April 11, 2019

Wine Diary: WSET Level 3 – Day 4

I’ve sat on this post for a couple of days. I needed some time to decompress, to just step away from it all. If I’m being honest, I didn’t I want to express the thoughts that were going through my mind.

For the past three years I’ve thrown myself into learning about wine. WSET was part of that, a little feather I could tuck into my cap, as if to say, “Hey, I actually know what I’m talking about here.” I wanted to take it all the way, through level 3, through level 4, all the way to Master of Wines, if I could make it. For the past three years, my future, as far as I could envision it, was me following a path set by WSET. Like I said in the last blog, after this weekend I don’t think I care any more.

Don’t get me wrong; I still want to learn about wine, I’m no less inspired by it, but whatever course I take from here moving forward, I don’t want WSET to be a part of it. Regardless of if I pass or fail the test next weekend, I’ll take no pride or have no remorse in the outcome.

What does that change? Not much really. My plans for the future looked a bit like this:

  • Drink Wine
  • Pass Tests
  • ???
  • Profit

Whereas now, it looks more like this:

  • Drink Wine
  • Continue Blogging
  • ???
  • Profit

There’s a mix of emotions, but ultimately I feel untethered. I guess none of this should really come as a surprise, if you look at the wines I drink, the attitudes I’ve adopted, they don’t fall in line with conventional wisdom about wine.

My primary points of contention are: 1) Most people don’t cellar wine, so any system designed to determine quality using ageworthiness as a significant factor is irrelevant to the average consumer.* 2) You cannot accurately quantify what makes a wine pleasing, this is the same issue I have with shelf talkers that proudly display scores for a wine out of some magazine. 3) We each perceive wine differently; our tongues and brains are similar in construction, but not identical and we are therefore unable to objectively map sensory experiences for others. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous, at best.

To be fair, the “theory” component of the curriculum does a great job laying out how wine is made, various winemaking techniques, vineyard management systems, and features of specific wine regions across the globe. This is the stuff I want to learn, unfortunately it’s overshadowed by the tasting portion of the course.

On Sunday we spent 30-45 minutes of class debating color. My classmates were so frustrated by the process, they were asking the instructor to come sit in their seats and look at the wine from their perspective. At one point she announced she wasn’t going to talk about it any more.

After lunch I had a moment with the instructor and asked her, “What is the utility of blind tasting ?” I explained that I could see as helpful in removing the bias of the taster in some circumstances, and that I did see a benefit to tasting, but in a professional setting, as wine buyer for example, what is the benefit?

Her answer was, essentially, that blind tasting was an important skill to develop in order to pass blind tasting exams. She ended by challenging the integrity of myself and my employer. “You work for a cooking school, shouldn’t you want to know as much as you can about wine?”

It was a cheap Straw Man argument, I didn’t bite. One of the things I really love about working at the Chopping Block is that we take the mystery, the snobbery, the pretension out of cooking. I think we should treat wine the same way.

Here’s something definitely won’t be on my blind tasting exam, a Michigan Riesling. Two Rieslings in a week? I guess if this class has given me anything, it’s a rediscovered love of Riesling. This one is from Left Foot Charley, I reviewed a previous vintage before the website overhaul and remember it fondly.

I’ve heard great things about Michigan Rieslings and I’ve wanted to give them some attention for a while now. This wine is medium dry to medium sweet, but has enough acid to keep that extra sugar in balance. It opened up with that gasoline and lime odor that I love so much from Riesling, with palate notes like nectarine, sweet tart, wet stone, honeysuckle, and lime. There isn’t a ton of complexity to it, but was a welcome end to one of the first warm spring days of the year.

*I’ve thought about this quite a bit since the blog posted and my position has changed. I agree that most people are not cellaring wine, but I do not think you can have a conversation about fine wine without considering the age of what you’re drinking. Even for the average consumer who goes through the bottle within 24 hours of purchase, there is a value in making a determination of age. A 10 year old bottle of Bordeaux could be a great find in a wine shop, a 10 year old Beaujolais Nouveau… not so much.


Wine Diary
February 14, 2019

Wine Diary: Mawby Vineyards Sex Sparkling Rosé NV

Okay, how could you not pick this wine for Valentine’s Day? The name has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but there should be no miscommunication between you and your date. I’ve wanted to carry this wine at work for a long time, just to hear my co-workers say things like, “The chef recommends Sex tonight,” or, “Have you tried Sex? It’s really good.” It’s the joke that never ends.

Beyond the silly immaturity of it all, I’ve wanted to carry a Michigan wine for a while now. It’s easy to look past wines produced in a majority of the United States, most wine press give their attention to what’s produced on the West Coast. As a consequence, people tend to think the local soil and climate are incapable or producing quality wine. It’s a misconception that benefits the established regions and makes it that much harder for the pioneering local winemaker.

Despite all that, Michigan has a growing reputation for producing quality wine, particularly Riesling. I haven’t had a lot of wine from from the state, but nothing so far has disappointed me. Before the site overhaul last summer, I previously had a review of a Riesling from Left Foot Charley that I enjoyed, but of all the Michigan producers, I’ve dealt with Mawby the most.

For about a year we were selling a sparkling wine from this same line, M. Lawrence Green, at the Chopping Block. I even wrote a blog about it on the company site, encouraging people to try local wines. When I heard they had a sparkling rosé called Sex, I knew I wanted to try it… after all, I’ve heard really good things about it.

Mawby vineyards founder, Larry Mawby, planted his first grapes in the mid-seventies. Growing up on a farm, he always knew he would be working in agriculture to some degree. While traveling through Europe, he was inspired by the vineyards and wine of Burgundy in France. Upon returning home, he set his mind to producing wine in his home state of Michigan. Today Mawby is a small vineyard that produces Pinot Noir, Vignoles, Pinot Gris, Regent, Riesling, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier. They also supplement their harvest by acquiring additional grapes from other vineyards in Michigan, Washington, and California, which is a pretty common practice, though Mawby seems more transparent about it than most vineyards.

According to their website, the M.Lawrence line of wines is an artistic endeavor to express music through wine. Sex is described as a “Fleshy Top-40 Rosé.” It seems pretty obvious to me that if sex was music it would sound like Bill Withers, but I guess everyone has their own opinion.

The wine is a blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Muscat. There’s some great red fruit flavors and enough playful effervescence to make the wine fun, but where it really stood out was in the range of textures I experienced while drinking it, in the beginning it seemed fibrous and juicy like biting into an apple, by the finish it was more dry and mineral. The best word I can use to describe this wine is “Sensual,” literally gratifying to all my senses, which may be the brilliance of naming it Sex.

If you keep track of my blogging, you may recall that I also recommended a sparkling rosé for Thanksgiving. What can I say? It’s a fun style of wine, that’s inoffensive, and food friendly. Plus, how can you pass up on recommending people have Sex for Valentine’s Day. Just call me Cupid… or maybe Dionysus.

Wine Diary