Getting Schooled

THE WINE IDIOT

I remember the first bottle of wine I ever bought. I’m not talking about the Boone’s Farm, either. I’m talking about the real deal. I was in college at Central Washington University, my friends were coming over that night, and I wanted to get something to impress them. You know, do something classy. Candles, Enya, wine. Yeah, sophisticated. I walked to the nearest supermarket, and started browsing the wine section. I didn’t know a merlot from a hole in the head, so I looked for a cool bottle at a price I could afford on my coffee shop budget. That’s when I saw that chubby bottle with the basketweave around its girth. You know the one. Chianti.

It said it was a dry red wine. How a beverage could be dry boggled my mind. I imagined trying to drink a pouch of Fun Dip without letting it dissolve in saliva. Not pretty. However, it didn’t look like Fun Dip (it looked wet!), that basketweave stuff was groovy, and it was pretty cheap. I’d found a winner. I was going to look cool in mixed company.

I found a cheap bottle opener, a set of glasses and some votives. I was set. When my friends arrived at my Kamola Hall dorm room, I was ready for them. Mood lighting. Orinoco Flow. The soft scent of singed hair from when my long hair temporarily went ablaze while leaning over a candle I was trying to light, minutes earlier. When everyone sat down, I nonchalantly got up to get the wine. There were oohs and ahhs. I drilled the corkscrew into the cork and pulled. Then I pulled harder. Then the corkscrew broke off in my hand. Some lame attempts with a Swiss army knife resulted in a knife with three less functions and a demolished cork inside the bottle. Floaters in wine glasses. Discrete removal of debris from lips and tongues. You can imagine.

But, you know what? The wine was pretty good. It was a liquid like I had hoped it would be. I liked the way it made my mouth feel funny. It tasted good. And, I got a serious buzz going. So did my friends, who knew no more about wine than I did. Little did I know that over a decade later, I’d have long since sold my used Enya CDs, would be schlepping around wine magazines in the trunk of my car, and uncorking bottles every day at my desk. I couldn’t have predicted as a student of philosophy that I’d end up a professional wino. I find myself thinking in clichés, “If I knew then what I know now…”

The point is, it’s not necessary to have encyclopedic knowledge of wine to enjoy it. It’s not even necessary to have wikipedic knowledge. You don’t have to be able to talk through your nose about malolactic fermentation, volatile acidity, or carbonic maceration to know whether you like the taste of a wine or if it’s just plain foul. But, like with anything outside of cleaning products, the more you know about it, the more fun it is.

There are plenty of ways to learn about wine. The public library is full of heady books on the subject. The interwebs are crawling with wine blogs written by other writers who like to drink wine at desks. There are scads of magazines on the subject like this one (but not so swank). But, why not get out of the house and rub elbows with the experts?

WINE 101

Many wine shops have begun to teach introductory wine classes, colloquially called Wine 101. For a typically modest fee, you get to drink wine while getting great information about things like how wine is made from grapes (it is), how those grapes are grown (on vines), and how to identify what you’re tasting in the wine (pay attention). You learn things that I didn’t know in college, like how “dry” doesn’t mean it’s powdered wine, but rather that most if not all of the sugar has been converted to alcohol by industrious cultures of yeast.

The Tasting Room in Seattle is one such place that offers a monthly Wine 101 class. For a mere twenty five bones, you get to spend an hour trying a lot of different wines with other like-minded souls while learning about how they were made, how the terroir affects the grapes and the wines that are made from them, the components of a well-made wine, and how to get the most out of each glass. You’ll even pick up some cool vocabulary that you can use when you’re trying to order a nice bottle at a restaurant, or reading terms on the wine labels at the supermarket (like “dry”).

Meet Sarah Carlson, a certified wine slinger at The Tasting Room. She began teaching Wine 101 at TTR about eight months ago after getting inspired while drinking vino with some relatives one night in their living room. Carlson explained, “They were asking a bunch of questions, and we basically cracked open more bottles than we should have. It was pretty much the same thing I do in here, but I didn’t have the wine I have in here. That’s where a lot of the ideas came from was the questions they had and, you know, they never drank a bunch of wine before.”

The idea of offering a Wine 101 class had been floating around for years, but tasting room manager Jen Doak had resisted the call. “I had been against it from the standpoint that our shop promotes kind of a no-hassle approach—you don’t have to take a class to enjoy wine. So, I thought by offering a class it was kind of going against how we promote it here in the shop.” But, after Carlson joined The Tasting Room staff, who had an approach very similar to Doak’s, and after a lot of requests from customers, they decided they could do it in a way that was consistent with their ideology—making wine approachable and teaching about it in an environment that’s fun and relaxed. The result is a highly informative class that Doak says is “no nonsense, a little bit campy and a lot of fun.”

The class certainly is relaxed and enjoyable, a time when people feel comfortable asking questions and need not feel intimidated. It’s like sipping vino in an extension of your living room. It’s OK to mispronounce Merlot (as in, I really love Mer-lawt!), it’s OK to ask if winemakers blend in blackberries to get that blackberry flavor (for the record, they officially don’t), and it’s OK to use mnemonic devices to remember how to say Gewürztraminer (“girls are meaner”). When asked how they achieve that kind of laidback vibe, Doak said, “I think that we strive for that outside of Wine 101 on an everyday basis. I mean, that’s kind of our mantra here at the shop—just a very relaxed, no bullshit, no attitude environment.” She believes that the personality of your business shines through in everything you do, explaining, “I think if you have an environment that’s a little bit more elitist, you can’t teach a class that goes against that mold, so how we operate the shop is substantiated in how we teach the class.”

Carlson was not new to the role of winemarm. She had previously conducted tours and tastings at an estate winery in Michigan, fired noise canons in the vineyards to scare away ravenous birds, and even went out in the middle of the sub-zero night to pick shriveled, frozen grapes for ice wine. After hauling her life across the country to Seattle, she was nostalgic for those times. That experience adds information and flavor to her classes. “I missed talking about it, and I kind of missed the grapes in the vineyard, so sort of bringing a virtual winery tour into the city through pictures and talking seems to be kind of a fun part, too—to actually go through how you get from the dirt and the vines to the bottle for people. That puts a lot of little empty pieces together, and gives me the chance to talk about it, too.”

The class is aimed at people from the novice level to those with medium knowledge. At the end of the class, you also get a discount on any of the wines you’d like to take home for further study—the best kind of homework. Wine 101 is a great way to bone up on wine, and it gives you a framework within which to start exploring your own palate and preferences. You can’t flunk out, but attendance is key.

WINE CLASSES

In addition to Wine 101 classes, there are a lot of different kinds of events you can attend to learn about wine in a much narrower, themed focus. Meet Sommelier Dieter Schafer, who is busy all month long with myriad classes and events for winos of all levels, from the “Wine Tasting Primer: Sight, Smell, Taste” (a nine-hour boot camp for newbies that he teaches at South Seattle Community College, $93) to the “Educational Dinner with a Washington Winemaker” (a quarterly event held at the Art Institute of Seattle’s Portfolio Restaurant where, as the name would imply, you get to learn from the winemaker himself, $75). Just browsing through the lists of all his classes, you’re sure to find something interesting. Schafer even teaches a “Fine-Dining Etiquette Seminar and Wine Dinner” where he covers the dos and don’ts of fine dining over a five-course dinner with five wines ($68). You might want to try this out before meeting your rich in-laws for the first time.

Schafer grew up in the Rheingau region of Germany and later lived in several French wine regions where he participated in vineyard work (“Hard labor!”) and wine making (“Even harder!”). He became a certified Oenophile, and worked in Morocco and South Africa where he frequented the local vineyards and wineries. Later, he moved to San Francisco where he had easy access to Napa and Sonoma before they were “discovered.” After many years in the restaurant business, he began teaching and training employees and managers, and his career took off from there. After landing in Seattle, he got busy dreaming up and orchestrating educational events on more wine-related topics than you could count without taking off your shoes.

Because his educational offerings are so varied, Schafer says his typical student is “anyone with taste buds.” What do students gain from his classes? He says they will “appreciate more a good wine, knowing the hard labor that goes into grape growing and wine making, [and] save money by knowing what the label says.” They will “become confident in choosing, buying, storing and serving wine.” I could have used that confidence in college.

Teaching about wine is rewarding work, to be sure. As an educator, Dieter Schafer loves “to hear a beginner, after just a couple of hours of class time, describe a wine with lots of newfound vocabulary. To hear a wine enthusiast tell me their taste buds are now a more accurate way to evaluate wine than the Wine Spectator points are. And, of course, the tasting.”

COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Ready for more? How about a formal wine education at one of our many great institutions, complete with a diploma to hang on your wall? Between them, Walla Walla Community College, Yakima Valley Community College and the Northwest Wine Academy at South Seattle Community College offer acclaimed programs in enology and viticulture, wine technology, wine making, marketing and sales, food-wine pairing—the course listings run the gamut.

Perhaps the newest wine degree program in the state is found at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. (Too bad it wasn’t available when I attended.) Starting in 2003, CWU’s World Wine Program offered a fifteen-credit Wine Trade Professional Certificate, wine industry training and short courses for the enthusiastic consumer. In 2004, it grew to include a Wine Trade and Tourism Minor, and in 2008, CWU began offering a full Bachelor of Science degree in Global Wine Studies. While students receive a strong background in viticulture, enology and professional palate training, the focus at Central is on the business side of wine.

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention, and Amy Mumma, director of CWU’s program, started it because of apparent need. She said, “I founded the program because throughout my own studies, I noticed a lack of programs that focused on the business and trade aspects of the wine industry. So, if it doesn’t exist, create it!” She cited a Motto, Kryla and Fisher report that showed that twenty-five percent of wine industry jobs are in wineries, but seventy-five percent are in other areas of the wine business. If wineries were a wheel, the rest of the industry would be the wagon.

According to Mumma, the B.S. in Global Wine Studies is the first of its kind in the United States. It requires core wine courses, a study abroad, an internship and a choice of a specific minor. This year, students traveled to Chile and Argentina for ten days to learn about the wines there. It’s a serious degree program for people that are serious about wine.

Like a business, one of the most important factors is “location, location, location,” and Mumma had to shop around. “I chose to found the program at CWU,” she said, “I looked at various areas around the country and even other countries to start a wine business program and settled on Washington State as it is the second largest producer with excellent wines and huge potential. I chose CWU because of its location in the center of the state, and also due to the open nature of the administration.” The university turned out to be a great choice. She said, “The support of the CWU administration, the faculty and the wine industry have all been crucial to the success of the program. We continue to listen to the wine industry to address their needs for training and qualified graduates.” Essentially, they’re churning out the next generation of wine professionals that will continue to guide the Washington wine industry’s explosive growth.

If CWU’s wine program is the baby, Washington State University’s program is the granddaddy of them all. It started back in the 1960s and ‘70s with horticulturist Walter “Johnny Grapeseed” Clore (hailed as the “father of Washington wine”) and food scientist/enologist Chas Nagel. It grew over time adding many more people for full or partial research responsibility in viticulture and enology. Until about two years ago, it operated as a research and extension program, but now there is a fouryear undergraduate degree program, a two-year Extension Certificate Program, and also MS and PhD programs. They also offer single day workshops for the less ambitious.

With the same line of reasoning Mumma used when founding her wine program, Thomas Henick-Kling, the new director of the wine program at WSU, says that the research and education program there started in response to industry need. “As the wine industry in Washington has been growing, it needed more and more trained people,” he said. And, also like CWU’s program, location is crucial. Henick-Kling explained that, “the study and research programs also available on the Tri-City campus gives students from the large winegrowing region the opportunity to get their education close to home, and it offers our students the opportunity to do internships and carry out research projects in the vineyards and wineries so close by. We also are able to bring expert grape growers and winemakers onto campus for guest lectures and talks with students.”

He went on to say that one of the unique things about Wazzu wine studies “is the location of our program in the middle of a large and diverse wine growing area—Yakima, mid-Columbia, Walla Walla and the Columbia Gorge.”

With the long history between WSU and Washington wine, it makes sense that they’d bring in a big gun to run the program. Thomas Henick-Kling has certainly been around the proverbial block, and definitely knows his stuff. When asked about his background in wine, he laid it out: “Before coming to WSU, I was Director of the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre in Wagga Wagga, Australia for two years. Before that I was the enology program leader at Cornell University for twenty years. I have been doing research in enology for thirty years now—primarily wine microbiology and wine flavors, but also collaborative projects in viticulture, cultivar evaluation, vineyard management options, and grape breeding. I was leading the enology extension program in New York State for twenty years and leading the vit and enol research and extension in Australia for two years.”

This is great résumé to have, considering WSU now features the largest experimental, non-commercial winemaking facility in the Pacific Northwest at its Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser. As a well-respected research university, WSU continues what Walter Clore and Chas Nagel started by conducting world-class wine research in world-class facilities. This scientific research yields results that help the entire wine industry from the vineyards to the winery. Unfortunately, the wine produced in the research winery can’t be sold or given away due to state laws; it all goes down the drain in the end.

Because of the Research and Extension Center, students get more than just book-learning, but also the opportunity to gain hands-on experience working with vineyards and wine. They’re directly exposed to the many aspects of winemaking, resulting in graduating classes of brainiac winos that will continue to improve wine for the rest of us.

SOMMELIER CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS

If your sole interest is in improving your palate, and maybe even using your taste buds to make a living, a Sommelier Certificate Program may be just the thing for you. The International Sommelier Guild is one organization that certifies somms, though you don’t have to commit to that level of education if you don’t want to. You can begin with a course called Wine Fundamentals I, which they say is designed for the novice wine enthusiast. It lasts twenty-four clock hours over several sessions. Wine Fundamentals II is a bit more rigorous, and goes for a total of forty-eight clock hours. Upon completion, you’re eligible for the Sommelier Diploma Program, which is an “intensive six-month course held once a week for eight clock hours.” When you graduate, you not only receive the coveted honor of being a Certified Sommelier, but you’ll know how to pronounce it, too.

The International Sommelier Guild isn’t the only institution that certifies Sommeliers, but it is the only one that does it through direct instruction. The classes are demanding, the learning curve is high, and completing the program makes you erudite in all the nuanced details of wine around the world. What’s the benefit? If learning everything there is to know about something you love isn’t enough motivation, you’re also primed and ready to get a job creating wine lists for prestigious restaurants and clubs around the world.

Meet Cheri Walters, director of wine at the infamous Teatro ZinZanni dinner theater in Seattle. Starting the program a little over a year ago, she made it through the Wine Fundamentals I and II classes, and has just started the diploma program. To pass, you need to write a series of comprehensive essays, explaining things like the difference between Rioja and Bordeaux wines (vines, techniques, flavors, et al), and blind tasting. Walters said, “We’re going to have twenty-two wines in front of us for our blind tasting for the exam, so there are definitely classic styles [we have to know], and it’s getting harder and harder to find…I think that people that were going through these programs twenty years ago had a very different experience, because of new modern vinification techniques and competing with a global market.” Essentially, the diploma program isn’t for the weak of heart.

Walters was inspired to join the ISG by some coworkers that were in the program. “You know, I was working with Teatro ZinZanni and had a couple of people that I was working with that were going through the ISG, and we had a weekly class on Thursdays. They brought in winemakers and different people from the wine industry, and up until that point, I didn’t really know much about wine. But, just meeting these different people and trying wines that I had never had the chance to try before, I started to get it. Something opened up. I thought, ‘this is fantastic.’ And I love people and being able to talk to people and open up their minds about wine… So I decided about a year ago to start with the ISG. I mean, I see my role models are now a little bit further along in the industry because of the ISG. They’re doing great.”

Having joined the troupe at Teatro ZinZanni because of her background in theater, due to her wine education, she’s now more than a mere thespian. She’s the “wine person” there, and she gets to teach those Thursday classes to the staff. Her education has benefited her outside of her job, too. “You go through the ISG and you can go anywhere in the world and know what you’re talking about. I mean, even when I was just in Wine Fundamentals, I went over to Germany, and I met a couple of winemakers over there. I knew what the grapes were and I could have an intelligent conversation and know what was going on. And they were really excited about that. I think it’s fantastic to promote wine education, and to have people going out there and making a strong impact—not just on consumers, but that’s a huge part of it.”

So, what’s next? She said, “I’m thinking about going down the path of Master of Wine. I haven’t made a definite decision, but I’m looking forward to being able to teach after I’m done with this, and do it in such a way that brings more people into the world of wine.” I can’t think of anything better.

Whether you’re wine-curious or ready to take over the wine world, there’s an educational program tailor made to enable you, and it’s right in your backyard. Whether you stick to wine blogs or sign up for a class, be diligent in your homework. You’ll love every minute of it.