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“I love it when you can take a sip of a wine and get personality out of it,” Emily Peterson told me. “It happened last night. I was at a tasting for Fiddlehead Cellars and the wine was a Sauvignon Blanc: Gooseberry. It was fun and lively and popped around in your mouth. Drinking that wine was like having a sip of the winemaker. My favorite wines are wines that tell a story.”
I too, crave the excitement people get from wine, and I wanted to feel what Peterson experienced, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get it. After all, I’m just a culinary student at Johnson & Wales University, working my way through the program. That’s why I decided to investigate how beginners like me can gain some knowledge of wine on our own time and without taking expensive courses.
The first thing I did was contact two women who I know to be wine experts, the aforementioned Emily Peterson, owner of Uncorked Consulting, and Catherine Rabb, wine educator and owner of Fenwick’s Restaurant. Just interviewing these two women taught me much more than I expected.
The first delightful thing I learned on my journey to becoming a wine maven is that you must experience it, and not just read about it —in other words, taste it. Taste lots of wine! I knew this even when I was living in Columbia, South Carolina, and used to go to wine tastings at Wine Styles almost every Friday. This was when I first developed an interest in wine and discovered that, in most cities, you can find a wine tasting somewhere close by on just about any day of the week. Then, after moving to Charlotte, I was walking through Harris Teeter and noticed that there was a representative from Heron Vineyards passing out samples of wine. I decided to take some advice from Peterson and not just taste the wine, but listen to what the representative had to say while I held the wine in my mouth, savoring the taste and aromatics. This really helped me to commit each variety to memory. I sampled three different wines and ended up taking a bottle home.
Then I applied another lesson learned from my mentors: talk to people about wine. I went to wine shops and specialty grocery stores, finding people who could help me figure out just what characteristics stimulated my particular palate—to discover, in other words, which were the wines I liked. According to Peterson, one thing to remember when tasting wine is that it’s all about your personal opinion. “The most important thing to ask yourself is: do you like the wine? You have the same right to like it as someone who has been drinking wine for forty years,” she said.
This reminded me of Wine Styles, the shop I used to visit in Columbia. After a few visits, I became comfortable talking about what I liked with the owner, Robert. Robert really started to understand my palate and almost always sent me home with a bottle that satisfied my taste. Now when I go out to dinner, I’m not afraid to talk to the servers about wine. At many upscale restaurants where they pride themselves on their wine selection, the servers have been through extensive training that has given them the ability to assist their guests in wine selection. It helps to choose the dish first, and then ask the server which wine or wines may pair well with that particular dish. The servers love to showcase their knowledge, and I get a free wine lesson.
As Rabb said, “Talking about wine has brought me a whole bunch of new friends. I have a passionate hobby that I get to share with people who I would have never run into otherwise.”
Then there’s reading about wine. Since I am a beginner on the journey from wine lover to wine expert, I bought a simple entrylevel book by Kevin Zraly titled Windows on the World. Rabb also recommended Wine: An Introduction, by Joanna Simon. Both Rabb and Peterson suggested that I read while I taste. So one night when I was having a glass of Australian Shiraz I gave it a try. I flipped to that section of Zraly’s book and read, while sipping, about the wine’s history, as well as its typical flavors and aromas. It worked! I could smell the aromas of dark fruits and was able to taste the spice that was left on my tongue after each sip.
“I have this split in my personality: part researcher, part party girl; wine sort of satisfies both of these opposites for me,” said Rabb.
Peterson and Rabb suggested that once I feel comfortable with what I’ve learned, I should move up to a higher level book. At this point, they explained, I should pick two wines of the same variety, but from different regions, and taste them against each other. Some helpful intermediate-level wine books are The Wine Bible, by Karen MacNeil, and any of Andrea Immer’s books.
“If I aspire to be anyone in the wine world, it’s Andrea Immer,” Peterson said. “Her books are awesome and she is so lighthearted.”
It was then I realized that I want to be like these two women the way they want to be like Immer. Andrea Immer is one of only fourteen women in the world who have been named Master Sommelier by the esteemed Court of Master Sommeliers. She was also the very first woman named Best Sommelier in the United States by the Sommelier Society of America. Immer’s approach to wine is considered open, down-to-earth and energetic. She has written eight books. They include Andrea Immer’s Wine Buying Guide for Everyone and Everyday Dining with Wine.
Another popular wine writer is Natalie MacLean, author of Red, White and Drunk All Over, a hilarious book in which she talks about tasting her way through the international wine world while visiting some of its most memorable locations and meeting some very interesting people along the way. MacLean also publishes a free wine newsletter, Nat Decants, which is available on her website, www.nataliemaclean.com.
Another important lesson I learned on my wine journey is to write things down. “The first notebook I ever had was hilarious,” Peterson said. “It had wrong spellings and question marks written everywhere, but it helped me tremendously.”
After that, whenever I was at a restaurant, a wine shop, or just having a glass of wine at home, if I had a “light bulb moment,” as Peterson calls them, I began to write them down. I wrote down names, vintages, tastes and aromas. This helped me explore wines that I had never tasted before that had familiar characteristics, but also offered a new element.
One common misconception is that a good wine has to be pricey. I’m not going to lie; I used to believe this as well. But I was wrong. “Wine is like food. What you expect from a six dollar hamburger you can not get out of a fifty dollar steak, but each can be fabulous in its own category,” Rabb taught me.
I’ve come to learn that to be a true wine expert you must always remember to be unbiased and to try different varieties. Just because I had a Cabernet Sauvignon that I absolutely detested over two years ago does not mean that I can’t try another one that may turn out to be absolutely fantastic. After tasting a 2003 Charles Krug Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, I discovered that I actually do enjoy Cabernet Sauvignon—at least this one. Its full body, rich, ripe cherry flavors, and tannins most definitely please my taste buds. I guess that’s why they say “live and learn.”
After all this mentoring, probably the most important thing I learned was to avoid the intimidation factor. Wine is a beverage that’s meant to be enjoyed. According to Peterson, “The important thing is that if someone knows more than you, open up the conversation to hear their story, and then the next time you’re discussing wine, you have an extra story in your pocket.”
Although I have a long way to go on this journey, I have happily found that no one knows everything about wine. When I asked Rabb just when it was that she became comfortable as a wine expert, she responded by saying “You can never know it all. It’s a lifetime of pursuit and pleasure without perfection. It’s a surprise every time you pull the cork, and you can always be just one cork away from the best wine you’ve ever had.”
~ Merrit West |
