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.


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April 7, 2019

Wine Diary: WSET Level 3 – Day 3

After Day 1 I didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance in hell of passing this course. Day 2 gave me some glimmer of hope. Today, after Day 3, I don’t know even know if I give a damn any more. I think a little backstory is in order.

I didn’t know shit about wine when I moved to Chicago. Back home I frequently hosted friends and small dinner parties, so I always kept a couple bottles of wine stocked in my bar. My wine of choice was River Boat Red, a local, semi-sweet, compost pile of a wine primarily blended from Concord, the jelly grape. I understood nothing of oxidation and assumed that, like spirits, wine could survive indefinitely once opened… my poor house guests.

Missouri, though home to the country’s oldest AVA, doesn’t have a dominant wine culture, things are different in Chicago. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a wine town, but there is certainly a thriving culture. People here took the time to help me understand wine and they approached it in a way I was able to wrap my mind around. Three years later I’m in the middle of a fairly serious certification class and writing this blog.

While I would never claim to know everything, I still very much consider myself a novice in the wine world, I have learned a lot in the past couple of years, and in the process I’ve developed some strong opinions. Sometimes these opinions are challenged and I have to reassess my position, but other times I feel as though the conclusions I’ve drawn are justified. I guess, the trick is to embrace that Socratic ideal that the only thing I can be certain I know is that I don’t know anything.

In the short time I have been pursuing an active interest in wine the one idea I have never been able to get behind is that taste, or how we experience taste, is objective or quantifiable. One of the reasons I was drawn to WSET over other certifying bodies, is because I felt their curriculum was based more in fact, ergo science, and less in the nebulous art of bullshit. My faith is shaken after today.

I think I may try to expand on this in a future blog, but, in brief, the WSET 3 approach to tasting wine has the student look at five categories of factors: appearance, aroma, palate, quality, and aging potential. Within each of these factors there are multiple points of further examination. For example, in appearance we are to gauge both color and intensity of color, which seems fine on the surface, however there was significant debate today on whether one wine we were looking at was “Lemon” or “Lemon-Green.”

While myself, and several of my classmates, were unconvinced of there being any green in the color of this particular glass, the instructor insisted it was so. She attempted to mitigate criticism by acknowledging that such points are subjective, that the light based on where we were sitting was a factor that would create discrepancy, and that this topic is frequently debated, although she did nothing to clarify how we were to make such distinctions on the test, which, essentially, attempts to quantify the color of wine. In other words, if I happen to gauge my glass in beam of sunlight coming through the window and she determines her in the glow of a GE bulb, we have different answers and mine will be wrong.

That’s the first category. We had the same issue, and debate in class, with each subsequent category. The tasting notes, in particular, terrify me on the test. To try to make this easier, WSET provides a key with terms to be used for tasting. However, the instructor is working outside of the key. So, if I taste a wine and use only terms found in the key and she makes tasting notes including things off the key, I lose points where our notes don’t overlap. I can’t help but feel I’m playing Blackjack against someone using an Uno deck. “Oh, you think you got 21, well guess what? Draw four, bitch!”At one point today we tasted a Malbec that several people in the class rated as “Very Good,” which is quite a high marking. The instructor only marked it as “Good” and this opened up a lot of debate on how we are supposed to determine quality. She said we have to grade it in the context of all other wines and, to elaborate, said “We can’t call a $17 Malbec ‘very good,’ because that’s like saying it’s on the same level as Premier Cru Burgundy.”

That’s the point where I wanted to flip the table over and just yell, “fuck yooooouuuuu!” We’re told price doesn’t equal quality, we’re told that quality is determined by structure, intensity, flavor complexity, etc. but even when a wine achieves those points, it’s not quality because it’s not fucking Premier Cru Burgundy? Why does Argentina even bother making wine?

Look, if these wines can’t be objectively measured with consistency, I have to question the integrity of any system that would try to profit off the idea that opposite is true. The Emperor’s not wearing any fucking clothes.

You know what else isn’t Premier Cru Burgundy? This Riesling I bought. Nearly every German Riesling I’ve had has been from Mosel, but this bottle of Georg Albrecht Schneider Niersteiner Riesling comes to us from Rheinhessen. I bought it because I wanted something that wasn’t from Mosel and the guy on the label looked crazy with that scythe in one hand and those souls in other, although, upon reflection, that might be wheat or something that isn’t souls… they’re probably souls.

This was super dry, with flavors of lime, flint, wet stone, and honeysuckle. For all those people who don’t like Riesling because it’s “too sweet,” this is the wine for you. HIGH acid, super refreshing, decent complexity. It may not be Premier Cru Burgundy, but it’s what I wanted to drink tonight and I’m happy. At the end of the day, isn’t that what should matter?

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February 27, 2019

Wine Diary: Domaine Gérard Metz Harmony 2015

Alsace is one of my favorite wine regions and has been since I first got into wine. In fact, Alsace may be one of the reasons I developed such a strong interest in wine. It’s one of the first things I look for when I walk into any shop and, frequently, it’s what I’m walking out with. That’s kind of what happened here. I was Augusta Food and Wine in Lincoln Square, purchasing a Croatian wine, when this bottle caught my eye. It’s unusual for me to pick up more than one bottle at a time, but when it comes to certain regions, I’m always trying to experience and learn more. Plus, it looked like a fun label to photograph.

If you do any amount of reading about Alsace you will quickly be confronted with the word “Edzelwicker,” which translates to “Noble Blend.” Despite the lofty sounding definition, it’s an informal term used to describe any blended white wine from that region. Although this wine is not labeled as such, it was tagged as this by Augusta on the shelf. Actually, the note commented that this style of blend is what is commonly referred to as “Edzelwicker.” Other than crémant, I really haven’t had many blends from Alsace, so I was intrigued and wanted to learn more.

Harmony is a blend of Silvaner, Pinot Blanc, Muscat, and Riesling. The producer’s website is, unfortunately, antiquated and, although it works as intended most of the time, it was unable to load the page devoted to this particular wine, instead giving me a loading screen of dubious integrity. After five minutes of, ” Page en cours de préparation,” I knew the page was never truly going to be prepared and moved on.

The importer’s website does list this label alongside one of the shortest blurbs I’ve ever seen. Seriously, my tasting note in Vivino was longer than their write-up. It’s also worth noting that the information I’ve gathered is for the 2014 vintage, they have no notes for this current blend, leaving me to assume the information is the same. However, from previous experience, blends like this tend to vary from year to year depending on the harvest.

From what I can gather, this is a more casual drinking wine from G. Metz. Food friendly, with a good amount of acid, lemon, and stone fruit flavors. Harmony seems to be perfect name for this wine, because it is superbly balanced. There was an interesting note in the aroma, a smell I thought was best described as “oily,” which sounds unpleasant, but wasn’t. While I didn’t find the wine to be terribly complex, it would be a great choice for a casual wine to have with dinner or share with friends.

I started this blog because I wanted to learn more about wine, bottles like this can be frustrating with so little information available online. Even the small amount of information I was able to find seems outdated and potentially inaccurate. In these moments it’s easy to let this frustration get the better of you, but that’s when you have to remember what the wine is for, close the laptop, and just enjoy the glass.

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February 6, 2019

Wine Diary: Schlosskellerei Gobelsburg Kamptal Riesling 2017

Most of my exposure to Riesling has been in wines from Germany and Alsace, two regions that are often viewed as the benchmark for how well that grape can perform. However, Riesling is grown across the world and I don’t want to be dismissive of how other countries are using it to craft wines. I’ve had some success with Riesling wines from Romania and the Finger Lakes of New York, but I seem to have skipped over another major Riesling stronghold in Austria. Well, we’ve just started carrying one at work, so now seems like a good time to check out Austrian Riesling.

This wine comes to us from Schloss Gobelsburg in NE Austria, part of the Kamptal wine region. The winery is built on the site of an 11th century castle, which was destroyed during the 15th century and replaced with a Renaissance manor. If I understand the history, it now belongs to a monastery, and is being leased by the current operators, who have been running the winery since the 90’s.

The winery has adopted a low-tech, hands-off, rustic approach to winemaking that embraces traditional practices. They produce three series of labels. Bottles in this series are part of the Schlosskellerei Gobelsburg brand, which represents, “the historical fundament of the winery.” This particular wine is produced from young vines, which they claim will represent the character of the grape more than the vineyard.

As for the wine, it had a very nice complexity, demonstrating a range fruit that started out as vaguely citrus and evolved into a pineapple flavor. Also, I found something I could only associate with tomato vine or, at least, how I’ve always imagined tomato vine would taste. I’m not usually one to embrace bizarre tasting notes, but I had distinct memories of standing in my parent’s garden, surrounded by the “green” smell. That’s not something I experience often, so it’s hard to disregard that, even if it is the kind of tasting note no one else may understand.

What I didn’t find was the characteristic petrol, or gasoline, odor that I was always told to look for in Riesling. I’ve always heard it’s more present in older wines, but I’ve found it in young bottles before. It makes me wonder if that character is less common in Austrian Riesling. As far as fruit set, most of the German Riesling I’ve tasted has a lime flavor, usually on the back end, that my mind latches onto. That was also absent here. The other major difference for me was how dry the wine was, drier than any German Riesling I’ve ever had.

I’ve always wondered how Austrian Riesling would compare to German, but I don’t think I expected so much difference as I found, which is pretty cool. The scope of how I understand Riesling can be expressed in wine has broadened significantly after one bottle. Once again, this is the advantage in trying new things. I don’t know when I’ll get back around to try another Austrian Rielsing, but I’m looking forward to that day.

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German Saar Mosel Riesling Hofgut Falkenstein white wine glass cork
November 3, 2018

Wine Diary: Hofgut Falkenstein Krettnacher Euchariusberg Kabinett Riesling 2016

Out of an entire wall of German Riesling this bottle somehow caught my eye. I think I liked the name, we used to sell a Riesling at the Chopping Block from Dr. Frank wines that the staff affectionately dubbed, “That Dr. Frankenstein wine,” …because we’re culinary professionals. I usually try not to get sold by a label, but in this case, I guess I was sold on the name; it reminded me of the immature laughter of some people I truly care about, I had to buy it. In my search for information about the winery, I stumbled across Lars Carlsberg’s write up, which quickly made me realize I don’t know shit about German Riesling.

German white wine Riesling Saar Mosel bottle glass

Hofgut Falkenstein is in the Mosel region of Germany, named for the Mosel River which twists its way through Germany, Luxembourg, and France. However, it may more accurately be linked to the Saar River, a tributary of the Mosel with a longstanding reputation for great Riesling wines. Carlsberg gives an impressive write-up of both winemaker and winery, peppering technical details in between personal anecdotes. If you’re interested in learning more about Mosel wines, his website is an amazing resource.

I can’t help that feel I’m biting off more than I can chew with this blog or, perhaps, uncorking more than I can drink. From Carlsberg’s write-up, this is everything I claim to want out of a wine: produced by a small family of passionate of winemakers in a very rustic, artisanal, method. Part of me wants to a book a flight to Germany just to meet these people. I should be volunteering to pick up their banner and carry it into battle against the Constellations and Broncos of the world, but in the end the wine just didn’t resonate with me.

The wine had complexity and impressive flavors, but it finished quickly and seemed unbalanced in its sweetness. From my perspective as a retailer, it’s exactly the kind of Riesling Americans are afraid of, sweet without a complimentary acidity. I would be reluctant to stock this in my store, unless I was offering a sweet alternative to Moscato. That being said, I finished the bottle by myself and enjoyed every bit of it, but I’ve had better.

Hofgut Falkenstein cork

My ratings on German Rieslings are generally favorable, so much so that I often wonder if I’m showing bias when I rate these wines on Vivino. This wine scored low for me, nearly a full point below the aggregate score, and I’m very conflicted about that. Perhaps this is an issue of my expectations being at odds with reality, or maybe I was just having an off day, or maybe my assessment is right and I’m simply questioning myself because I want to like this wine so badly. Instead of buying into a label or a name, have I simply allowed myself to be sold on the idea of the artisanal winemaker?

There is no doubt that the world of German Riesling is much more complex than I understand it to be and I’m looking forward to diving deeper into that rabbithole. Maybe in time I’ll be able to wax poetic about the nuances of Saar Rieslings compared to the greater Mosel region or Rheinhessen. For the moment, I have to leave this wine where it is, but I hope to return to it one day and give it another chance. If you’ve tried this wine or have strong opinions on German Riesling in general, I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below.

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