The Culinary Tales Week 29 1/2: Grape Expectations

August 25, 2014

 

Garde Manger was proving to be a challenging track, and what gave me extra incentive to look forward to the weekend was Wine class on Saturdays.

 

 

But even wine class was tough. We didn’t just spend the time drinking wine. We were in class from 8 am to 2 pm, and most of those hours were filled with long-winded lectures on grapes, wine regions, the wine-making process, etc. Our sommelier teacher was a little long-winded and with so much information to digest, I often fell asleep in class.

 

 

I used to come home from Saturday classes, take a nap, and then tackle my to do list. Instead, I found myself sleeping through Sunday morning. That’s how exhausted I was.

 

 

But one Sunday found us trekking up to the Central Coast for a mandatory winery visit. We were supposed to go to a report on it. I talked a buncho of my classmates into visiting Cottonwood Canyon in Santa Maria.

 

 

It’s a small boutique winery, founded by a Silicon Valley millionaire who made a fortune in software development and decided he wanted to be a winemaker in his retirement.

 

 

He spent about $1-2M building a humidity- and temperature-controlled cave on the premises, the sole reason I picked it for the report. I believe it’s only one of two wineries in California with a cave.

 

 

It was a lovely visit and I very much enjoyed their wines. It’s such a small operation that they hand-bottle their product; a bottling party is open to the public every year. (I had hoped to make it to the party the next fall but to this day, I haven’t found the time. Maybe this year.)

 

 

Despite the hectic schedule, I managed to squeeze in a screening of Bottle Shock, an independent movie from the makers of Sideways about a little Napa winery that shocked the world by beating highly regarded French wineries in a 1976 Paris tasting. We had talked about this historic event in wine class and the timing of the film’s release was a little creepy.

 

 

Actually, two Napa wineries beat the French: Chateau Montelena won the white category while Stag’s Leap took the reds. The movie only concentrated on the Chateau Montelena story, and though the big-screen version was romanticized for cinema’s sake, the community spirit of the winemakers isn’t fiction.

 

 

These wineries put California front and center on the wine map. It wasn’t long after that Moet & Chandon had the foresight to invest in California, and California earned some respect. In the aftermath of that event, subsequent tastings were conducted, and Napa continued to kick serious French butt. (The French will concede that New World wines are technically superb though they lack character. “Terroir” as they like to call it, that certain inimitable je ne sais quois that apparently only French wines possess. Whatevs!)

 

 

There was a reception following the screening in which a mock blind tasting was staged. We had five wines to taste and we had to pick our two favorite wines. I had a hard time choosing between Bouchaine and Chateau Montelena, but I ranked them 1 and 2 respectively. Bouchaine won, followed by (wait for it… wait for it) Two Buck Chuck. (The organizers couldn’t help it.) Montelena came in third, an Australian wine came in fourth and the French wine came in a Pluto-distant fifth. So much for “personality.” Though this may have more to do with what folks are used to drinking.

 

 

I worked on my winery paper late into the night after the movie screening. As I had been prone to doing all year, I miscalculated my time management. I had figured there was plenty of time to tackle it throughout the week AND take in a movie. I was wrong, but I got the job done. (So much for getting some sleep.)

 

 

As much as I enjoyed wine class, I was grateful it was coming to an end. I was in dire need of getting my Saturdays back and I realized that the wine (or perhaps, our teacher’s long-windedness) wore me down.

 

 

But at least the last couple of classes actually offered us wine and food pairings. People commonly say that a wine enhances food, but I disagree. I think food enhances wine: try drinking wine before taking a bite. Then eat something, like fruit or cheese and then take another sip. The wine tastes better, doesn’t it?

 

 

Our teacher brought Italian wines for our last day, among them Frizzante, a sweet, fizzy red wine that is milder than Lambrusco (another red sparkling wine that I wish more restaurants carried.)

 

 

Frizzante dances like a sweet mambo on your tongue compared to the wild salsa that fuller sparklers like champagne and prosecco do. I drank more than my share of the bottle and tried to sneak the rest home, but everyone wanted seconds (and thirds…)

 

 

Sigh. A bottle can only give so much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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