None of these methods will give you the same sort of intense, disciplined study as a formal class would. Classes come in all sorts of intensities, from fun one-offs to semester-length obligations. They may be worth a look.

One-Night Stands

Many cooking schools and evening education programs offer one-night wine classes. The themes run the gamut from serious inquiry into the wines of a certain place, to classes on wines for Valentine’s Day. Either way, you’ll get to taste a handful of wines, and you’ll have access to a wine-knowledgeable person whom you can grill with wine questions.

Going Steady

Fewer places offer longer-term classes, but it’s worth a look if you’re this devoted. A long-term class gives you the chance to taste more wines, as well as develop a rapport with the teacher, whom you should be able to rely on for knowledge.

If you think wine is something you might want to get into professionally, call the American Sommelier Society, the Sommelier Association of America, the Court of Master Sommeliers, or the International Wine Center (NY) to see whether they offer classes near you. These associations prepare professionals for a career in wine, as either a Certified Sommelier, a Master Sommelier (MS), or a Master of Wine (MW). They might give you more than you ever wanted to know, but they might be just what you’re looking for.

MS, MW, what’s the difference besides one letter? To gain Master Sommelier certification, a person not only needs to know everything about wine, but he also needs to be able to serve it gracefully and correctly under pressure. The MW exam was created for retailers, and so the MW is tested more on the knowledge and communication of wine than service. Both require passing extremely challenging exams.

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You may have already figured out that the more you know about wine, the more you realize you don’t know. I’ll warn you now: It only gets worse from here. The only thing that you can ever be sure of is that you have more to learn.

The wine world is getting harder to keep up with, too. Advances in knowledge and technology are making it possible to grow better wine in more places than ever, and in some cases, even grow it where it never grew before. And whereas it was once unlikely that you’d find wine outside of the region it grew in, let alone the country or continent, wine today is shipped all over the place—and typically gets there in good shape.

Add the sheer number of wines to the simple fact that each vintage brings something different to a wine, and the possibilities really are endless.

The upside of this realization is that it means the possibilities of excitement, discovery, and new and delicious sensations will outlast your ability to get through them all. You’ll never, ever be bored.

If you keep drinking wine, and thinking about it every time you taste it, you can’t help but continue to learn. Things will go a little faster, though, if you keep actively working at it—and you might create an encouraging network of wine-loving friends, too. That’s fun, and it’ll help you through those times it seems like there’s so much to know and so many bad bottles.

Uncategorized learning about wine, Wine Education, wine knowledge, wine lessons

Wine Club Insider back with you.

Rain, Rain, go away, come again another year…

Another day of substandard temps, buckets of rain and overcast here in the northwest. Our summers and falls are marvelous, but Spring kind of sucks until the rain ends… they give us just enough nice days so we don’t move away, but then the next wave of storms comes through, and our drought worries ease for another year!

One good thing is that it’s great for the grapes, though! Wet spring, long, hot, dry summer… maybe that’s why Columbia Valley fruit is getting such a great reputation!

In doing my normal weekly tromp around the cyber-vineyards of the Internet, I came across a new (to me, at least) site called “The Wine Society” out of England.  www.thewinesociety.com

Founded in 1874, it is reputed to be the World’s oldest wine club, and their stated goal is to introduce people to some of the world’s great wines at a fair price.

The way they work their membership is that you actually buy a share in the WIne Society for $60-ish (40 British pounds) and it is good for a lifetime, with no pressure to buy.

Even though shipping to the US isn’t an easy option, there are still plenty of other reasons to join, especially if you want a great wine education or have the option of travelling to the UK or to France at all…

Their wine list is over 800 deep, stuffed full of some of the great treasures from the US, Europe, Australia and beyond. They have a great online library, and if you live in England, they will deliver your wines with their own vans!

They also have several tastings, controlled storage for their members, and a nice futures program. They also have retail outlets in England and France if you “just have to have it today.”

I’m actually thinking about joining just for the extras, and picking up my wine when I next get there… and if I can’t bring it back with me, I guess I’ll just be forced to drink it with a nice piece of cheese and some fresh bread out in the English countryside… could be worse, I guess.

Cheers,

Wine Club Insider out

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Wine Club Insider back!

Got a chance to get out and do a great five hour long snowshoe trip up Boulder Basin today with a couple of friends. There was over 10 feet of snow at the top of the peak as we stopped for a quick Jet Boil meal. On one of our real mountain climbs last summer, we took wine up in Nalgene bottles for dinner, but I forgot today, so I had to wait until I got home… there’s not much better than a nice glass of wine after a great day outside in the snow!

Well, to business…

We’ve talked about dozens of wine clubs, several different wines and wineries, but we haven’t really taken much time to talk about the specific wine varietals and grapes that make up our favorite beverage!

For the next few days, I’d love to chat a bit about some specific grapes, and the wines made from them, but today, just some basic grape info…

All red wine is made from red grapes (which can be black or purple as well). White wines can also be made from red wine grapes, though there are plenty of good white grapes to choose from.

In all, there are more than 400(!) varieties of wine grapes grown around the world. Who knew? Yup… I bet if I polled 100 people, the majority couldn’t name twenty… A couple of years ago, I probably couldn’t have, though I’m getting better.

One good site to look at for info on the various “cultivars” (the correct name, though “varietals” has taken on such everyday familiarity that it’s unlikely to change anytime soon) is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grape_varieties#Red_grapes

Now, the Bordeaux grapes that everyone has heard about are Merlot (the number one red grape in France, and likely the number one red grape world wide by the end of the year, no matter what “Sideways” says), Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petite Verdot, Malbec and Carmenere. Almost all Bordeaux wines are blends of these six grapes, usually with Merlot or Cab Sauv as the majority. There are none that I could find that use all six, though several used four.

There are also several popular “New World” grapes, such as Zinfandel, which is also named “Primitivo,” Syrah (or Shiraz, if you’re from Down Under), Petite Sirah, which isn’t related to Syrah, Sangiovese and Temperanillo, big Mediterranean grapes (ever hear of Chianti or Rioja?)

On top of that, we’ve got to look at the labels, and the (sometimes silly!) laws and rules that govern our passion!

Okay… we’re off and running! I’ll see you tomorrow!

Cheers,

Wine Club Insider out.

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WCI here again!

How’d you like to have snagged “wine.com” when the whole Internet thing started? Yeah, me too.

Well, www.Wine.com is a pretty cool site, though I hope they do even more with it over the next while… with a name like that, you’ve got to be the best, right?

Anyway, one of the things they do as well as anyone is organize their wines in their online “store,” and then offer you a truly amazing selection!

They are big on “name” wines… wine’s you’ve probably heard of, which is always a help when you’re not able to spend a lot of time perusing and tasting many of the smaller (Many excellent, some not!) production houses.

They have an excellent “Collectibles” section, where you can get your Silver Oak, your Caymus, your Chateauneuf-du-Pape, your top Barolos and the equivalent. Their prices are very comparable, and they have some oft-changing specials which are great deals. For example, right now, they have the highly acclaimed 2005 Concha y Toro “Don Melchor” Cab from Chile for only $59 per bottle, and the awesome 1995 Charles Heidsieck “Blanc de Millenairres Brut” for only $99, and this is an awesome bubbly, let me tell you! I’m actually thinking of serving it for our Christmas dinner this year.

Wine.com also has a variety of wine clubs, and though they are based on the seemingly-obligatory three levels system, the thing they do better than most is offer you almost guaranteed “No Miss” wines… Everything they send out has been judged and awarded high scores by a number of “reputable” (or at least famous!) wine critics. Now, there are lots of arguments, pro and con, about this system, and we’ll get into them over the next few weeks, but for all of the potential problems, they provide at least a fairly common ground for conversation, and even if, like me, you have never detected “the essence of underbrush with a tar finish,” you know the big boys won’t give a good grade to “plonk.”

Wine.com’s “90+ rated” club really has the good stuff, including the Jim Barry 2004 McRae Wood Shiraz (95 pts James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion), Clos Pegase 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon (92 pts, Wine Enthusiast), Valdisanti 2004 Toscana (91 pts, Wine Spectator) and Parson’s Flat 2004 Cabernet/Shiraz (93 pts, Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate) as examples.

Also, if you act quick, they have “1 penny” shipping on orders over $99… a perfect combination for the wine lover on your list!

See you down the dusty wine roads!

Cheers,

WCI

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WCI back ‘atcha!

So, my friends, I had my two wine clubs, and was getting a whopping four bottles per month, of which I drank twenty… how’d I come up with that math?

Well, like any good aspiring wine fanatic, I was diligently working toward my “bottle-per-day” minimum quotient. I was starting to spend some serious coin on vino, and loved every bit of it! I had found a couple of very nice, affordable “everyday” wines from Parducci (www.Parducci.com) and Mondavi (www.robertmondavi.com), and started “collecting” the good wines from my wine clubs…

Clubs, you say? Ah, you are an astute reader!

I soon found that wine collecting was nearly as fun as wine drinking, and turns out I had a bit of a knack for it.

How did I decide which clubs to join? Simple… I went to Napa to audition them in person!

Yes, indeed. A couple of months later, just as Spring was springing, I landed in San Francisco, rented a charming mid-size, and headed north along 101 for my first real visit to the “Magic Valley.”

I’d done a little investigating in terms of lodging, and had settled on a great little B&B just south of Calistoga along Hwy. 29. The Zinfandel House (www.zinfandelhouse.com) was and is owned by George and Bette Starke, and is a charming, eclectic house high on the western hills above Three Palms Vineyard, with an awe-inspiring view.

George had been the owner and winemaker at Napa Cellars in the late seventies and early eighties, and was one of Robert Mondavi’s closest friends. He also made one of the finest wines I have ever tasted, the 1980 Napa Cellars Cab.

George and Bette also led the first-ever American wine tour to France, where they toured and tasted at some of the most famous wine chateaus in the world, long before they were closed to the public. Can you imagine drinking ’45 Mouton, or ’28 Margaux right from the cellar?

We started a friendship that lasts to this day, and they helped set my itinerary, and in large part, were my mentors as I discovered the joys of Napa and Sonoma.

At our first breakfast, we discussed the wineries I should visit, and George made some calls to get me in to a few wineries not as well known, or a little harder to get into, and for three days, I lived in wine buyer’s heaven.

Stay tuned for a wine weekend of a lifetime when we meet again tomorrow, and continue tripping down the dusty wine roads.

Cheers,

WCI

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Ho, ho , ho… your humble Wine Club Insider (WCI) here to share the joys of the fruits of the grape! As Ben Franklin so aptly put it, “Wine is proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy,” and what better way to share that happiness than by giving some away, and saving a bit for ourselves as well?

I started collecting wine in the heady days of the mid-nineties, when anything “Cab” from California was seemingly blessed, and the cult wine prices hadn’t quite caught up yet. Those were the days when you could buy Silver Oak from the winery for $45, and Opus for $90, and keep the glass from your tastings!

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the fortune of living in Napa, but I still wanted my wine… Oh, what to do? Feeling like I was going to be forced into buying whatever limited supply my local grocer could procure, a dear friend shared a little secret with me… he belonged to a wine club.

What, pray tell, was that, I asked? As he explained, the doors flung wide, and the light shone through. A whole new world was opened up to me! It was truly a new concept, but, being a quick study, it didn’t take me long to warm to the idea.

As it was near Thanksgiving, the season of giving was upon us, and less than a week later, I received a deightful gift: my now-even-dearer friend had gifted me with a six-month subscription to his favorite wine club, and my love affair with “wine at my door” had begun.

I was still working only on theory, but on December 18, my first shipment of wine–one white and one red–arrived on my doorstep. That wine club gift proved to be a life changing one for me. It started the growth of my 1400 label (and still growing!) wine cellar, and led me along a delightful (and still on-going!) love affair with everything wine… varietals, wine storage, wine pairings, wine tasting, wine making, wine tours… even wine glasses, wine barrels and wine labels!

It also led me to follow my passion with food, and I channeled my “native ability” with cooking, and became a gourmet chef, giving me the perfect opportunity to share two of the joys of my life; food and wine, with my friends, and now, I am looking forward to sharing this passion with you through Wine Club Journal.

We’re going to look at wine clubs, and everything else wine over the next few weeks, and I hope you’ll join me for the ride!

See you tomorrow!

Cheers,

WCI

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