Our Beginning

            I thought it might be helpful if I told you how three neighborhood ladies began our wine journey together and how you and your friends can study at home too!

     A few years back I decided that I wanted to learn more about wines. I had enjoyed wines for years, especially red wines from California. After taking a few classes at our neighborhood wine store called Fezziwig’s, I started looking for books that might assist my wine journey. I found a great one called Great Wine Made Simple by Andrea Immer Robinson. Each chapter is set up perfectly for creating your own wine school. Some lessons can be done in one sitting. Others work better over multiple evenings (which, by the way, is a great excuse for getting together with your friends or neighbors). At the end of each chapter, the author lays out a tasting with step by step instructions. After reading the first chapter of her book, I decided I needed to have my own tasting. You can gain a lot of knowledge about wine by reading but you really have to taste the wine to get a better understanding of the concepts. My only problem was it wouldn’t be much fun to taste alone, so I asked my neighbor Lisa to join me. She had taken the wine classes with me at Fezziwig’s so I knew we had about the same knowledge going in. The first wine school class was so much fun we decided we should keep it up. Due to the amount of wine opened for a class, it really seemed like we needed more drinkers. So we asked another wine drinking neighbor, Mary Jo, to join us. School was in session.

So, you ask, how did we set the curriculum for Wine School? In the beginning we basically followed ideas from Great Wine Made Simple. We also expanded our reference selection to include Wine Windows on the World Complete Wine Course by Kevin Zraly. This is another excellent resource that we find ourselves referring to often. He also has some tastings to try. When I was preparing for a trip to Italy, I added Italian Wine for Dummies which was informative and a great reference tool. Now we go online a lot to find information and expand on tasting ideas we have read about in the past. For example, we may compare California and Oregon Pinot Noir. Or sample wines from a specific region in Italy or France. There is no end to possibilities. To share the load of planning a lesson, we rotate hosting school with the host deciding on the topic of the evening. In the beginning we just did tastings but we soon started adding cheese pairings. Yum, yum!! Lately we started to add some other small nibbles that should pair well with the wines we are trying. If the wines are red, you can be sure there is some dark chocolate involved!

There is a basic format that we follow for our classes, but we remain flexible. Each class consists of three wines. If we are comparing the same style of wine from different regions we try to stay in the same general price range for our wine so the comparison is more accurate. Other times we may vary the degrees of price ranges. Sometimes it will surprise you…you may enjoy the more moderately price wine the most. The setup includes three glasses for each person and a white plate or napkin for viewing the wine. We have learned that it is best to taste and make notes on each wine by itself before we add any of the food pairings. That way you can really see how wine and food are meant to be together. For our note taking we found a tasting sheet that we find helpful at www.wine-tastings-guide.com . This tasting sheet allows you to have all three wines on the same sheet for side by side comparison. We start with the color/appearance. Next we move to the nose, which we find is the most difficult to put in words. We have grown in this area, but continue to look for ways to improve here. Last, the mouth, how does it feel in the mouth, the finish, etc? After we have tasted each one, we go back and try them again with the pairings. Many times our least favorite wine becomes a favorite with the correct pairings. A new twist we have added to a couple of our classes is the Winerd game. Mary Jo received it as a gift for Christmas and it is a lot of fun. It challenges us on terms and general wine knowledge, so you learn while you play!

When all is said and done, we have fun, enjoy each other’s company and get to try new wines. Over these last few years we have become more that just wine loving neighbors. Now we are wine loving friends! I count myself lucky to call Lisa and Mary Jo dear friends.

Cheers,

Beth