Um, so You guys can hear me OK with this microphone?
So I'd like to proceed by saying I have no official credential
in wine. I have no master sommelier, any of that.
But I have been reading about wine for years, I've been traveling to many of the wine regions in the
world: California and Italy, France I think I know some, so this is intended for beginners and hopefully you'll gain something from my talk so I do want to say that I'm not an expert but hopefully you
will benefit and over the past years I've been having
some practice educating my wife about wine. I remember
one of our first dates and I got excited "I'm dating an Italian." She was born and bred near Rome and I got a really nice bottle wine, I decanted
it and and I served it to her and she's all "I
don't really like wine" [laughter] but, there's been a lot of progress since then. So this is going to be a basic wine course. For example some of you may have gone to
a wine store in seen something like this this might be a little bit intimidating
to you. I know many people including my wife have bought wines based on the painting or the picture on the label so I
want to provide more information to you so you can make more informed decisions and hopefully get a wine that you you
enjoy a little bit more. So that's the point of this talk. So the first thing I want to
point out is that wine can be an experience it's not just a beverage, it's going
to be something that involves all five senses. And when we think
about it this way it does shed a little bit a light into
how people talk about wine, reading wine descriptions, and maneuvering the
wine world a little bit more. So I'm going to start and go through the five senses. So first off: taste. We have five taste senses. I'm only going to talk about the four that most of you will know about. The first one is sweet, so basically a wine can be sweet. And if it's not sweet, it's typically called dry. So whenever someone
describes a dry wine that means it's not sweet. And by the way, I notice a couple people taking notes. Number one this talk is being recorded so there
will be a video posted later on and there will also be PDFs of these slides so pretty much everything that I'm saying on the slides will be available afterwards, so no need to go crazy with the notes. The second--- so sweet and dry, so dry is not sweet.
The other aspect of taste is acidic. So many wines are
described as acidic and this is like lemon juice, vinegar. And
this is something I'm going to be talking about a little bit later throughout the talk the other two tastes, sour and bitter,
don't really come up in too much in wine but there are some examples that it will but I really want to focus on the first
two: the sweet, or lack of sweetness of a
wine, and the acidity of a wine. But beyond that, the one that's more important and the one that really gives the flavor to
the wine is the smell. And if you talk about wine especially
more in the maybe perhaps a little more pretentious
approach to it, they usually call the smell of a wine the "bouquet" or the "nose" a wine. So whenever you read the "nose" of a wine, that means its smell, or the "bouquet" of a wine, that means its smell. But here where gets really
interesting. There's actually a whole slew of
different possible smells you can get from smelling a wine. Let me give a couple of examples. So fruit, flowers, yeast, earth
leather, wood, chocolate. All these come about in wine. So for
example, fruit: this could be apples or this
could be lemons, oranges, and these are usually associated with white wines. And the way you can experience this is, the next time you have a wine, smell it but close your eyes. Close your eyes, smell the wine, and see what comes to mind. Many times you would swear that you have an apple in front of you, or a lemon in front of you. Flowers, rose. These are typically
associated with rosés and many types of wine like that. Yeast: you might not think this is a good aspect associated with wine but this is typical of many sparkling wines and champagnes. Earth: this also might be a weird one but
this is typical of Pinot Noir and it's not like you're smelling dirt, but like an earth essence and it actually goes really well with the
more mushroom-based dishes and truffle-based dishes. And I'll talk about pairings later on in this talk as well.
You can experience leather in old red wines and basically almost like smelling like nice new
leather and in a glass a wine. And that's typical of the good wines
that have aged a number of years. Wood: many times you're going to smell like
cedar an old red wines or oak in a chardonnay, but again it's
wood and this is what really gets the different flavors, the different
profiles of wine and this is what is associated with the
descriptions are sometimes written on the back of a wine or on a review of a wine. Chocolate as well. This will arrive in or come about in, say red wines and ports as well. So, smell. Third is sight, so using your eyes is going to be very important
for enjoying wine as well. And this I'm going to talk
about a little more later but basically I'm going to refer to color
of a wine red verses white as well the clarity: is
it almost transparent and see-through or is it very opaque and cloudy? So this is going to be different aspects of the color of wine. Touch: so touch is associated with wine as
well. And this is typically called "mouthfeel"
when you're talking about wine and a couple of examples that come to
mind is descriptions that are full verses
light-bodied ones and this is analogous to drinking cream verses nonfat milk. When you drink cream it fills your mouth, feels heavy because of all the fat. Skim milk feels like you're almost drinking water. It's a straight parallel to that in
terms of wine. Full body wines feel like a cream. Light-bodied wines feel like non-fat milk. And finally, oh I forgot about this. Touch tannins: this is another descriptive term
that's pretty important for red wines. This allows wants to age but it's an aspect that you either like or you hate So tannins, you can describe it as it dries
out your mouth. It's almost as if you put cotton in your mouth, and it feels like the moisture is leaving your mouth. It's also associated or described in terms of really strong tea. Once you swallow the tea, your mouth ends up feeling a little dry. Those are tannins, and usually these are associated with the bigger red wines like Cabernet Sauvignon, and some merlots. Now let's talk about how
that's associated with food as well. So that's the touch aspect of wine and finally, does anyone have any idea how
the the sound comes in? Sound is associated with wine too. Yeah, any ideas? Clinking. [laughter] So wine uses all these senses. Okay? So another message I want to give you guys, there is no best wine. Wine is
really subjective, so basically, I'm giving you tools to figure
out what you like. Just because I like a wine doesn't mean
you like a wine. My wife and I have very different flavors when it
comes to wine so there's not like an objective evaluation of wine, so keep that in mind
and hopefully you can find out the wines that you like the best after this talk. Okay? So, I'm going to elaborate upon many of these
throughout this talk. The other aspect that is really
important when it comes into wine is something called new world verses old world. So basically the wine world is split
into new world and old world. New world is easier. Basically if you get a bottle wine from a new world producer, a new world country, it's going to tell you what the varietal,
what the grape is, that the wine is made from, so
varietal means grape. So the new world is typically the United
States, predominately California, Washington, and Oregon. These are the three states that produce probably the most wine in the US but they are also
produced in New York and I think up to ten other states, so
it's all over the United States. But, these are the big the big players in the US. Canada and Mexico also produce wine. Canada surprisingly produces some really
good wine which I'm going to talk about a little bit later. Other countries that are classified as
new world, South America, Chile, and Argentina make
really good wine. Peru makes decent wine. But Puru, if you look at it, and I know because my mom is from Peru so I've been there many times, their best grapes are used to make Pisco, so Pisco Sour. So you're not going to get phenomenal wines from Peru in my opinion. But you will get phenomenal wines from
Chile and Argentina. Australia New Zealand also considered
new world and South Africa's consider new world, so
if you get a wine from any of these countries, it will say what the grape is that goes
into making the wine, or the combination of grapes. So the new world will be a little bit easier to to
deal with. In contrast, the old world names its wine after the
region in which it's made So for example, and I'll talk about this in a second, Chianti. Chianti is an Italian red wine and Chianti is a region in Italy. So if you see a bottle that says Chianti, it's made in the Chianti region. But unless you know otherwise, you don't know what grape is going into that wine. It will never say on the bottle. There are some exceptions, but primarily it will not say on the bottle. So when you're dealing with an old world wine, you have to know what grapes are going into that region
and then you can make your choice based on that. So all the old world countries are going to be France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece,
Germany, primarily Europe. As I said this is
the harder portion of the wine world to maneuver. But I'm going to be talking about France and Italy in a little bit of detail. I don't have time for the rest, but just
to give you an idea of how all this would be maneuvered. So stereotypically, historically, French
wine has been deemed the best, and when my wife saw this item, she hit me. [laughter] She did. So, this was actually proved wrong in 1976. In 1976 there was something called the
judgment of Paris, and this was a blind tasting of both red
and white wines from California and from France. So in particular it was Napa Valley versus
Bordeaux and they picked the five best producers in Napa and the
five best producers in Bordeaux and they had a blind taste testing in
Paris. Blind meaning they didn't know what the labels were. And what happened was, California won. The best red wine and the best white wine came from California. Different wineries, but California was the winner. And this put the the wine world on its
head. Everyone was so surprised. One judge was shamed--she was trying her
best to get her judgments back. She literally tried to invalidate her own votes. But the winners, and there are wines that are still produced--you can go buy them. The best red wine was the Cabernet
from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars. They're still doing really well, the wine
is excellent if you're willing to pay say, they're not cheap, maybe 40-50 bucks, it's phenomenal. On the white side was a
chardonnay from Chateau Montelena and that's on the northern part
of Napa Valley near Calistoga but they're there, they're going strong--
excellent wines as well. But basically, there is no best wine. You know
when you have the wine experts that always say French are the best, that
was violated. Alright. So that's the difference between new and
old world and for the remiander of the talk I'm going to be talking about new world first, talking about the varietals so you can maneuver new world more easily then I'll talk about the old world. And before I do that I want to talk about labels a little bit. So on the left is a label from the new world, on the right is a label from the old world. So in the new world, this is a label from Napa Valley and Luna is the producer. On the old world this is from Chianti, so Ruffino is going to be the producer. So the label will always tell you what the producer is. The new world will also tell you the grape. So this Luna is making a wine from the red wine grape Sangiovese. Chianti Classico is labeled here
because that's where the wine is made and you just have to know that's also made from Sangiovese. So these two wines are made from the same grape yet you'll never see the word Sangiovese on this label. Another piece of information from a wine label is going to be the vintage, the year the wine was made. So this one was 1994, this one was 2003. I'll talk about vintages at the end of the talk. The other thing that's relevant kind of hard to see, but basically alcohol percent by volume and I think this one
was 15.6. This is a strong red wine. Here it's about 12 percent so it's a
less alcoholic wine from the same grape. But this is relevant if you want to get drunk or you don't. [laughter] Alcohol strength varies. It'll go from like
nine percent up to 16 percent. So it can vary a lot, so does pay to look
at that and to make sure you know what you're getting. So I think that's the most I wanted to say about the labels right now. That's the most important information. And again, the difference is, in the New
World you know the grape, and in the old world, you don't know what the grape is. So now let's get into color clarity and then I'll be talking about the varietals. I'm going to do white and then red. These are all white wines, so asking for a white wine is a very vague statement. So we can see that we can have wines that are almost
transparent, almost clear like water to almost brown. These are all white
wines from different varietals, from different
grapes. And I will give you a little information to show you like why the different colors come about and what the different flavors are. So in two slides or three slides, I will show you what grape goes into each of these wines. But the point is, not all white wine is created equal. So, I want to talk about white wine varietals of which there are hundreds. I'm going to give you three or four. So I'm going to give you some of the more popular ones, give short little descriptions and then hopefully you can go off on your own and learn more about different types of white wines because I don't want to do information. I'll give little examples and then you can go off on your own. White wines are typically made from green grapes. So this is like a grape that's the color green. And the way the white wine more precisely is made is they'll press the grape and they'll make the wine from the juice itself. They basically add yeast which can convert the sugar in the grape juice to alcohol, sugar disappears and then that becomes a wine. There's also an exception. So white wines are usually made from
green grapes but not always. I'll show you an exception of this, I'll give you two examples of exceptions. So basically it's possible to make white wine from red grapes, but typically it's from the green grapes. First example: Riesling So this might not be the most popular varietal out there, but the reason I mention it is that it's typically sweet, it's typically easy to drink and it's a good starter wine. So if there are any of you in here who have never really had wine before I strongly suggest to start with the riesling It's like slightly punched fruit juice. And it's great with spicy food. So spicy food I'll mention toward the end is actually pretty hard to pair with wines but if you add sweetness to it, it becomes much easier to pair with. So riesling actually goes really well with Indian food, Thai, Mexican food. Whereas I pretty much would not match any other wine with it. So sweet wines go with spicy foods. Sauvignon Blanc is another type of white wine, another varietal. This is one that is typically acidic so it has more acidity than other types
of wines and that's good because it usually goes
well with food on as long as it's not spicy it
typically goes pretty well. And the acidity acts like lemon juice that you
put on seafood. The acidity brings out the flavor So the acidity from the white wine helps you taste the food a little bit better. So that's a good default if you're trying to match with food. And then there's Chardonnay. And Chardonnay, I'm sure you guys have heard of, is probably one the most versatile white
wines. So it's hard to even describe what
it is because it can be many different things. So for example if you get a Chardonnay
from California typically they're described as buttery and oaky. If you smell it, you smell wood because
they're typically stored and aged in oak barrels so the oak barrel imparts its flavor into the
wine. In contrast, the Chablis region from France makes Chardonnays but they don't really store it in oak, they store it in stainless steel so it doesn't have any of the butteriness, doesn't have any of the oakness and it tastes completely different. So there's huge variety. And there's one last grape I want to mention: Pinot Grigio. So I want to talk about Pinot Grigio versus Pinot Blanc. So Pinot Blanc looks like this. It's a green grape, it makes a white wine. But Pinot Grigio is also known as Pinot
Gris. So grigio is Italian for grey, and gris is French for grey. It's like the grey pinot. It looks like this, it's kinda like a red grape. They will make white wine from this red grape. Basically press out all the grape juice, throw away the skins, and they make a white wine from that. So even though you might be a familiar
with Pinot Grigio it's a pretty popular white wine from Italy, it's actually made from a red grape. So those are samples of white wine varietals there's a lot more, but just to get you started So let's go back here Let's see how those varietals fit into this scale of colors. So Pinot Grigio is typically pretty transparent. Pretty low amount of color. Sometimes, and I've seen them before, some Pinot Grigios look almost like water and have mistaken it for water before so be careful with that. When you go toward the right, the next one is going to be a Sauvignon Blanc. Still pretty clear but you can tell that is has some yellowness of color to it. Moving on, Viognier. I didn't mention this, but this is going to be another grape that's very common in France and they're
starting to make it in California as well. A little bit more color, a little bit more full-bodied. So as you move from left to right, they become more full bodied, more toward the cream aspect than to the non-fat milk. The next one is Chardonnay. Chardonnay typically has the most color because most of them are aged in oak, so the wood is going to impart some color into it. The next one I'm actually not going to give you a varietal. But I'm simply going to call it an aged white wine. So some wines are going to be capable of aging and the ones that do, when they're white,
typically become browner with age. So typically white wines gain color as they become older. That doesn't mean you should go grab a ten dollar bottle of Pinot and then save it for ten years. [laughter] Not all wines should be aged and I'll talk about that at the end. And the last one is a special type of white wine which I will define and talk about later, but Sherry. Sherry is going to be a much darker colored white wine it's almost like brown. So with white wines, different colors come from different
varietals, different player profiles and there's so much there so the one point of advice I can
give you right now is explore. Try different kinds, see what you like, and go from there. I'm still trying new varietals so I like to find really random ones and
taste it and see what it's like and sometimes I like it and I go with it, and I'll give examples of that towards the end as well. Okay Red wine: I couldn't find a good graphic but the point is the same. So especially with this projector it looks almost the same right? It looks better on my screen but if you do this on your own and you pour
them in glasses, you'll see that the colors are going to very and in a couple slides I'll tell you a little bit about what colors are associated with which varietals. But before I do, I want to talk about the red wine varietals the grapes that go into making red wine. So this is going to be a red wine grape and as you can see it's almost like blue but the way you make a red one is you're
going to crush it just like you did for the white grapes but you can keep the skin. That's the main difference. So the skin, the color of the skin, is going
to give the color to the wine. If you look inside one of these grapes, it's actually like clear colored meat. If you take away the skin you'll get a white wine So it's the skin that gives the color to the red wine, and the different flavors, and the tannins. A couple of examples: Merlot. Merlot is probably the one that most of you know. And this is going to be my recommendation for a starter wine on the red side. It's typically fruity. If you smell a Merlot it might smell like berries, sometimes strawberries, raspberries, more wood type of berries and typically they have unless you really invest they don't have too many
tannins so you're not going to get that that dry feel in your mouth and it's a good starter wine in my opinion on
the red side. Another example: Zinfandel. And there's a big difference
between Zinfandel and white Zinfandel. So it's the same grape.
Zinfandel grapes look like this. and you can make a red wine from it
that's phenomenal White Zinfandel is actually a rosé oh I didn't say that so Rosé wine comes from limited contact with the skin. So you leave the skin in for the entire
fermentation process you get a red wine If you leave it in for a day you get a rosé wine. So if you do that with the Zinfandel grape if you have limited contact with the skin you get white Zinfandel which is a rosé which is pretty simple very easy
drinking but there's not much complexity to it, there's not much to it this is the best-selling wine in the US but it's very simple, I actually would not
recommend if you actually want to explore wine [laughter] If you leave the skins in you get red Zinfandel which is excellent, its is really really really
good. It's also the most alcoholic. They really are, they can get up to 16 or 17 percent. This is the one you really have to be careful with. And they're typically described as jammy. So if you have like apple jam boysenberry
jam It has that essence when you smell it in
the glass. Very good with barbecue Another example Pinot Noir. So this is going to be the
grape that was featured in the Sideways movie If you haven't seen that, it's the wine that the guy was obsessed with This is more of an acquired taste the first time you try Pinot
Noir you might not like it But practice. The more you practice I think the more you will learn to appreciate Pinot Noir until you get to the point where it's actually really good It does have earthy flavors and this is why it's a little put-offing to many people when you smell it sometimes it's like
almost like smile a little bit of ground or the earth, but that means is really
good with mushroom dishes, truffle dishes, also pretty typical typically good with salmon so that violates the conventional wisdom: white wine with fish, red wine with meat it doesn't always have to be that way salmon is a pretty full flavored fish and with a light Pinot Noir it's
actually really good. By the way given this, my wife and I just experimented truffle salt with salmon, very good So try it [laughter] and the the Pinot Gris or Pinot Grigio
and the Pinot Blanc that I mention on the previous slide
a couple slides ago that make white wine these are actually natural
mutations of the Pinot Noir grape so this dark blue grape has had natural mutations in the past to go into that reddish great and also
to the green grape but they all are from the same family so that's kind of interesting ok finally Cabernet Sauvignon this is probably the biggest red wine this is the wine that I love and the wine that my wife hates because it has a lot of tannins a lot of the the moisture is being sucked out of your mouth depends on your taste but I love it
with steak, very good with steak okay so going back to this you can't really see the colors but basically cabs and merlots are pretty dark but the as the cabs age they lose their color
so it's kind of hard to see but they become less red and more brown in that
sense and here's an example of Merlot Zinfandel in my opinion are the darkest sometimes you can pour a Zinfandel and it looks almost black in the glass but you taste and and it's it's wonderful it's like a
party in your mouth I think Zinfandels are one of my favorites. And Pinot Noir It's hard to tell but Pinot Noirs are usually the lightest the clearest of the red wines and as they get older they'll also get browner but also it's a lighter brown. So the message
here red wine loses color with age So those are varietals, examples of varietals, we did some of the white side and some on the red side now let me talk about the old world
so the old world you're going to know the location but you're going to have to learn the
grapes and then you can use your knowledge that you learn from the varietals from the early part talk. So I'm going to first talk about France these are all the wine regions of France one country the old world and it has
like 15 different wine regions I'm not going to go through all of them of course but I'm going to give a couple of samples one of the best in the world and you just have to know that a Bordeaux red wine is going to be a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet
Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec those are the wines that go into
Bordeaux by law. So in the old world the blends are going to specified by law. so if they don't do that they can't call it
a Bordeaux Here's an example of a label from Bordeaux and if you look carefully you can't even
see Bordeaux anywhere on there Pomerol is a sub-region of Bordeaux so you'll find it in the Bordeaux
section to the store but actually doesn't even say Bordeaux on it this is a pretty well-known Bordeaux
called Petrus and I point it out because I want to
show you the Bordeauxs can be expensive. I looked up
the price for the 2010 Petrus... 3700 dollars pricey so careful Bordeaux actually also makes white wines, dry white wines and they're going to be made
with the Semillon and the Sauvignon Blanc grape so though that's the ones you
have to know when you're buying a white Bordeaux is made with those grapes there's not too many of them but you might encounter them and they're good but I mention this because it is a
special type of white wine from Bordeaux that's a sweet white wine called Sauternes so what is done to these grapes is something called botrytis which
is also known as noble rot they will wait until the grapes rot on
the vines they break open a lot of the water evaporates
and what's left is has less water and the same amount of
sugar and they make the wine from that and
that makes a phenomenal white wine called Sauternes But you're drinking something that is previously rotted okay so let me do burgundy now so burgundy there's a lot of subregions
here as well but typically I if you have a red
burgundy thats Pinot Noir almost always just
going to be Pinot Noir so if you want a red burgundy, Pinot Noir Thi is an example of a really famous red burgundy called Romanee-Conti again it doesn't say burgundy anywhere
on the the label you just have to know that this is a
sub-region of burgundy Côte de Nuits actually a 2010 bottle of this is more expensive than that a lot more thirteen thousand dollars for
2010 so it can get crazy [laughter] there's a lot of people that want it and that drives up
the prices and honestly I don't think it's going to be better than a hundred dollar bottle or even a fifty dollar bottle for that matter there's a lot of white wine in
Burgundy too so think about burgundy as being half red half white. The white is predominately Chardonnay. so if we have white Burgundy it's going to be
a chardonnay. There's a lot of different styles but you're gonna be getting a chardonnay and
I'll give you one more example Loire Valley this is the in the middle
France along the Loire river where all the castles are a lot of sub-regions there but the one that
comes to mind for me is a region called Sancerre that
makes wine from Sauvignon Blanc white wine from Sauvignon Blanc and these
are very very good so this is the third wine I wanted to mention
so if you did want to explore another region in France try a Sancerre Let's do Italy good on time. Same thing with Italy there's a
bunch of sub-regions in Italy so I think there's like maybe another
fifteen here and again if you want to know about all
of these you are going to have to learn them I'm just going to give you three examples
so the first is Tuscany Everyone knows Tuscan wine region but it
actually pays that its predominantly red wine and its predominately made from the Sangiovese grape So if you get a Tuscan red wine chances are it's going to be Sangiovese this is probably going to be somewhere in between
like a Pinot Noir and a merlot, a little on the lighter side. Typically described using strawberries, cherries.
Pretty good, and very good with food, a little acidity in there First example is Chianti Chianti is a region of Tuscany that makes red wine by law made with Sangiovese grape. This is an example of a Chianti that you may have seen in stores and restaurants that comes in
a little straw basket kind of cool as decoration, to taste not that good, these can be like five dollars but to cook with and as decoration they're good but you want a chianti that is
representative of the Sangiovese with the strawberries and the cherries, you might want to invest in an actual regular bottle that's a little bit better Chianti is also the wine that Hannibal Lecter had with the fava beans same one [laughter] The two other regions in Tuscany that I want to mention that also make Sangiovese grapes Brunello di Montalcino Doesn't say Sangiovese anywhere on the bottle but that's made with Sangiovese So it's the same types of wine as as Chianti, perhaps a little bit higher quality. And also Vino Nobile di Montipulciano, another region of Tuscany that makes wine from the Sangiovese grape not to be confused with Montipulciano
di Abruzzo which is made with the montipulciano grape I made a mistake once in Italy because of this so I want to warn you so you don't confuse the two. So old world becomes a little more complicated personally I stick to a couple
regions in every country and then I learn those and I work with those and then I don't get surprised unpleasantly by picking a
random one The other region of Italy that I want to mention is Piedmont This is going to be primarily red wine This is from the north west of Italy. This is going to be red wine from a grape called Nebbiolo You're never going to see Nebbiolo on the bottle The bottle names are going to be Barolo and Barbaresco very good wines made from the Nebbiolo grape very pricey but if you see a wine from Napa Valley with Nebbiolo
on it, it probably won't be too expensive and it might be similar to these so that's a trick you can do to
get efficient in your wine purchasing
learn the grapes of the expensive wines that you like find that grape made elsewhere, there's a chance
it'll be be pretty good and finally I want to mention Puglia This is like the heel of the boot, the Italian boot this is where my wife's grandparents are
from and there's one wine I want to mention from there that you can find in stores: Primitivo this is exactly Zinfandel, it's just called Primitivo in Italy So if you really like red zinfandel and the ones you like are too expensive try a couple primitivos, you might find a good value there so I do want to mention really quickly specialty wines, the first of which is champagne or sparkling wine so basically this is a wine that's fermented and then they open up the bottle they
add more sugar and the add more yeast and the byproduct is going to be gas and this is why it becomes carbonated so there's a secondary fermentation.
And it can be made from white wine grapes so this statement is about champagne it can
be made from only white wine grapes and that's
typical called blanc-de-blanc so white of white in French or it can be made from red
wine grapes and this is called blanc-de-noir so champagne
sparkling wines are white but you can make it from a red
grape and typically it's Pinot Noir so if you ever see a champagne with blanc-de-noir white from black that is
the clear champagne made from a Pinot Noir
grape, the red Pinot Noir grape and this next point is a pet peeve of mine Champagne comes from the Champagne region of France Everything else is sparkling wine. This is by law in France, this is by law in the European
Union this is by law in I think seventy
countries around the world except in the United States, but there is a new law in the United States that says new producers can't call a product
champagne is only grandfathered producers that can call it champagne and there's actually one example
that they call it California champagne costs five bucks not very good so if you see champagne on a bottle make sure comes from Champagne
or else it's probably going to be a waste of your money Another specialty wine: port So port is, the process of making port is you're fermenting the wine
but before it's fermented completed they add brandy that's going to bring up the alcohol
level, kill the yeast and there's remaining sugar that's not converted into alcohol and that is why it's going to result in a sweet, strong wine and this actually came about
historically the story goes that to transport wine from
Portugal to England they added brandy to preserve the wine
so it lasted the trip it didn't actually happen that way they decided to add the port to sell a new product in they noticed that 'oh by the way. it does happen to last the voyage as well' but it wasn't because of
preserving the wine to get to England two types of port, there's Ruby and Tawny so ruby is the red color, tawny is like a
yellowish brownish color and there's exceptions but basically a ruby is going to be a young port
a tawny is going to be an old port that's been stored in an oak cask
typically it has lost its color and retains just like the a little bit of the color of the wood so as a rule of thumb,
ruby is a young port and tawny is an old port Sherry, this is another a specialty wine, it's also
a fortified wine but they add the fortification after
fermentation is complete so the sugar is already gone and they just
make the wine stronger so this is going to result in a strong
dry wine port is a strong sweet wine, sherry is a strong dry wine and the last specialty wine is icewine so this is a special type of wine made in Canada and Germany where they leave the grapes
on the vines through winter and they freeze solid so
in Canada I think they wait until it is
consistently 10 degrees below zero and then they take off these frozen grapes
crush them most of the water comes out as ice
and what's left is a very concentrated a must or a grape juice that they make the wine with so very sweet but very complex these are
actually really really good Actually we just bought one yesterday from Costco Inniskillin made from a winery near Niagara Falls so if you're
interested I highly recommend that one Ok so Terrior and vintages so we'll go through this quickly. Basically a wine made from the same grape in
different regions can be very different it can be a
different they can be different qualities they can
be expressed differently they can taste completely different and the reason is because of the terroir and the vintage So terroir, it is basically, in essence, a place and the typical terms are the geology of the region
and the geography of the region and the climate of the region so let me give an example of what I mean by
this. So there's a sub-region of Bordeaux called Graves which means gravel in French and if you look at the vineyards, the
vines are growing out of rocks this means that the vines struggle to grow and the grapes that they produce a very
very small but concentrated and that results in a very distinct
wine from that region so that's an example of geology of a
region another example if geology is in
Champagne the soil contains a lot of chalk and that
influences the vines that are grown there and that influences
the flavor of the wines another example, so those two
were for geology the last one is for geography and
climate... Napa so it's called Napa valley but it
actually has a valley this is why it's lower case and the Bay
Area is associated with fog a lot of that fog goes inland throughout
the night and the valley funnels that fog into
the Napa valley keeping the region relatively much
cooler than the surrounding regions that's why they make the wines in Napa
Valley not in the Central Valley which is roasting hot. Vintages. So vintage is basically wines are made every year and the
vintage is the year with the wine is made and that's influenced by the weather
that they experience in that year Napa's pretty... not too sensitive to the weather
becuase it's pretty even but in France and Italy the weather can change drastically that's going to affect the quality of the wines so for example 2007 was pretty good for
Napa rated 97 out of 100 whereas only 90 for
Burgundy so this is where it gets complicated you
have all these different regions and all these different years and
they're going to be all different so instead of memorizing anything, I strongly suggest using a a Wine Spectator app it's on iPhone and
Android it's free and basically it's going to give
you all the regions all the sub-regions so this is a sub-region of Bordeaux I mean Burgundy and it'll tell you what
the rating is for that vintage and this is basically a factor of this is related to prices as well it's a much easier way to know about
vintages. Whenever I buy wines at the store I whip out my app and then I look up 'okay there are a couple of
choices here, let me get this one' and it's free so I think it's a nice resource serving temperatures, I'll do this
one really quickly because there are a couple more things that I want to say afterwards light white wines, rosés, champagne, sparkling wines, these are the wines that you'll want to serve the coldest this is 40 to 50 degrees full-body whites like a chardonnay to
light fruity red wines like a Pinot Noir, Sangioveses little warmer 50 to 60 degrees and then
when you go to the full body red wines and ports you want to serve those even warmer so
60 to 65 degrees however if you're storing
wine and it's like 75 degrees it's probably not going to taste good whether it's red or white one thing that we've done before, stick it in
the freezer for a couple minutes cool it down to the right temperature
the wine is going to taste better if you want speediness, an ice bucket a bucket of ice filled with water is
going to transfer the temperature the fastest there's a chemical reason for this but this is going be the fastest way to
cool a bottle much faster than a freezer
because in freezer the temperature is transferring over air here it's transferring over a liquid this is
going to be faster okay this one's fun: opening a bottle so champagne and sparkling wine needs no
tools so this is what it looks like and you
have a little wire cage you need to twist the cap and that loosens the wire cage, you take off
the wire cage, and if you're not careful this can pop out and hit you in the eye I've come close once. So basically once you take off the foil and then the cage, put your
hand on the top and then twist the cork carefully, it's
going to pop out on its own but you have your hand to make sure it doesn't shoot up and like pop your eye out So you want to be careful with that because if
you don't that can happen Unless you want that to happen [laughter] As a quick aside, there's actually another way to open a
sparkling wine called sabering that some fancy restaurants do, they'll open it with a sword. They pay you a
premium for that and then you lose half the bottle but if you have money to burn invite me to
dinner Other wines typically from the New World have
screw caps or will you just screw it and it opens or core plugs where it's basically a plug you can twist open it and plug
it back in and it's pretty easy to open and close but most wines have a cork that you need a tool to open so here's examples this one right here is my bread and
butter this is waiter corkscrew you basically screw it in and this acts as a lever and it makes it pretty easy to open a wine bottle this is another simpler one requires more effort so I actually have
like a plastic version of this that I travel with It's plastic so it doesn't set off a metal detector
but I can always open a bottle of wine when I need to this is pretty self-explanatory, you screw and then as you screw the corkscrew into the cork
these move up and then you move down pretty easy to open This is a rabbit. It's basically a clamping system, you clamp it around the top of the bottle and then you push this lever down the corkscrew goes into the cork, pull the lever up and then it's open This one is the I forget what it's called but basically you put it on top of the bottle you press the button in and out, and it pulls out the cork pretty easily this one is a piece of metal with two prongs on it the way you use this is you have to rock, basically stick that the two prongs
on each side of the cork and you kind of rock it back and forth and it goes in and then you twist it
and that'll take out the cork and it's called an ah-so and the
reason they call it an ah-so is because once you figure out how to
open it, you're like "ah, so that's how they do it" [laughter] So that's actually
pretty fun to use and these are going to be appropriate when you have an old cork that's falling apart these two, I have no idea so I don't know [laughter] Glasses, so really quickly there's a lot of business built around wine glasses the shape of a wine glass linking with a varietal so for example a Bordeaux or a Cabernet Sauvignon
is going to be a big tall glass some of the glasses are going to have wider mouths, some are going to have more narrow mouths, so for example a more
narrow mouth is to concentrate the smell or the aroma of a weak smelling wine so you can smell
it a little bit better and there's a whole science behind this so
personally I think I have two white wines two white wine glasses, two red wine glasses, champagne glasses port, scotch [laughter] a couple more there's different ways but you don't
need to go all out just a regular wine glass will more than
suffice and typically once you pour it you want to swirl number one it looks cool but number two it aerates the wine it mixes it with oxygen. So oxygen is a wine's friend and foe. In the beginning by
mixing it with oxygen this can bring out the flavors, make it taste a
little better but too much oxygen its going to oxidize. The wind is going
to deteriorate after a couple days. And I have a couple points
on that in a slide or two Okay I have three more slides Food and wine, I'm going to mention a couple classic pairings and they're classic in the sense that the some other the whole is greater than the
sum of the parts caviar with champagne caviar with champagne both are expensive but you can get any type of fish roe, fish egg, with a
sparkling wine you're going to get the same effect steak with Cabernet Sauvignon mentioned this at the beginning, love it. Oysters with Chablis so oysters are very briny, seafoody flavor chablis is going to be a chardonnay but
not an oaky one, very steely it's almost like metallic when you drink it but
together they mellow out each other and
they're very excellent together another one, foie gras with Sauternes foie gras is the the liver of a fattened goose or duck Sauternes is that sweet wine from Bordeaux and together the sweetness tempers the fattiness of the fois, of the liver, and it's actually really good together lamb with merlot, dark chocolate with port and perhaps a more surprising one is stilton, which is a blue cheese, with port This is a classic pair and if you haven't had this, I urge you to try it a really pungent blue cheese with port it works Note on spicy food hard to pair in general so I guess at the very beginning select the sweet wine A warning: wine and cheese. Not all
wine goes with all cheese So wine and cheese parties you have to be careful For example I think brie with Cabernet
Sauvignon is really bad. Again that's my opinion but you might want to try the different pairings Actually two nights ago my wife and I went to a nice restaurant
and they had a cheese course they paired with a cider so not a wine, they didn't try to
pair them, so be careful with wine and cheese okay five minutes, two slides and here's some, I think some of my most valuable advice for you for buying wine. There's this company called Cameron Hughes which I'm gonna gush about I have no
connection with with them whatsoever do not own stock I
just love them so the started in an article in 2010 from the Wall Street
Journal so taking advantage of the wine glut amid an oversupply Cameron Hughes by top
wineries' excess and resells it for bargain prices. So
what's going on? so you can buy one from Cameron Hughes but you only know roughly where comes
from so you're going to know its vintage and you're going to know its varietal but you're not going to know much else, so here's an example So this is a Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa
Valley from 2012, that's all the information you have the only identifier is the lot number, but what
Cameron Hughes did is they bought excess wine from a top wine
producer in Napa Valley, signed a huge
non-disclosure agreement and sold it at a steep steep discount so the effect is you're going to pay less for a really high quality bottle of wine using this I typically pay between
ten and fifteen dollars per bottle and the wines taste like
thirty dollars and up like I think they're excellent values
literally ninety percent my wine from over the last few years has
come from Cameron Hughes so I urge you try it, you can either buy
it online sometimes they're available at Costco but for the best bang for your buck you're not going to beat Costco I mean Cameron Hughes. Costco too. Wine at restaurants. Restaurants
regularly charge three times the retail price of a wine It's kind of like a racket What I suggest, especially for special
occasion where you want a really nice bottle of wine is bring your own bottle pay a corkage
fee corkage fee is the fee that you pay the
restaurant to open the bottle it's usually ten to twenty dollars but overall you end up paying less
because of this huge markup and if you give the waiter a taste they'll sometimes waive the corkage fee [laughter] try it, it's worked multiple times for us and another thing to get good value
for your buck is buy less popular wines, stay away from
Bordeauxs stay away from Burgundy buy a petit verdot, this is a great varietal made in Napa it's an auxiliary grape from Bordeaux but
in and on itself its pretty good too Malbec, same principle, they're made in Argentina also Napa Valley pretty good, buy wines from New Zealand from
Australia less popular you're going to get a better value
supply and demand and one last slide Storing and preserving wine typically you want to store wines at
45 to 65 degrees, 55 is ideal Historically a cellar, like a hole in the ground is goingbe the best I think most houses here don't have cellars so closets are fine. If you're living
in Southern California it might get too hot in your house so I would not advise that but here I
think it's fine if you have more expensive wine or
you want to be careful a wine refrigerator is good, we have one I think we got it at like Best Buy or
something they're not too expensive you get it from like six bottles up to
we have one like 30 bottles and then you can get huge
ones with thousands of bottles climate control most wines don't need aging and so you don't want to stick a
wine in your wine refrigerator forever unless you intend to age it for a certain period of time and if you do want to age a wine
if you do want to buy a wine to give to your if you just had a baby and you want to give it a wine when he or she is 21 years old you want to research it, you don't want to buy a random bottle and save it for 20 years because they'll be vinegar [laughter] once opened, wines oxidize which means they basically turn to vinegar, it's not instant In my opinion the next day's going to be
fine three days later I don't like to
drink it anymore but when you have leftover wine you can
cook with it we do that all the time but there's wine preservation systems you can use too and these are going to be the two last bullet points and then I'm going to wrap the first one are backing pumps which are
these little guys right there you stick it on top of an open bottle you stick this plunger on top of an open bottle and this pump kind of pumps out the air it removes the oxygen from the bottle and that's the it preserves it. They work okay I think I can get another day or two
out a bottle but beyond that I i noticed that it's not as good are so if you want a day or two preservation this will work fine if you want
to preserve a little longer there's something else that my wife just
gave me for my birthday which I love, this is called a coravin [laughter] Yeah I think it's awesome I really do. So this was developed by MIT educated doctor he's in
pharmaceuticals and basically this is a needle so what you
do is you take a bottle you clamp this thing on
to it you push down the needle through the cork and you can here there's a canister of argon gas and
you can exchange the wine for the argon gas, one for one, then you
take up the needle and the cork reseals itself, I tested it. I turned the bottle upside down and nothing happened So basically you can take a wine out of a bottle without opening it and they have
apparently it's a 100 percent success rate with professional Sommeliers that they
can they'll give them two glasses of wine, one from a new bottle one from a bottle that used months ago and the sommelier cannot tell the difference so if you want to preserve more longer-term this is gonna be the tool for you to use
and I love it, I use it almost every day Well worth it I think Okay so let me wrap it up and then if there's any questions we can answer them then He's a smart smart man so I'm going to follow in his footsteps if anyone has questions about wine feel
free to email me my email is, the easiest way to remember it is mister wagner at u dub That stands for Michael Robert but it's easy to remeber And there's more cool stuff at The Whole U, so look at what stuff there is and if you're into cooking there's actually Italian recipes from my wife as well as videos
