I had never attended the Playhouse Wine Festival before this year. I have been to many other similar events and as a general rule, I'm not a big fan of large wine tasting events. It reminds me of a cattle call. And to be fair, I haven't usually been in town to attend it.
This year I decided to take advantage of the fact that I was in town during the event. I was invited to some private tasting suites and I signed up for 3 wine seminars. I even joined the herd on the main tasting floor.
I attended 3 seminars on Saturday, Vinho Verde, Blind Blind and Century Mark. Blind Blind was a double blind wine tasting. Not only did we not know what wines we were drinking, we were also blindfolded. The idea being that taking away one sense heightens the others. Now as I've previously mentioned, I suck at blind wine tasting. This was a great seminar for me to work on my skills. Having just got back into town on Thursday night I hadn't had a chance yet to start building on my nose encyclopedia but I am happy to report that I did get 2 of the 10 wines right. And by right I guessed what grape varietal they were. Baby steps.
During the Century Mark seminar we tasted 9 wines all from vines that are over 100 years old. The vines are over 100 years old not the bottles of wine. These wines are produced in limited quantities because vines that old have small yields meaning they don't produce a lot of grapes. The wines were very dark and rich. I wish they would have given us some cheese during the tasting because these wines are so intense that a bite of cheese would have made a big difference towards the enjoyment of them.
But the seminar I enjoyed the most was Vinho Verde. Vinho Verde is a white Portugese wine. This was my a-ha moment. One of my goals with this blog is to introduce people to good quality wines that don't cost a fortune. Vinho Verde is one of those wines. You all know how I feel about Critter Wines, well I have found the exception to the rule. Vinho Verde Gatao (there's a blue cat on the label). This is an awesome wine. Once the weather warms up, it will be great to sip on the patio by itself or with a wide variety of appetizers. During the seminar there were snacks provided by the chef of the convention center so we got to try the wines with various foods. There is a huge Asian influence in Vancouver's cuisine and it's often hard to find wines to work with all the complex spices. Typically Rieslings have been the go to wine for Asian food as well as Sauvignon Blanc. The Vinho Verde wines were amazing with the Asian spices. The other two wines that stood out were Arco Nova Rose 2007 and Arco Nova Loureiro 2007. We tasted 6 wines and they were all fabulous and all under $20. The problem is that 3 of them aren't available yet. You can get Gatao at the BC Liquor Store for $10.99. The Arco Nova wines are available at Everything Wine in North Vancouver. If you are in North Van, it's worth a trip to Everything Wine to pick these wines up. The Rose' worked so well with all the snacks we tried. I was told that if you bought them by the case you got a $2/bottle discount off the listed price. Well worth it because once you have these wines at home, they will be gone quickly.
Aside from the great wines tasted during the seminars, I really need to comment on how excellent the events were run. The people they had running the seminars and on all the panels were fabulous. They made each event very enjoyable. I can't wait until next year so I can attend more seminars.
It made me very proud to be a Vancouverite. Many people from all over the world come to this event. This wine festival is really world class.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Court of Master Sommeliers
I recently returned from Orlando Florida where I was writing some exams for the Court of Master Sommeliers. I am a sommelier with the Federation of Italian Sommeliers (FISAR) as well as their Sommelier of the Year 2007. So the obvious question is why write exams for another sommelier organization. As with many things Italian, I find FISAR to be disorganized and unprofessional. Also, it is unknown outside of Italy. The Court of Master Sommeliers is recognized worldwide and there are very few Master Sommeliers out there. The program is very intense. I headed to Orlando because I could write several exams in 3 days. And Mickey's there. You automatically think wine when you see Mickey. Or is that just me because I'm trying to drown out the screaming children that typically surround him?
I arrived in Orlando around 8pm on Sunday night and my first seminar was at 6:30am Monday morning. I spent 2 full days in lectures before writing the first of 4 exams. The lectures consisted of an overview of all the aspects of winemaking as well as all the wine regions of the world. These weren't lessons. You had to know your stuff before walking in that door or you would have been lost. The key part of these 2 days for me was the blind wine tastings. Let me explain what that is. A blind wine tasting is when you are given a wine and you have to figure out what it is by looking at it, smelling it and tasting it. You then draw a conclusion as to if the wine is old world or new world, the grape varietal you think it is, the country and region you think it comes from and what year it is. Easy right? We tasted 28 wines over those 2 days. I suck at blind wine tasting.
There are a few reasons why I suck at blind wine tastings. A key one is that my nose isn't great. It looks good on my face but it isn't fine tuned in the smell department. I don't know if this is a result of the many sinus infections I've had over the years or if it just never worked properly out of the factory. Everyone is different with their smell abilities. I think people that grow up in the country have more to work with as they've been exposed to more of natures' smells than city folk. And I'm a total city girl. The other reason is that I've never been properly trained to analyze wines like that. The main focus in my Italian training was wine and food pairing, a subject that wasn't even discussed in the Orlando sessions. So for me, the blind wine tasting sessions were very important and one of the main reasons I wanted to enter this program.
The first exam came at the end of day 2. It was a multiple choice written exam covering everything imaginable about wine. Out of over 100 people who wrote, I got the highest score. There was no time to celebrate as at 8am the next morning I was back for more exams. The first one of day 3 was the dreaded blind wine tasting at 8:45am. The theory is that your nose is at it's sharpest first thing in the morning. My nose is still asleep at that time. Try as I might, I couldn't get anything out of the wines. Now, my nose isn't completely useless but it sure was that morning. I tried my best and then moved on to the written exam. This exam was harder than the one the previous day but I did well. After the written we had to do a practical service exam. We were put in a restaurant setting and had to open a bottle of champagne for our customer and answer various questions that he asked.
Let me talk about the champagne for a minute. Each sommelier association has their own service protocol they want you to follow. The ideal way to open a bottle of champagne for the the Court of Master Sommeliers is in the air, with a napkin over the top. I've never opened one like that before. I could have left it in the ice bucket and opened it there (which I should have done) but I wanted to do it in the preferred manner. When opening a bottle of champagne you should never pop the cork. The cork should be released gently so the champagne hisses. When I opened my bottle it sounded like a Disney firework went off.
Once I recomposed myself, I continued with the exam. I was asked a variety of questions including wine recommendations for particular dishes. Because of the champagne incident, I didn't think I did very well but surprisingly enough I got a good review and was even complimented on my wine/food pairing abilities. So it all came down to the dreaded blind wine tasting. It was no big surprise that I didn't do very well on that part.
So what does this all mean? Because the blind wine tasting is such an important part of the total exam, I can't move on to the next level yet. I was very disappointed that I didn't do better but I'm not giving up. I am going to work on my blind wine tasting techniques and start working on my nose. It is possible to train your nose. I just have to start smelling everything and commit those smells to memory. Build up my nose encyclopedia.
And drink lots of wine.
Studying is hard.
I arrived in Orlando around 8pm on Sunday night and my first seminar was at 6:30am Monday morning. I spent 2 full days in lectures before writing the first of 4 exams. The lectures consisted of an overview of all the aspects of winemaking as well as all the wine regions of the world. These weren't lessons. You had to know your stuff before walking in that door or you would have been lost. The key part of these 2 days for me was the blind wine tastings. Let me explain what that is. A blind wine tasting is when you are given a wine and you have to figure out what it is by looking at it, smelling it and tasting it. You then draw a conclusion as to if the wine is old world or new world, the grape varietal you think it is, the country and region you think it comes from and what year it is. Easy right? We tasted 28 wines over those 2 days. I suck at blind wine tasting.
There are a few reasons why I suck at blind wine tastings. A key one is that my nose isn't great. It looks good on my face but it isn't fine tuned in the smell department. I don't know if this is a result of the many sinus infections I've had over the years or if it just never worked properly out of the factory. Everyone is different with their smell abilities. I think people that grow up in the country have more to work with as they've been exposed to more of natures' smells than city folk. And I'm a total city girl. The other reason is that I've never been properly trained to analyze wines like that. The main focus in my Italian training was wine and food pairing, a subject that wasn't even discussed in the Orlando sessions. So for me, the blind wine tasting sessions were very important and one of the main reasons I wanted to enter this program.
The first exam came at the end of day 2. It was a multiple choice written exam covering everything imaginable about wine. Out of over 100 people who wrote, I got the highest score. There was no time to celebrate as at 8am the next morning I was back for more exams. The first one of day 3 was the dreaded blind wine tasting at 8:45am. The theory is that your nose is at it's sharpest first thing in the morning. My nose is still asleep at that time. Try as I might, I couldn't get anything out of the wines. Now, my nose isn't completely useless but it sure was that morning. I tried my best and then moved on to the written exam. This exam was harder than the one the previous day but I did well. After the written we had to do a practical service exam. We were put in a restaurant setting and had to open a bottle of champagne for our customer and answer various questions that he asked.
Let me talk about the champagne for a minute. Each sommelier association has their own service protocol they want you to follow. The ideal way to open a bottle of champagne for the the Court of Master Sommeliers is in the air, with a napkin over the top. I've never opened one like that before. I could have left it in the ice bucket and opened it there (which I should have done) but I wanted to do it in the preferred manner. When opening a bottle of champagne you should never pop the cork. The cork should be released gently so the champagne hisses. When I opened my bottle it sounded like a Disney firework went off.
Once I recomposed myself, I continued with the exam. I was asked a variety of questions including wine recommendations for particular dishes. Because of the champagne incident, I didn't think I did very well but surprisingly enough I got a good review and was even complimented on my wine/food pairing abilities. So it all came down to the dreaded blind wine tasting. It was no big surprise that I didn't do very well on that part.
So what does this all mean? Because the blind wine tasting is such an important part of the total exam, I can't move on to the next level yet. I was very disappointed that I didn't do better but I'm not giving up. I am going to work on my blind wine tasting techniques and start working on my nose. It is possible to train your nose. I just have to start smelling everything and commit those smells to memory. Build up my nose encyclopedia.
And drink lots of wine.
Studying is hard.
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