Wine for the First Week

Well we're off! Three days into my Certified Sommelier wine program and so far I am loving every minute of it! There's a lot of information coming at me, and the first two days I felt exhausted with what I can only think to call "brain drain". It's been so long since I've felt that kind of tiredness that happens from taking in and processing a lot of information, where my body is ready to move but my brain is chocolate pudding. Now though, I am finding it energizing. I guess I have to cop to being a bit of a learning geek. I love me some learnin'!

Now to be fair, I don't love learning all things equally, as anyone who has tried to teach me math can attest to. Whenever there is math involved, invariably panic and tears follow, so I have done my best to avoid it at all costs. I didn't much take to learning how to ride a bike either, as evidenced by the fact that I just didn't do it in my childhood and then, by the time I got to be an adult, I was too afraid to try and teach myself. I wound up enrolling in a class in New York, taught specifically to adults like me who never learned how to ride a bike. The class went fine, the teacher was very good, and I did, indeed, learn how to get the balance and ride the bike very slowly in a straight line (while 6-year-olds raced by me laughing). Well, I say a straight line; it was a straight line punctuated by spontaneous and unintentional figure-eights and circles which I was totally unable to prevent or control. But once I got the balance, that was it; I got off the bike and have not been back on to this day. The final thing I have not been a good student at was learning how to drive a manual transmission car. Steve tried to teach me once, but every time the car stalled I had a minor panic attack and began shrieking in a pitch that only dogs could hear. So that was the end of that.

But wine class, I mean, come on, what's not to love? We talk about wine, we drink wine, and then we talk about it some more. Not a bad way to spend the day. The worst thing about this class for me is that I have to dress up. I can't wear jeans, and I live in jeans, so this has caused me a bit of wardrobe panic. I do not own very many clothes, and out of what I do have, at least half of it was bought in 1999. I kid you not. I have about 15 pairs of jeans and one, that's right, ONE pair of black dress pants. And I seriously cannot remember what year I bought those pants, but it could have easily been in 2001. So I went to The Gap and bought a black and white pair of dress pants to shake it up a little and give the other pair a rest. For the Sommelier exam I have to wear a nice suit. I have one pant-suit which I bought for auditions in 2004, and that's the only one I have. And I've gained weight since I bought it, so it doesn't even fit!

The solution is easy I know, but I hate clothes shopping. I don't like sterile shops with their florescent lighting and their recirculated air. I know nothing about fashion and what's more, I don't really care about it, and I end of feeling guilty about every penny spent on clothing, and though I know it is a necessity, I feel somehow like it's frivolous. So as a result, I rotate between the same four pairs of jeans, the same four t-shirts, the same four sweaters and the same four...nope that's about it, I have nothing else. I was going to say the same four shoes, but I don't even have four of the same type of shoe! I have one pair of hiking shoes, one pair of sneakers, one pair of every-day black slip-ons, one pair of high-heel boots, one pair of sandals and one pair of high heels. Really. That's it. And it doesn't really matter, I know, but I do worry that everyone I know has, at some point registered the fact that I essentially wear the same four things ALL THE TIME. This information will probably cause some dismay to my girl-friends in the building who have been coming to me for pre-date wardrobe advice. Even Steve couldn't argue with me when I said; "I mean, have they SEEN me?" High-class problem I know, but nonetheless...

Back to the wine-class: it is taught by a Master Sommelier named David Glancy. He is a very good teacher, who imparts a lot of information in an easy-to-understand format and is funny without seeming like he's auditioning for a job hosting The Oscars. The class itself is an interesting mix of people: 12 men and 10 women, which is different than I would have thought. I expected fewer women for some reason, but I'm glad to see there are so many of us! There are a lot of people like me who have been in other careers and are making a switch. A sign of the times, there are quite a number of people who were in finance, real estate, and mortgage lending prior to this, and who are now having to think of alternate careers. And a number of people who said they were tired of the jobs they had been in and hated for the last 25 years, and were trying now to do something they enjoyed. Everybody seems to be at a similar level of wine-knowledge, which is comforting.

There are a few interesting human-nature quirks I have noticed that have made me laugh: the first is seating. On the first day, we all chose seats at random, and every day since then we have all sat in the exact same seats. We don't have to, but we all do. Except for me today, because I was the last person to arrive and some dirty rat had taken my seat and for the whole class I kept turning around, giving him the stink-eye and staring at my seat with longing. Tomorrow I plan to get there extra early to re-plant my flag, dammit. The second thing I've noticed is competitiveness. It's very subtle and friendly, but it's there. And it all seems to be the guys being competitive with each other. Today we had a whole series of component tastings, in which the instructor took a Chardonnay and doctored it a million different ways, to get us to sharpen our senses and identify varying levels of Tannin, Acid, Alcohol and Sugar in the wine. He also took twelve glasses of that same Chardonnay and spiked each glass with a different fruit, vegetable, spice or herb, and our job was to see how many of these we could identify first by smell alone and then by taste.

This was loads of fun by the way, but as we were tasting, and afterward, when we found out if we had guessed right, I could hear a lot of the men all over the room, hissing at each other: "Dude, I totally know what this one is, do you?" "I got all of those right" "I would have gotten that, but I've been smelling so many wines my nose is just shot" "Dude, I swallowed fire last night, but I still got that one right", and so on. It just makes me laugh. It seems very hard to leave the locker-room behind. And honestly, it doesn't get more sissy-fied than wine, but these guys were still finding a way to macho it up. And I say that with much love and affection. Tomorrow we start service, for which we have to open a bottle of champagne, decant a bottle of wine, pour multiple glasses, carry these glasses on a tray and serve these glasses to people. I can't wait to hear the boasts/counter boasts for this: "My champagne cork popped so hard", "Did you see how far my cork flew?", "I can carry fifty glasses on a tray", "That's nothing, I can carry one hundred glasses balancing the tray with one hand", "One hand? I can carry one hundred glasses, balancing the tray on my fingertips", "Fingertips? Check it out...one finger my friend", "Dudes...I don't even need to hold the tray. My tray just rides ahead of me on a wave of my testosterone. I'm that much man."

Well, I think we have a winner...

The wine I am recommending for the first week of school is a 2006 Chappelet Cabernet Sauvignon. This is one of the wines we tasted in our very first blind tasting yesterday, and it is just lovely: dark, rich red color, and it smells dark and rich too, of stewed red fruits mulling in spices like cinnamon and clove, and you can almost taste and smell the warmth of the Napa Valley in it. A perfect winter wine for stews and other hearty fare.

Enjoy. I will be thinking of you all tomorrow while I am balancing a tray of 500 glasses on my head and opening champagne bottles with my teeth. I'll let you know how it goes.