now go through life drinking Brunellos, Barbaras, Barolos and Barbarescos for the rest of my life. They were the most food friendly red wines, all of them with tremendous amounts of acid on the pallets.
The last week was not as exciting as the previous ones. We dealt with wine service for two days and food and wine pairing for the last 2 days.
And on the last day we sat for the Certified Wine Professional exam. I have several thoughts. First is that I think I may have been able to pass the written test without the course, but there is no way that I could have passed the blind tasting without the training. For those curious about what we tasted they were a Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and the funkiest Syrah that I have ever tasted.
The second thought was that I could not believe that the course was finished. I was privileged to be part of a great program with some truly awesome classmates. We all challenged and pushed each other in expanding our wine knowledge. I wish them all well, and I miss being in class with them.
The final thought for this program, was it worth the time and money. The answer is yes, but it only scratched the surface. This class left me wanting more, and wanting to be part of this wonderful world. And that is where I am today.
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