137 days snoot-free

Despite recently completing the WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust) Level 1 Certificate in Wines course in Kelowna, I have not morphed into an incredible wine snoot. In fact, I know little more than I did going in. Not to rag on the course, but it turned out to be much shallower than expected. I'm told this is because every level builds on the last, the Level 2 being slightly more in depth than Level 1 and so on, and the first level is for people who have absolutely no knowledge of wine. At all.

Perhaps I should have asked if I could skip to Level 2. I did, however, pick up a few useful scraps, in particular a copy of the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting Wine* (their format for structuring tasting notes). Now, we were initially given a Beginner version of this tasting guide which, while seeming painfully simplistic, does train students to focus on and isolate specific characteristics of the wine, a useful skill to develop. Luckily, after a short while our instructor let us use the Intermediate level tasting notes, which are slightly more in-depth. They're also more useful for post-course review, for instance when attempting to remember a great wine tasted in class.

This brings me to the best aspect of the class, which was that we got to taste 8+ wines per class, meaning we tasted over 32 wines over the course 4 weeks. And the bulk of these were fairly good wines, and fairly expensive, with the average price falling at about $40. But honestly, for nearly $500, that is to be expected. Nevertheless, I got to try a lot of wines I otherwise wouldn't have, partly because the idea of paying $100 for a bottle of wine just about gives me hives. The only downside to the tasting was having my neophyte classmates hollering out their opinions on every wine they tasted before their olfactory bulb had time to respond to any stimulus. ("Oaky! Notes of under-ripe farmed salmonberry!") Yet more proof that the mouth can indeed operate independently of the brain.

But while the tasting experience was generally dandy, the learning material was not very stimulating, consisting mainly of how to serve wine safely and in style, thin descriptions of the most common varietals, the likes of which can be found anywhere on the web, and most entertaining of all, a pronunciation guide, some of which follows, for your enjoyment:

Chardonnay: Say it - Shard-on-ay!
Sauvignon Blanc: Say it - Sew-vin-yon-Blonk!
Cabernet Sauvignon: Say it - Cab-ur-ney-Sew-vin-yon!
Pinot Noir: Say it - Pee-no N-wa!

(Exclamation points added.)

Honestly. Really. C'mon. As a francophone, I was simultaneously deeply amused and extremely offended. But despite this, the wines we tried were often quite well matched to the varietal descriptors, so you got an idea of what to typically expect from the varietals we covered. Also we got to talk about some very basic rules for wine and food pairings, equally available everywhere, since wine is such a hot topic these days. So while I'm well aware of how well-respected the WSET courses are, I think I'll wait a while before I fork over the grand required for Level 2.


*Note: The WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting Wine, in its many incarnations, is plastered all over the web in .pdf form. If you're interested, check 'em out here.

I'm a lousy blogger

I admit it freely. I have, however, been doing some constructive things with my time. As boss-woman of a soon-to-be vineyard, I have some time on my hands, seeing as between now and planting time in May '08 I'm nothing more than a dirt-farmer. So, this past harvest, I worked at a winery. I did everything they would let me do, which was basically working crush, and then working in the cellar until winter came around and there was no work left for me to do.

Now, I had learned and read all about harvest time, and let me tell you, what you read doesn't even bring you close to getting a grasp on what the real deal is like. It seems like no matter what, in books and in other (experienced) people's descriptions, the work is romanticized and all the practicalities fall away. Not to say the work is crappy. Well, it is if you aren't interested in wine, or work with unpleasant people (or so I've heard) - but in my case, while the work meant being cold, wet, achy and tired, it was by no means unpleasant. I didn't stand there (and there was a lot of standing there involved) thinking, "Is it time to go yet?" Not once, not ever.

However, it's not glorious. If you are just a lousy cellar hand /crush helper (and I say this with pride) you still do all the grunt work. You get to spend hours on top of a rickety, sticky ladder, hosing the tartrates off the inside of a tank. You get to do all the sampling and get all sticky. You get to climb up on towers of barrels to stir hundreds of barrels on Chardonnay lees over a period of a couple of days, weekly (Well, okay, in all fairness I really liked the climbing part.). You get to hose off the destemmer at 11pm in the cold. You get to use freezing effing cold water to hose out picking bin after picking bin. There's a lot of hosing involved, mostly with very cold water in very cold weather. And you don't get to make any decisions.

But you're there, in the thick of things, and the grapes you picked are the same grapes you crushed or pressed and inoculated with yeast that you rehydrated. And the caps of skins on red ferments that you ceaselessly (or so it seemed) punched down during fermentation, you got to help press off, then rack, then barrel, and then maybe even put back in tanks and finally into bottles... Well, you get the idea. Working in a small winery, I got to be involved in everything, saw all (or most) of the steps from dusty grape cluster full of earwigs (Ew, seriously.) to shiny, tasty new bottle of wine. And I can honestly say now that I know I would love love love to do it all the time.