Winning a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence...

Recently the restaurant where I am the general manager and sommelier, Maestro 2300, was awarded the Wine Spectator award of excellence.  Since then I have been overloaded with questions about this award, the process to get the award, and what exactly it is.  I figured since that is the reason that I started these blogs to begin with, why not go ahead and write about it to tell everyone what I know about it.  As in previous blogs I warn you to bear with me as I am no literary genius and have no filter from brain to mouth sometimes.


So the obvious question is...what the heck is a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence.  Well, The Wine Spectator is the largest and most prominent wine publication in the world with over 2.6 million readers world wide...which kinda trips me out that some little French guy is sitting in his cafe in Nice or wherever is reading the Wine Spectator and notices a little place form Auburn, Alabama called Maestro 2300.  So anyways, every August they issue a list of restaurants that they consider has the best wine lists in the world.  Just to clarify this point, this is only the opinion of one magazine and its editors, but since they have some of the most knowledgeable and experienced wine palates and minds anywhere....I would pay attention to what they say very closely. 


They base these criteria on not only the actual wines on the wine list but also every minute detail, including spelling, appellation, vintage, style of the list, size of the list, prices, storage conditions, and everything else that goes into making a wine list.  Moreover they also want to see the food menu for the restaurant to make sure that your not serving hotdogs and pickled pigs feet for dinner.  This is to ensure that not only is your wine list of impeccable stature but also that your restaurant is as well. 


To apply for this award a restaurant must submit a printed copy of its wine list, food menu, and most importantly a cover letter that outlines a few things that the gentlemen want to know about.  In this letter the restaurant must tell about its storage conditions, size of its inventory, and what they are trying to accomplish with their wine list.  My belief is that they do this to make sure that each person that finds your name in their publication will find a certain standard in every restaurant they visit off of this list.  For instance, one thing they appear to be very big on is making sure that the red wine is served at a proper temperature....not room temperature....but somewhere around fifty five degrees Fahrenheit...now some of you are probably saying that is to cold for red wine, but in fact that is  the temperature range where red wine releases most of the fruit flavor and ages the best...so if you happen to have a 1978 Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon on your wine list the correct temperature ensures that a wine this old will not break down while in you possession and most importantly taste correct when served.  Now you may tell yourself that having a wine this old is a rare thing and most young wines don't need this attention to detail....well if you think like that then your probably not ever going to receive an award like this....you see cork dorks like me believe that wine is a living organism....and as such it should be kept and treated with respect....so if it be a young 2009 pinot gris from Oregon or something as old as Abe Vigoda all wine should be kept at the proper temperature in a horizontal position....kinda like....well Abe Vigoda.  Another thing they want to know about in this cover letter is your inventory, meaning how much monetary value do you have in wine in your restaurant.  Now there is no set standard for this number to wine an award but this is the smallest of the inventories I have ever managed of the three awards I have won and lets just say it is several thousand dollars.  Once again I believe they want to see the same commitment in monetary value as they see in all other aspects of your wine list...because nothing says total commitment like the Benjamins!  Last, they want to know a little about what your wine list is trying to accomplish....ie. are you trying to be a small sidewalk bistro, world class steak house, or in our case just a small world class restaurant playing on the same stage as all the big boys like Gordon Ramsay, Emeril Lagasse, and John Besh.  In  our case our list is broken down into two major parts, old world wines....those from all over Europe....and new world wines....those from everywhere else.  In doing this we have tried to set up a list that will help the customer decide on what they will drink that night based on the country of origin...which can relate directly to the flavors found in these wines.  Our reason for doing this is because we are a Mediterranean restaurant and want to make sure that if our customers want to eat and drink from the old world it will be just as easy to find a wine as it is to find the classical Spanish paella on the dinner menu....while at the same time taking care of our new world diners in the same manner.  So for our "style" this set up works best....but there are all different types of wine lists all over the world...


So what then does a great wine list need in order to make this cut? To answer this questions remember, like I just said, every restaurant will have a different type of wine list....some will be nothing but big Napa wines....others mostly French or Italian wines....others small boutique wines....and everything in between.  I have seen alot of Wine Spectator awarded wine lists and alot of good wine list that didn't have the award.....so I  have asked myself whats the difference?   Well to answer this question in laymen terms I am gonna put it into something we should all understand....football!  If you can think of a great wine list like a great football team then it may help you to identify what to look for.  Both must have balance in all positions....like a good quarterback and wide receivers that play well off each other....just like great low end and high end Italian wines like Brunello and Rosso di Montalcinos.  Both must have their heavy hitters....like an insanely fast and large interior linemen on defense....or in wine list terms a big huge Napa Cabernet like Caymus Special Selection or an aged wine like a 1978 Barolo.  Most importantly both must have great closer.....like a great kicker that can make a field goal to win the game with the weight of the world on his shoulders.....or a 1978 Colhieta port to end a meal!  Now, it is very easy to do what the Dallas Cowboys do and go out and spend a ton of money on your team....but then something goes wrong and your star wine Silver Oak fumbles a snap on a routine field goal and you don't make the playoffs!  Just like a great football team...like maybe our current NCAA national champions the Auburn Tigers (shameless plug)...it's not about the top wine on your list but more about the unsung wine on your list....say maybe like a freshman running back that is not gonna stop until he hears a whistle.  Why do you ask...well which do you sell more of the $239.00 of Silver Oak or the $29.00 bottle of Bonarda that no one has ever heard of....most likely not the Silver Oak...so that being said which wine is going to get your name out in the community more if a person really likes it....obviously the quiet little bottle that no body has ever heard of...except the guys at Wine Spectator...which in my opinion is why some places, even though they have a big beautiful list....and some football teams even though they are supposed to be the dynasty team....hu hu Alabama...may not get the top award...why the little cow poke team I mean restaurant may end up with one...but that just my two cents on the situation.... 


So now that you have submitted all of your menus, wine list, and cover letter...what next?  Well you do like the rest of us and wait.  If you have made some mistake....which can be a myriad of things like not putting an appellation on the list incorrectly, misspelling something,  or maybe a wrong vintage.... or if your wine list just simply isn't good enough by their standards....meaning that it is not a balanced list of depth both in regions of the world, vintages, styles of wine, or reputable producers....or if they don't like what you have done with your storage or pricing....well then you get a letter saying basically thanks but no thanks....then you try again next year.  Now...if you have met all of their exacting criteria, not misspelled anything, not forgotten anything then one day via mail you get a letter saying congratulations on winning the Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence...which is followed by a very nice certificate for you to display.  So what exactly does that mean?  Well the one thing I can tell you it definitely means is that your owner....especially if he suffers from what I call T.O.S. (typical owner syndrome)....he or she is gonna flip out...they are gonna talk about how awesome it is and how they are so happy.  The next thing it means is that in all 2.6 million issues of The Wine Spectator in August your restaurant's name will be listed with all of the contact information so that diner's and wine lovers know how to find you....pretty cool huh!?  That is all the stuff it means to everybody else....but what does it mean to a person like me who lives and breathes the wine business everyday and studies their butt off to get to that point?  Well I can tell you in this sommelier's eyes it is not so much about the prestige of winning an award like this....no what it means is that a cork dork of equal or probably even more dorkness has gone over that wine list with a fine toothed comb.....checked and rechecked for any flaw or error....then passed it to his superiors and they have in turn passed it to their superiors...and that all the way up the food chain they all agree that it is indeed a grammatically correct world class wine list...and if these guys say it is...than it is....which to me means that even though you may be in east Alabama...and may be in the middle of nowhere by some peoples standards....when you dine with us you are indeed in a class with the rest of the world!   

Summer Camp for Adults...Part Three!

If you have worked in the restaurant industry as long as I have, and especially in restaurants that are only open for dinner service, then you probably are a night owl like myself.  So when a wine maker hopped on nine cups of coffee comes knocking at you door at six forty five in the morning you would think such a person would be a little grumpy...as for me I have had years of training from my mother doing the same thing.  So when Tahmiene woke me up again this early I was ready to go!  Now I will admit that part of this was from the excitement of what the day would bring...but the rest was years of training by my mom...so I wanna say thanks mom...I always knew that your loud and sometimes downright offensive coffee making, phone talking, breakfast making, repaving of the driveway, and all the other crap you like to do at five thirty am would one day come in handy.

Once again we were off to the bus stop to load up on our buses, after a mimosa of course, and then down the Willamette Valley to the Van Duzzer wind gap.  This is an area that is in the southern part of the valley and has a break in the mountains off to the west that allows the cool ocean air to come in and cool the valley at night....which as I mentioned a few blogs ago is perfect from growing pinot noir!  That being said it is also perfect for growing a myriad of other types of grape...especially white ones.  Oregon is always going to be know for it's amazing pinto noirs but that being said it also produces some of the countries best white wines as well.  In a cool  climate the acid structure of a wine is usually preserved better due to the fact that it is more difficult for the sugars to fully mature inside the grape.  Since the sugar doesn't eat up all the acid then after the fermentation process you are left with a higher acid content.  Now your probably asking yourself "is this a good thing?"  Well in terms of wine and food its a great thing.  As I mentioned in my last acid is essential for balancing foods with heavy sauces....so this makes Oregon whites really good food wines!

Our first stop was at the Van Duzzer winery for a tasting of Oregon white wines that ranged from some pretty good Chardonnays, Rieslings, and Pinot Gris' to some very interesting things like Gewurztraminer and Gruner Veltliner.  All in all pretty standard tasting with some nice information presented by a few winemakers and then we all got to ask a few questions about these whites....this is where I got a bit perturbed.  I asked the gentlemen, Jeff I think his name was, from King Estate about the use of oak in Oregon chardonnays.  I noticed that all of the chardonnays we tasted were either completely un-oaked (meaning they were never matured in oak barrels) or they only saw neutral oak (oak barrels that have been used so many times they no longer impart any flavor into the wine).  My question was if any Oregon winemakers are using new or semi-new oak to make their chardonnays...to which I received a very shocking response....which I would like to touch on for a brief moment.  The answer I received was "do you mean to make crappy chardonnays...we don't make crappy chardonnays in Oregon."  Now I know that I am not a winemaker...and I do not know that much about how chardonnay reacts with oak...but I do know that in some far stretch of the imagination they do use oak in places like maybe Montrachet, Napa Valley, or even say Corton Charlemagne...and last I checked they don't make crappy chardonnays in those places.  The reason I mentioned this was because I was curious to see if the cooler climate would affect the flavor of the oak...not to insult this guys since of what Oregon chardonnay is...instead I got a terrible answer that really kinda embarrassed me in front of about forty people....and that is why I touch on this little "outburst" by the winemaker.  Thanks to this tard I will now tell most people I know that this guy is obviously a dumb ass and I will also not buy or recommend his wines....and I guess this is the double edged sword of an event like this.  For every great thing that we all experienced at pinot camp I am sure some of us....hopefully a small amount....had something that we did not like.  I only mention this so you all don't think I am here to tell you all the splendors of pinot camp but to let you know that this is a working trip for us all and we take back with us not only the good....but also the bad things we find.  We tell our customers, friends, and family members all of these things so that they can appreciate place Oregon for what they are...a place that is very rare that makes great wine but is not perfect.  So hopefully that is enough of a Maury Povich speech for you...now back to the funny stuff!

We had a chance to kinda decompress with a little breakfast and some incredible views then we were off to our next destination....Eola Amity!!!  As I mentioned before the great thing about Oregon is their dirt....and our next little experiment showed me this in a way I never thought possible.  When we arrived at the Eola Hills winery I noticed that we had been parked right next to the green bus....hmmm...interesting.  We all walked into a large fermentation area where we were presented with six different red wines that we knew nothing about...except they were all red wine of course.  After we were all settled Jesse Lang of Lange Vineyards came in and began to explain to us about the different types of soil in Oregon...which Tahmiene had already told me about...so that was nothing new....but then he elaborated on the fact that if we knew what we were looking for we could also taste the different type of soil in each wine.  He explained to us that in our glasses there were two different soil types represented in our glasses....marine sedimentary and volcanic.  The marine sedimentary he explained could be tasted because it would have a higher concentration of limestone flavoring in it and the volcanic would have a deeper earthier flavor in it.  Then we all tasted the wines and once again by a show of hands were asked to tell which is which...and this time something different....only about five or six of us actually got all six wines...and yes I was one of the five or six.   The reason being wasn't because all the people were just bad tasters but because they had not been trained to taste deductively....which once again is a blog for another day.  Deductive tasting is what the Court of Master Sommeliers teaches its students to do in order to figure out were a wine is from, what vintage it is, and what the climate and varietal are.  Each of the people who got it right had been trained that way.  Now once again I am not saying we are in better or worse then the man next to us, just that our palates are trained a little different.  Earth is one of the major components in wine that we must know in order to be able to tell all of these thing about a wine....so I guess we are just very sensitive to these things.  The only reason I mention this is because it is helpful when trying to pair wine with food....obviously earthy flavors go very well with other similar flavors...say maybe in things like truffles or mushrooms...so if you are trying to pair wine with these types of food then you need to be able to detect these flavors in the wines.  If you can successfully do this than maybe you should start making flip cards and bind tasting too....you never know you may too be a sommelier one day.  Until after we were finished none of us knew that we were all trained this way....so we didn't really pay much attention to it...instead we all sat there fascinated by what we had just figured out by tasting these wines....not only could we tell climate or type of grape but we actually got the soil type right....WOW....that was pretty cool to a nerd like me.

After asking a bunch of questions, and a quick lunch, it was time to head back to the buses to load up and head out for our much deserved nap time....when at this time is when I was approached by a certain person that I will only identify as our "camp counselor"....this person too had noticed that we had parked directly in front of the green bus....the evil and dastardly green bus.  This "person" notified me that if I just happened to coral a few of my fellow red bus campers onto our bus...our sabotaged bus...that we may find an entire bucket of water balloons and an arsenal of super soaker squirt guns. So going on a hunch I decided to grab a few fellow campers and scurry off to our bus and set a little ambush.  Upon arriving I discovered no less than forty or so water balloons, ten super soakers, and two very large buckets of ice water.  Now if I was the type not to hold a grudge I would have simply turned a blind eye to all of these devices of evil....lets just say I am not that guy.  We immediately deployed half of our super soaker ration to one side of the green bus....the other half to the back of our bus with the emergency door at the ready.  We set about five ready and willing campers behind a small tree line with the water balloons and for the crowned jewel propped the iced water inside their bus door and exited out of the back.  Like Patton awaiting Rommel we quietly watched the counselors and campers from the evil green bus approach their chariot....as the opened the door the  buckets of ice water fell down onto about four of them....the back door of the red buss swung open with super soakers slinging water everywhere....water balloons began to rain out of the sky from behind the trees...and the other super soakers were then unleashed from the other side of the bus.  Like trapped cats thrown into a  swimming pool they all began to pile into their bus to get out of the line of fire...little did they know that the red bus "patriots" had planned for this and began to shoot through the windows of the bus and completely soak them while inside their fortress.....AHHH...our revenge was at hand. Slowly they began to try and mount a counter attack....but by this time we were all loaded on onto our bus and were in route for a much needed nap...I mean after all ambush can really take it out of you.

Awaking from our slumber we all gathered by our bus and toasted to the sweet taste of revenge and a job well done.  We were now off to our last dinner....a salmon bake like no other....but first we had some drinking to do.  We arrived at Witness Tree Vineyards and were escorted up a large hill to the area where they had once again set out about sixty different tasting tents. So by now you know the drill, recon, whites, reds, freebies...then onto something truly spectacular. 

We walked back down the hill to the tent they had set up for us where there was a fire pit that had been built that was about forty feet long.  Burning on it was hickory logs and on each side were twelve foot long spikes that were mounted into the ground.  Each spike had been split and inside the split had been placed the most beautiful filets of Copper River sockeye salmon that I had ever seen.  About fifteen or twenty of these spikes were placed down either side of the fire pit and they were constantly being attended to by the chefs that were cooking the salmon.  In addition to the salmon inside the tents were about five large buffets set up with every type of food you could imagine.  Eventually we all found a seat and began to gorge ourselves on fresh salmon and delicious food for the better part of two hours.  Now once again I was lucky enough to sit with a few of the Domaine Serene people and my host Tahmiene...and once again we got to drink some amazing single vineyard Oregon Pinots.  After all of this imbibing I surely figured that Tahmiene would want to go back and crash out....oh was I sadly, sadly mistaken.  Apparently there is a tradition at Pinot camp that on the last night all of the counselors go to a little diver bar in McMinville called Lumpy's.  Being from Panama City I know a good dive when I come across one....and I truly had respect for this one due to the fact that the men's room had no door....my type of place.  As any good red blooded American would do I ordered a beer and began to watch the festivites.  If you have ever been in a true karaoke bar than you know that if their are Japanese people....and I don't mean Asian-Americans...no I mean people that are from Japan that cannot speak English and drink massive amounts of sake....that once get a little liquor in them they truly love to sing karaoke.  I am all for this part of thier culture...cause to me it is friggin hysterical....and so went our night for the next few hours.  We got to hear renditions of Elvis, Garth Brooks, and my personal favorite.... Fight for your Rights by the Beastie Boys.  As the night went on I began buy8ing them shots, they were buying me shots, and before you know it we were all singing karoake and having a grand time!  However little did I know that our night was far from over....Tahmiene had planned a little party back at her house and had invited about half of pinot camp to come over...so I figured why not invite my new friends....it didn't matter that I didn't speak Japanese and they didn't speak English...no sir....because we all spoke the universal language of shit-faced!  So after all of the kaoroke we could handle we piled into Tahmine's car and were off to her house to play a new  game....beer pong!

Growing up in the South and going to school at Auburn I have played beer pong many, many times....but never with anyone from Japan.  For those of you that don't know what beer pong is it is a game in which a table about five or six feet long is set up....on this table there will be a total of twenty plastic cups, ten per side, that are arranged in a pyramid fashion....now without getting into the technicalities lets just say that the object is to take a ping pong ball and throw or bounce it into the opponents cups....if you do this than they have to drink the beer in the cup that your ping pong ball landed in....whoever knocks out all of the opponents cups first wins...oh and the opponents then have to drink the remaining cups of the winners.  Now obviously this is a very silly game for grown adults to be playing at three o clock in the morning but after a long day of drinking eating and more drinking what else were we going to do?  As I mentioned I am quite familiar with this game and surely thought that since my Japanese counter parts had never even heard of it that I would reign supreme as the beer pong champion....or so you would think!  I explained the game to the one gentlemen that could speak a little English I could see that the other three gentlemen were listening intently on his every word and noticed that they seemed to understand the game very clearly....so I figured lets just play a game.  We set up the cups, poured about four ounces of beer in each one from the keg, and began to play....and it was at this point that I realized I may be in a little trouble.  Now I don't know if in Japan they have a game where they also throw something the size and shape of a ping pong ball into something size of a Solo cup from six feet away but if they don't then the Japanese are apparently born with some type of inherent skill for this game.  With their Samurai like focus, within about three throws I had one cup left and they were only missing two cups...now if you paid attention to the rules then you know that means I had drank about twenty four ounces of beer in a little under five minutes....then add to that fact that no one told me that we were actually drinking a beer that was about nine percent alcohol by volume and you can imagine the state I was slipping into.  I also at this point began to notice that my new Japanese friends were so insanely focused on this new game that I had about as much a chance to beat any of them as I did hitting the lottery....twice!  That fact of course did not stop me from trying though....it did however stop me from remembering what time I finally went to sleep or even where I went to sleep.  All I know is that when Tahmiene cam to wake me up I was not feeling so hot and apparently slept with my both my shoes on....which I must say I was a little surprised that I made it all the way until the last night before that happened!

The next day as Tahmiene was driving me back to Portland I had a good chance to reflect on everything that I had seen and learned at Pinot Camp.  I noticed that Oregon as a whole is a really down to earth place.  It has a wonderful since of direction in its style of wine making and a wonderful set of people that really care about their product.  I also thought about the weather and how truly unique it is....I mean most nights the sun wasn't even out of the sky until nine at night....and the breeze is always blowing because of the Pacific.  Overall I was the most impressed with the non touristy part of Oregon....everyone treated you like family when you came to their winery and you could tell they weren't being fake, it was just how they were!  I really liked this part because so much of our culture has turned into a "cow-herding" mentality when it comes to the public.  I think that Oregon has fought against this notion and that's something that makes me proud to be in this business and get to experience such an amazing event like Oregon Pinot Camp!

Summer Camp for Adults....Part Two

As you can imagine, being loaded into a school bus with 40 strangers that all had way to much to drink the night before is never a pleasant thing.  Add to that, the fact that our once pristine bus had been trashed by the green bus and you have some riled up campers.  Thank god we were now into the thick of our first day as campers and were headed towards the R. Stuart and Co. Winery which also happened to house one of my favorite pinot producers...Panther Creek.  This being our first day of seminars I think most of us expected some lame cookie cutter presentation from a freckle faced tasting room attendant that most of us would have probably chewed up and spit out in the area of wine production....once again Pinot Camp had a few more surprises in store. 

We began by all being gathered into a large room where the fermentation tanks were and then herded into an area where we watched a brief video about wine making and the different types of fermentation....pretty standard stuff.  Then something new was thrown our way....we were put into 3 different groups and each group was given a little experiment that they had prepared for us.  My first was the experimentation of the process of acidification...now stick with me here and I will try not to geek out too much.   Acid is a component in a grape that is present before, during, and after the grapes life cycle.  When a grape is young and under ripe it is full of acid, but as it ripens the sugar is created and replaces the acid.  In a perfectly ripe grape the two, acid and sugar, are in balance.  Then when this grape is pressed into juice, and if fermented correctly, you end up with a balanced wine...and by that I mean the sugar content of the wine is not overwhelmed by the acid content and vice versa.  This is one of the things that winemakers try to do on a daily basis....balance these two very important parts of the wine.  So if you followed that than you can probably figure out that this is not always the case!  Alot of times Mother Nature can be a real bitch and she can throw curve balls at you and terribly screw up this process.  This is a time when the process of acidification is used.  This is the process in which acid is added to a must (pressed grape juice) to balance out the fact that the grapes were over ripened and there for produced too much sugar.  Now most wine makers would tell you they would never do such a thing...it would be unnatural....yeah right...that like saying movie stars don't get boob jobs!  However the point of this little experiment was not to call out wine makers that bend the rules a little...no it was to help us as wine buyers be able to taste the difference in a wine that had been manipulated and one that had been made with out any added acid structure.  Reason being is that most wines that have been manipulated are more likely to be unstable at a later date as they age. 

So the experiment went like this...they gave us each two wine glasses...then poured us each a different wine in each glass and did not tell us which was acidified and which was not....they then gave us all a few minutes and did a show of hands...was it wine number one or wine number two that had been acidified.  Before I tell you the results I would like to point out a few things...first off these two wines were the exact same wine at one point...same grapes, same harvest date, same wine maker, same soak time...but then for the cause of this experiment the wine maker added acid to half of the batch and basically ruined perfectly good, sell-able, wine.  I thought to myself that is a pretty big commitment to a project for complete strangers!  This is a point that I noticed numerous times about Pinot Camp...these people all gave their blood, sweat, tears, and of course wine so we could learn and become more knowledgeable in our field...and for that I am very grateful!  So now that we had all tasted the two wines we raised our hands and about two-thirds of us got that wine number one had added acid...but how you may ask...well it is actually very simple.  When acid is present in a wine it will make you saliva glands go into overdrive.  When you drink the wine the acid binds to your saliva and when you swallow the wine it cleanses your mouth of most of that saliva...then your taste buds say "hay where did all the saliva go?"  The saliva glands then kick into overdrive to replace the missing saliva...so when you taste a wine with a fair amount of acid pay attention to those little glands and what they are doing and you can gauge if a wine is full of acid or not.  Oh yeah...and wine with good acid is great for heavy foods with alot of sauce...but that is a blog for a different day.  Once again as I stood here and listened to the wine makers answer questions about this process it stuck me that this truly is a unique test of your palate and nowhere else can you get a test like this.  I mean you can take a low acid wine, like maybe big Aussie shiraz, and copmare it to a high acid wine, like a German riesling, but that apples to oranges...this was the exact same wine except the added acid.  A truly unique experience. I was now really excited as we moved to our next little expirament...to cork or not to cork?

We took our little party across the street to the bottling room for Panther Creek and began to listen to the wine maker from Brooks winery...another favorite...who talked to us about the corking process and the difference between using corks or screw caps.  To make this not too much of a geek out moment again I will try to keep this short....basically a cork is in the to of the bottle of wine to seal it while at the same time let a very minute amount of oxygen into the wine over a long period of time.  This helps the wine age and makes it taste better in the long run...but there is a unsolvable problem with corks.  Cork is a natural product that comes from a tree...it is inconsistent and can let a wine get spoiled.  Now I am not taking a stance for screw caps here, but that facts are very clear...in a single vintage up to ten percent of a wine sealed with corks may be "corked."  That means that if you use corks you may loose up to one out of every ten bottles you make...that is not good when your trying to run a business.  I can guarantee that if the Chef at my restaurant had one in ten plates returned to the kitchen that he would be the newest member of the McDonalds team on South College St. by the end of the week!  So why screw caps then...well because a screw cap is not made by Mother Nature...it is made by man and there for is a very exact tool for a wine maker.  Screw caps let in the exact amount of oxygen that the wine maker desires, and as long as there is no damage to the closure, there is no corkage at all!  So then why doesn't everybody just use screw cap right?  Well that is what our next experiment was all about. 

We were once again given two glasses....two wines were again poured blind.... and we had about ten minutes to figure out which had been sealed with a screw cap and which had been sealed with a cork.  Once again I am going to elaborate on this little experiment.  Just like our first experiment this wine at one time was the exact same wine, but the wine maker stopped the bottling line half way through the process...changed all the bottles and types of closures on the bottling line and then donated them to the cause of Pinot Camp...pretty cool huh?  Oh and by the way this was a ten year old bottle of Oregon Pinot that the winemaker had held onto for this little test...so your talking a serious commitment!  So once again after a show of hands about two thirds of the people got that wine two had been a screw cap and wine one had been a cork.  Your probably asking how did we do it this time?  Well you can probably guess that a cork would have a little more earth on it due to the cork being in contact with the wine...so no real secret here...the second wine tasted cleaner while the first one was more earthy.  Depending on what style of wine you prefer that would answer the screw cap or cork question for you...I personally preferred the screw cap style a little better because I feel that the fruit showed a little better...but to each his own!

After two of these little experiments I now was really interested in what came next.  We moved back over to the fermentation room side of the winery where we all gathered around a sorting table (a large conveyor belt that moves grapes along to the fermentation area so that the bad ones can be picked out).  Here we were told about another interesting experiment from the lead wine maker at Domaine Serene...whole cluster vs. non whole cluster fermentation. I know, I know what the heck does that mean....and please know that I am trying not to be the biggest cork-dork in the world....it's just happening! 

Well when the grapes are picked from the vineyard they are picked from the vine on a stem and the group of grapes are called a cluster.  When the grapes are then transported to the winery they go to the sorting table and the wine maker will make a decision, after sorting all the bad grapes out, if they will then stay on the cluster or be destemmed.  If they are left on the cluster then the grape juice will have more tannins and if they are destemmed then the grape juice will be less tannic.   So why do you ask does this matter....well that is lengthy discussion but for now lets just say that certain people like tannic wines and certain people don't!  By now you have probably figured out what the experiment is and also that about two thirds of the group guessed right about the two wines.  Hopefully by this point you are beginning to see what makes Pinot Camp such an amazing experience.  For most people it would just be a cool event to attend just for fun but for people in the wine business, that taste a huge array of all types of wine and then have to sort through what is crap and what is quality, it is something that I believe is incomparable to any other event in the country. 


By now, as you have probably figured out, most of us were borderline drunk or at least definitely had a buzz...so after a quick lunch, and more wine, with the wine makers that had given the seminar we were loaded back onto our buses for my favorite part of the day...nap time.  Now I am not just saying that I wanted to take a nap...even though I did...they actually put in our itinerary, every day, an hour for "nap-time"...which I did indeed indulge in before getting ready to head to dinner at Domaine Serene....and oh what a dinner!!!

After awaking from our slumber we were all carted to the property at Domaine Serene for a tasting from all of the wineries and then a sit down dinner.  Once again I arrived and employed a little recon, tasted my way through the event, hit up one of the Domaine Serene guys for a free t-shirt, and then made my way down to the pavilion for dinner.  As I began to wonder around the pavilion I noticed all sorts of large format bottles appearing...magnums of St. Innocent, double magnums of Elk Cove, and Jeroboams of  Eyrie....needless to say that means there was alot of wine to be drank....and as campers I felt like we were up to the task.  By now I had run into a good friend, John Kimball, who actually got me into the sommelier program and we decided to grab a table together.  We ended up sitting with Grace Evenstad...who just happens to be one of the owners of Domaine Serene....so as you can guess we got to drink some amazing wines that night!!!  Dinner was absolutely numbing....seared loin of rabbit with blackberry jus...Humboldt fog and butter lettuce salad...venison with a foie gras stuffing...and chocolate terrine for dessert.  If your mouth is watering by now than imagine how stuffed we were and how tired we were after a long day.  We were all ready to be loaded back onto our buses and head home for a much needed nights rest to get ready for the next day....but as we did head that way I asked myself "what would tomorrow have in store?"  Little did I know it would be another day of amazing experiments, an insane dinner, karaoke, beer pong with my new friends from Japan...and most of all the sweet taste of revenge!   

Summer Camp for Adults...Part One!

About this time last June I was on an airplane headed from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon for a little wine outing called Oregon Pinot Camp that I honestly did not know that much about.  I was invited, which by the way is the only way to get into this event (not that I am trying to brag, I'm more keeping you from spending endless hours on trying to get into Pinot Camp), by Tahmiene Momtazi the winemaker from Maysara Winery located in McMinnville, Oregon. Now I had heard of this mythical Pinot Camp, but had never met anybody that had actually been.  So I bought a plane ticket, got on the airplane, and prepared for whatever this crazy adventure would bring....and boy did it bring the pain!  To begin I will try not to bore you with too much of the geeky stuff that a true wine nerd like me really enjoyed about Pinot Camp and Oregon as a whole.  I will also try not to include too many stories of drunken retard ism and  debauchery....just a little.  Lastly, as I have stated many times, please bear with me...some of that nights got a little blurry and some of the mornings were rather painful....as to be expected at such a magnanimous event!

So to answer the most obvious questions, to go ahead and get it out of the way, what is Oregon Pinot Camp?  This is an event that the Oregon winegrowers association, Oregon winery owners, and distributors all over the country have put together to educate wine buyers, sommeliers, wine shop owners, restaurant owners, and anybody else that may sell wine for a living on exactly what is going on in the Oregon wine world.  It is a four day, four night experience of wine seminars, wine tasting experiments, ob-seen dinner experiences, and most of all first hand tut-ledge from some of the most knowledgeable wine people on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.  Moreover, it is a complete immersion in the Oregon wine experience.  We got to sample wines that I can honestly say you will not find anywhere in the world, get dirt between our fingers, and hold conversations with people that will forget more about wine than I will ever know.  So as you can imagine, for a cork-dork like myself, this is comparable to letting Charlie Sheen loose in the Playboy mansion with a pocket full of Viagra!

To begin, the day that I landed in Portland was the same day that The US soccer team played Gahna in the world cup to move onto to the quarter-finals.  Now if you know anything about Portland than you know that is probably the most soccer crazed city in the entire United States of America...no way I am missing this party!  So shortly after touchdown Tahmiene and I found ourselves in downtown Portland drinking a nice glass of Guinness and chanting USA, USA, USA....to no avale...we lost in overtime....oh well....no need to worry ourselves with such a terrible thing.  Instead we headed into the heart of the Oregon wine world...the Willamette Valley!

As we headed south she told me a little about the difference in Oregon as a wine growing region and say Napa.  First off Oregon has a myriad of different types of soil....and not just spread over the length of the different AVA's...no... in some vineyards as tiny as a few acres you may have four or five different types of soil.  You probably ask yourself "doesn't this make growing a consistent product a pain in the neck?"  Well the answer is yes and no...it makes a winemaker do much more research on their land and it also makes it much harder to plan what type of grape to plant....but the yes far outweighs this.  When you have alot of varying soil types then you get alot of varying flavors from the grapes that come from this soil.  This means that when you go to blend the final wine you have great depth and complexity in that wine...which is what makes Oregon dirt so great.  Another point that she pointed out to me is that Oregon's climate is quite different from Napa.  It's average temperature is about four to five degrees cooler and their is much more sunshine...which sounds like a bad thing.  Then she mentioned an interesting fact that I had never considered...the lattitude of Oregon.  Oregon is so far north, that other than Alaska, it has the longest days of anywhere in the US...which for grapes is a dream come true.  To produce great wine you need long sunny days, that are not too hot or too cold....which is Oregon in a nutshell.   Then to elaborate even further, this is the perfect climate for my favorite grape of all....Pinot Noir!!!

Arriving at Tahmiene's house I was told to get dressed for an outside tasting and picnic and was told that we would probably be going out after words for a "drink"....that's like saying Captain Ahab might go after Moby Dick.  So I dressed for cool weather and prepared my liver for what was to come.  We took off for a little winery right in the heart of the Willamette Valley named Sokol Blosser.  Pulling into the driveway I had not noticed something...partly from the Guinness and partly from the jet-lag....it was already 7pm and the sun was still high in the sky. Tahmiene pointed this fact out to me and I really began to appreciate the difference of this amazing place I had been transported to.  We walked up to the middle of one of the of the vineyards and we were in the middle of about sixty different tables that each represented a different winery and were all there to showcase the very best wines that Oregon had to offer.  Now if you read my blog last week you know that I first did a little recon....Domaine Serene, check....St. Innocent, check....Argyle, check....all the big boys had brought out their big guns....yep this was going to be a shit show!  Next to start with a little bubbly...Argyle's Brut...perfect....then onto the heavier stuff....Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Caberent...everything was here.  Just when I thought maybe I was imbibing a little too heavy they opened up the BBQ pits and began serving us whole roasted pig and ribs that would have made the most southern pitmaster proud.  Now with my belly full of delicious BBQ and unbelievable wines it was time for a nap right?  Nope....not in these parts...now it is time to head out into downtown McMinnville with one of the most unusual assortment of strangers that all had only one thing in common....we were all campers at Oregon Pinot Camp 2010.  Sometime around two am Tahmine dragged me away from a conversation with a winemaker about whole cluster fermentation so that we could get some rest....after all it was going to be a long day that began at seven am....which for me was the earliest I would have been awake all year.

Sure enough at six fifty five...after working out, drinking twelve cups of coffee, and probably doing some work at her winery....Tahmiene was knocking on my door to make sure I would be ready in time to get onto the school bus....yes I said school bus!  A small fact that she had not told me was that the transportation for all of the campers via school bus.  Now I am not talking air conditioned, bucket seated, buses....no I am talking big yellow, stinky school buses.  At first I was a little curious about this....but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.  What a great way to transport some of America's most influential wine buyers all over Oregon than a big yellow school bus!  Once again I was beginning to fall in love with this place and all of the fun that surrounded it.  So as we arrived at the our bus stop there sat a big yellow, sixth grade reminiscent, McMinnville county school bus....but more importantly than our transportation needs were the mimosas that were also furnished....which would be a necessary key to the success of the day!  Loaded up and ready to rock we all where headed to somewhere which I truly never thought I would be....the home of the original Spruce Goose!  Our first stop was at Evergreen Aviation in McMinnville for a much needed mimosa refill and breakfast break.  All of the six school buses arrived and we were led into the massive museum at Evergreen Aviation where as we ate we wondered among pieces of aviation history.  Planes like the B-17 Flying Fortress, ME-109, Spitfire, and of course Howard Hughes' own Spruce Goose.  Now to some people this was only a mild morning of entertainment....but to me this was the whole Charlie Sheen Viagra thing times ten. I always have been a huge airplane buff...and to get to stand inside the Spruce Goose...with a mimosa in hand no less...well lets just say that Howard Hughes himself was probably never that happy in the belly of that monster...at least with all of his clothes on!   After breakfast we were led into the IMAX theater here at the museum where were shown a brief video about the reason for Oregon Pinot Camp and then each winemaker introduced his or herself.  Then back to our buses...but something was amiss with the red bus...my bus....we had been most deliberately attacked!!!  Spread all over the inside of our bus was a mass of hundreds of fake green dollar bills....about waste deep!  Now we could only assume that this came from our newly formed nemesis....the green bus!  After a little clean up all of the red bus campers began an immediate wartime session to plan retaliation....and retaliate we did!!!  However before we decided to enact our revenge we had some serious wine tasting and experimentation to complete...so after less than twenty four hours in Oregon I had accomplished so much....soccer, wine tasting, roasted pig, winemaker interrogation, classic airplanes, revenge of sabotage, and IMAX theaters ....but I had not even scratched the surface of this thing called "Pinot Camp"....

Learn from a pro....

So as I sit here today I am extremely hungover....but not just for any night of over consumption!  Auburn, Alabama was host to one of the best food and wine events that I have ever had the privilege to take part in.  Auburn University Chefs to the Recuse was an event pulled together in three short weeks to benefit the victims of the deadly tornadoes that ravaged our state on April 27th, 2011.  Hans Van der Reijden, the general manager of the Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center, Chef John Hamme of my restaurant Maestro 2300 and  a few others got together and decided to do a spin off of our walk-about wine tastings to raise money for the people that lost everything in these storms.  For a hundred dollars a person each guest received a wine glass and a informational packet that told them all about the different stations and who the chefs were.  Then they are free to walk-about to each of the stations where there is a different chef paired with a different wine or beer selection.  To make sure all of the proceeds from this amazing event were donated to the victims all of the food and wine was donated by food purveyors, wineries, breweries, and farmers so there was no cost to any of the chefs or staff involved except our time.  Now as much as I am honored to have been a part of this event, this is not the reason that I am writing this blog today....no sir.....the reason I am writing this today is to give you some pointers on how to successfully navigate one of these types of events and not end up in the pitiful fashion that I currently reside!

Once again, remember I am only trying to help you get through a night of amazing food and wine pairings with maximum enjoyment....and as I have stated I am not a literary genius and really don't have a filter from brain to mouth....so bear with me.  

Pointer number one....do a little recon when you arrive.  There is nothing worse at an event like this than getting full off of the the first three things you see and not being able to try the items that may be your true favorites.  When you arrive take your time to get a layout of the place.  Walk around and see what everybody has to offer, what the portion sizes are, and what the beverage selections are...then plan accordingly!  Every one of these events that I have attended, if it be the San Destin Winefest, Atlanta Food and Winefest, one of the numerous wine tastings that I have attended, or Oregon Pinot Camp (don't worry mom that's next week blog) I usually have had pretty good success in navigating through the less popular items on to the bigger and better things.  Personally I like to start with some bubbly, be it cava or champagne something about bubbles tells my liver to be prepared for what is coming.  After that on to the white wines, usually from light to heavy starting with a good German Riesling and moving all the way up the food chain to a good white Burgundy.  When I decide to transition to reds I normally begin with a pinot noir....but I am not one to turn my nose up at a good Barolo!  As for the food I like to try and keep my pairings light to start....maybe a fresh ceviche or tuna sashimi and then move into the heavier things like beef or pork later.  Following this pattern of light to heavy seems to let me fill up at a nice pace so I can match my buzz accordingly.

Pointer number two...take a beautiful women, or women plural, with you.  Now if you are a beautiful women this rule is obviously already taken care of....for the rest of us your gonna have to know a beautiful women that will trust you enough to get her drunk.  If you have this taken care of then most women will jump at the opportunity at getting to go to a wine and food tasting.  I know some of you are thinking that I sound like a chauvinist pig now....but that is not it at all....I am strictly thinking of the best rules to help you navigate an event where there will most certainly be male chefs serving you food and wine...this being said most of them like to look at beautiful women and therefore if it is an ugly chic or a pretty chic to get served next guess who they are gonna pick?!  At the event last night I was fortunate enough to be accompanied by three beautiful women and I can honestly say that I didn't have to wait for any food or wine all night!  Once again I am simply trying to make your night as pleasant as possible.

Pointer number three...and the most obvious...pace yourself.  Most food and wine events have a time limit.  The one last night was from six to eight thirty with a VIP tasting afterwards that lasted from nine to ten.  Now if you were not heeding my advice then by seven or seven thirty you could be trashed.  If that is how you like to roll than you are once again reading the wrong blog and probably will not get invited back to an event like this because your gonna be the drunk guy they throw out at seven forty-five....not good.  If they say these things are gonna last until eight thirty than you really only have until about eight fifteen or so before everybody starts to break down and head for the bars.  This is still plenty of time....trust me.   So figuring that you have over two hours of time if you hit a different station every fifteen minutes than you are gonna get to try eight different things.  Now I know that doesn't sound like alot on paper, but trust me when you are on your sixth glass of wine and sixth food item you will feel a little different.  Most of us eat three or maybe four things at a time and only may have one or two types of drink with a good dinner.  Now add on to the fact that you are eating and drinking faster than normal and you can see why I say pace yourself!

Pointer number four....when everyone starts breaking down hit up the wine stations for some freebies!  I am not trying to sound cheap by any means.....but these events always alot a certain amount of wine for each table....if you don't sweet talk your way into a free bottle of wine then the wine reps are just gonna take the freebies home with them and they already have enough wine...I mean they're wine reps for gods sake!  The easiest way to do this is to revert back to your successful tactic from pointer number two.  Send the beautiful women that accompanied you to this event over and let her do a little friendly persuasion on the person pouring the wine.  Now if you have successfully followed pointer number one and done a little recon than you have probably figured out which rep is the biggest pushover....this is where you begin.  Remember, if you don't at first succeed then try try again....you will eventually find one who will buckle under the pressure of a pretty smile.

Pointer number five...and the most important...HYDRATE!   This is the rule that I obviously did not follow last night!  Frank Sinatra used to say that he felt sorry for people that don't drink because when they wake up in the morning it's the best they feel all day....I strongly disagree!  You can safely navigate such an event and feel just fine the next morning....but not if you forget to hydrate.  Alcohol gets into the cells of your body and takes the place of the water in those cells....if you don't rehydrate those cells after drinking copious  amounts of boos then presto....hangover!  As I sit here today I can attest that if you skip this rule than you have missed the maximum amount of enjoyment of such a wonderful event...even if you think did the night before!  

These rules have successfully helped me navigate many such a wine tasting or food event in great gastronomical and alcoholic bliss.  Remember that if you to want to learn from a pro then follow these simple rules and you will be in much better shape than I am this afternoon!

The Cost of a bottle of wine?

Three or so weeks ago I decided to take an early night off of work and take a beautiful girl, that I am very interested in, to a special restaurant up on Lake Martin called Spring House. Now I wanted this night to be perfect....so I called the chef to let him know we were coming,  I planned the timing perfect so we could enjoy sunset,  I looked up the menu online to know exactly what to order that night, and most importantly I brought an amazing bottle of wine.  In this case Shafer's 2001 Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon from the Stag's Leap District of Napa Valley in California.  To me this is no mere bottle of wine....this is a bottle which I had kept in a climate controlled cooler for many years and that had traversed the country with me as I worked in various locations.  When I decided to drink this very special bottle that night it began to occur to me that the importance of this bottle was not only monetary but also emotional and almost spritual.  I mean this bottle had been like a pet to me, that had been all over the country... through 3 or 4 apartments that I lived in...transported every time with the care of the Hope diamond!  I then remembered the amount that I paid for this bottle...upwards of $200...which brought me here...writing this blog.  I often hear from non-cork dorks a very simple question...."Why would somebody pay so much for a single bottle of wine?"  Now for some one like me that is a no brainer....BECAUSE IT IS A 2001 HILLSIDE SELECT!!!   However to most people that means very little..so I began to think...how could I illustrate to the common person the intrinsic value of such rare piece of the wine world.

To start I began thinking of the sheer value of a single bottle of wine from a monetary stand point and how it is derived in an open market.  Keynesian economic theory, which is one of the foremost economic theory's in our time, sates the law of supply and demand...meaning that if there is a huge demand for an item and a very low supply for that same item, than the cost will rise.   Sounds simple right?  Well here is the argument for most people against why a bottle of wine should not be so expensive by this theory...there is no shortage of wine in this world...and moreover in the current economy there is huge stock piles of wine that wineries and distributors can't give away....yet every vintage a bottle of say Chateau Mouton Rothschild increases in value and sells almost every bottle before it is even fermented!  The answer to this part of the question is that to everybody the difference between a bottle of Doug Shafer and Elias Fernandez's 2001 Hillside Select is no different than a bottle of the Gallo Familie's Tickle Pink Boone's Farm....I mean to some people a bottle of wine is nothing more than a bottle of wine!  That being said, to some of us that is simply not the case...and to the rest of you...well basically you should be slapped for ever thinking such a thing.   

To most people that drink wine regularly a big part of the reason a bottle of wine can still be considered "rare," even in times when so much wine is on the market, is because some of us know that a certain bottle of wine comes from a very special place on the earth...and in this special place the grapes are grown a certain way....cared for intensely over the course of their life...harvested at exactly the right time...and eventually put into a bottle for us to enjoy.  So if this is something you believe let me break down a few statistics to show you the actual rarity of a single bottle of wine, from a certain area of the world, in a certain year.  To begin lets look at the investment that a winemaker in the Napa Valley must make to produce wine.  On average an acre of land under vine that produces grapes in Napa cost somewhere between one hundred and twenty thousand dollars and three hundred thousand dollars.  The average for a small winery is around a million dollars.  Then you have labor, barrels, marketing, and so on and so on... so to say the least it is a very big investment.  Now lets look at the rarity of a single bottle of wine in sheer statistics!  There are currently about four hundred wineries in Napa that produce around nine point two million cases of wine annually....that equals out to one hundred million, four hundred thousand  bottles of wine a year. That means that if you are holding one bottle of wine from Napa you are holding .00000009% of that years anual production....small number right....but how small.  Well the distance between the earth and the sun is about a hundred million miles, give or take a few million.  This means that if you were floating out in space somewhere, you could be in a space ship a mile long (and by the way the Starship Enterpirse was only about twelve hundred feet long), and the length of your space ship would be about the same percentage of that same single bottle of wine from a single harvest in Napa....kinda puts it into perspective don't it Captain Kirk!  So is that the answer....it's the simple rarity...well if that is the case than all bottles of wine from a certain area would carry that type of value...so what is it then?

To this sommelier it is a mixture of a few things that are both tangible and intangible.  It is a proven fact that the more of anything you eat or drink the more your palate gets used to it and there fore changes.  This means that some one who has never tasted wine would never appreciate wine like I or many other millions of wine drinkers around the world do.   The Hillside Select would very simply taste "better" to me than to a non wine drinker because of my experience and palate....that is why you will rarely know some one that doesn't drink wine that will ever understand the reason we pay so much for a bottle of wine....but that's only half of the answer....if those people wouldn't pay so much what about the people that will?

That is about where I was in my screwed up little wine lovers brain when I let Lacey pour my date and I the first sip of the Hillside Select that had been decanting for well over an hour.  As we each took that first sip...that first pefect sip where my dates eyes lit up like diamonds in the sunlight...where I tasted for the first time the perfectly seamless tannins...the dark chocolate that gave way to a subtle tobacco and finished with a polished vanilla...that was the very moment that the answer to my question hit me like a ton of bricks.  All of these things really shouldn't matter to anybody except the person that is drinking such an incredible bottle of wine!  The value comes from those of us that can truly can savor and enjoy the wine for what it is...not the cost...not the pain staking measures to keep it perfectly stored...but instead that moment in time that the person or persons drinking that bottle will always remember and cherish!  I know that until I go to wino heaven, where we all start our day with a glass of Chateau Y'Quem and end it with a 1976 Dows vintage port and a plate of chocolate chip cookies (port and chocolate chip cookies....trust me!), I will always remember the awesome time I had that night....how perfect the food, the company, the service, and most of all that 2001 Hillside Select truly was!  Now if you tell me that you still do not understand why someone would pay so much for a bottle of wine...then you name me some other item that will put a smile on your face, as big as the one I get when thinking of that bottle of wine and the memory of the night that accompanies it and I will guarantee you, what ever that thing is, it won't be cheap!!!

Everyday questions for a sommelier...

About 2 years ago my life became much more interesting from a professional stand point when I passed my Sommelier (pronounced saw-muh-LYAY)  certification through the Court of Master Sommeliers.  Even though for years I had loved wine, and studied it intensely, after receiving an official certification, through such a respected program, I have found that many more people hit me with an array of questions on a daily basis.  Thanks to my mom's good friend Bart I have decided to learn to "Blog" to answer some of these questions and also address points of interest that some of my patrons, friends, and family members may have so I don't sound like a broken record answering the same questions everyday.  However I do warn you to bear with me....I am no literary genius and sometimes have no filter on my mouth....so if you get rubbed the wrong way please don't take it personal and know that it's only one person's point of view!   

One of the main questions that I get asked is "What is a sommelier?"  Well to answer this question straight from the "Wine Lover's Companion" (which by the way is one of the best wine books ever) a sommelier is a french term for a wine steward or waiter that is in charge of the wine at an establishment. Sounds simple, right?   A sommelier is often thought as a stuffy old man that stands in the corner of a restaurant and turns his nose up at any bottle of wine that doesn't cost over a hundred dollars and is not from Bordeaux and Burgundy.  In reality most of us are in the age range from 22-35 and are full of suggestions of wine to drink from anywhere in the world that are usually moderately priced.  Most of us aren't able to afford such affluent wines from the great estates of France so we are drinking alot of really good wines that you have never heard of.  So answer this question a little more frankly the real definition of a sommelier is someone who has an extensive knowledge of wine and food, who is in charge of selecting wine for an establishment, that is priced to sell, and loves to converse about wine everyday. Some of us have gone through a formal program such as the Court of Master Sommeliers program, but some of the most wine savvy people in the world have no formal certification.  This doesn't mean that they don't know as much as a "certified" sommelier, it just means that they didn't have the time money or inclination to jump through the hoops of being "certified" by an official program...which brings me to my next question. 

Question number two..."What do you have to do to become a certified sommelier?"  Well first of all you have to have a real passion for wine.  Now I don't mean that you like to go to Publix and buy a few bottles of wine and drink them with the hubby over dinner.  No, I mean you need to love everything  about wine.  The soil, the grape, the climates, the different countries, the myth, the lore, and the legend that all surround wine.  You need to be a bit of a history buff, a bit of a geography geek, with a pinch of scientist thrown into the mix.  If you have met all these criteria then you need to do two things...and do them often. 

One...taste alot of wine.  Now I am not telling you to go get drunk all the time...that's why I said "taste" and not "drink."  As sommeliers we may taste up to fifty or even a hundred wines a day...now if your "drinking" that much wine a day than you are reading the wrong blog...you need to be reading the twelve step blog.  Tasting is a deductive process by where you analyze a wine for its sight, smell, and flavor.  Moreover you need to be able to identify specific things about the wine that will help you pair it with different types of food...but we will get into that later down the road. 

Two...you need to study...alot!  If you want to pass the certified level of the sommelier exam you will need to know alot about all areas of the wine world.  When I say alot...I mean a whole lot!!!  For example...in Burgundy alone there are 33 Grand Cru Vineyards...not only do you need to know all of them but you also need to know what type of grapes are grown in each vineyard, which village they are in, which region of burgundy they are in and also the great vintages and producers from each.  Now knowing that Burgundy is one of the smallest wine regions in all of France you can imagine how much more difficult a larger region like Bordeaux could be. 

Once again if these criteria are met than you get to take the Court of Masters Sommelier Certified Exam.  This is an all day exam given at various places all over the country.  The typical exam will begin around 8:00 am and ends around 4:00 pm.  The exam consists of 3 parts, a blind tasting of 2 wines, one red and one white, where you must identify the type of grape, region of the world it is from, it's climate, fruit characteristic and vintage.  Part two is a written exam that consists of 25 questions mix and match multiple choice and short answer that covers all area of general wine knowledge.  Part three you have  a service exam where you must perform a mock service for a Master Sommelier.  In this part of the exam you will also be asked a myriad of food pairing questions, dessert wine questions, and anything else he or she feels like asking you....and a word to the wise....don't try to bullshit one of these guys...they will know!  If you pass all 3 portions of this test then you will be a certified sommelier...awarded a purple certified sommelier pin, Now as I mentioned it doesn't mean that you know more than anybody else...just that you know enough for a Master Sommelier to sign off on your knowledge.

Final Question..."How do I know what is a good wine to drink?"  Obviously the easiest answer to this question is "what ever wine you think tastes good."  However if the answer was that easy than I would be out of a job.  The best answer to this question is that it is an absolutely endless answer.  It all depends on so many variables that you could literally spend a week....and alot of "blogging" on this question alone...which is what alot of people do and that is not the point of these little rants.  The reason I decided to write this series is to give you some practical knowledge that you can use when I, or anybody else for that matter, are around.

So the first and best answer I can give you is to ask a person at your local wine shop, grocery store, restaurant, hotel, country club, etc.... that deems themselves the "wine guy" of that location.  However, like so many other things in life where you must rely on another person there is always the chance that the person you are asking is either an idiot or completely full of shit.  The good thing about wine is that you will get an immediate feedback when you drink the wine he or she sells you.  So say you go into you local wine shop and buy a bottle of wine in the price range that you want to be in and it sucks.  Most likely you can go back in the next day or week and ask a few questions or even explain what you didn't like about it and determine yourself if that person is telling you the truth or blowing sunshine up your ass.  If you do determine that he is not quite as knowledgeable as he leads onto to be than you simply go somewhere else and buy wine from a different person until you find some one you trust.  This is where a certification does lend a little creditability because as you now know they don't just give those purple pins away.

Another good answer to this question is to use the rating systems that some one like Robert Parker or Wine Spectator will use.  This is normally a system that an expert like Robert Parker or James Suckling will use to rate a wine, while they only know very little about the wine so that they keep impartiality.  The good thing about these systems is that they give a score to a wine which you can then compare to the wines price and make a decision based on the information.  The down side to this system is that it is normally based off of one persons palate.  Meaning that if your palate is different from the person that is rating the wine then you could end up spending alot of money on a wine that you think sucks.  Remember one of the benefits of having a good sommelier is that we take the time to not only determine your comfortable price point, but also your experience with wine and what you like....not just slapping some score on a wine and saying everyone should agree with it.  Now once again...I am not trying to rag on any of these experts that rate wines...they are all definitely much more experienced and much, much, more privileged to taste wines that I will probably never get to taste....but unless you are good chums with one of these guys good luck getting one of them to take time out of their day to talk to you about your personal preference in wine.   Which is ultimately what this question is all about...what do you as a person like to drink.  So I remit to my first answer get to know you local wine guru and try things he suggests....speak at length with him about what you like and dislike...and most of all enjoy what you drink!!!