Wine

good luck ! where did you do the course, out of interest ?

Thanks! Just home and sadly I found the exam quite difficult. Currently trying to assuage my disappointment and not to dwell on the things I know I got wrong (having checked the book afterwards). We shall see in 2 weeks how it all pans out when the results come.

I did it at my new(ish) workplace (been there a year now), a spirits, wine and beer specialist shop here in Glasgow. One of our managers teaches WSET Levels 1, 2 and 3 (and maybe beyond if we get interest). I work in the web side of things and don't have booze experience previously (whisky is all I really know, and how to pack boxes and take photographs), but I really love the job and have discovered quite an interest in wine especially, so I'm super keen to get some decent knowledge.

Ah, well the good thing is that the questions you know that you missed you will never, ever forget again. But good luck!

I did my WSET advanced (Level 3, I did it online except for the test) a couple of years ago right after I passed Certified Sommelier with the guild (I did the Certified Wine Specialist test too with Society of Wine Educators to keep up with reading). I have been putting off doing the diploma because not everyone offers it, I need to do it online and I can't coordinate being somewhere for the orientation and tests. I am sure you have other resources locally, but feel free to email me or discuss study methods or books to read here.

Thanks Yerac, that's good of you and an impressive résumé. In terms of reading materials... so far my meagre library consists of the Wine Folly book, a battered old edition of Jancis Robinson's Oxford Companion To Wine and the WSET Level 2 course book, so I'm definitely open to suggestions.

I didn't feel like Level 2 was difficult per se, rather that it was a lot of factual info to absorb in a short time (2.5 contact days over 3 weeks as the fully taught course we did, with the exam being the afternoon of the final week). I wish I'd started studying more beforehand, but of course everyday life intervened. Anyway, it's all good, I learned a lot whatever happens. I'll try to keep actively learning and drinking and have a very long-term eye on Level 3 in a year or more, perhaps.

I feel I want to be supportive of others research/practice in this field.

good luck with your oenophile studies everyone, something i keep meaning to get into but never quite bother to allot the time.

I've had lots of good natural wine

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Friday, May 18, 2018 9:41 AM (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've drank lots of natural wine since this post and have had a much more mixed-bag experience including crazy variance between bottles, and the dreaded kombuchay-style

xpost Wine knowledge is cumulative, so even in downtime and I am not actively studying I try to read books (not reference books) or watch wine centric movies or listen to podcasts. I would highly recommend checking out Wine and War (so much about WWII I didn't know!), Champagne, Adventures on the Wine Route, The Widow Clicquot, Reading Between the Vines. These are books that have more of a story and give more frames of reference instead of just memorizing facts.

Besides any study guides that WSET gives you, I think I have only used the World Atlas of Wine and then all the study guides on the Guild Somm website (but more for when I was taking the certified somm test because they are more focused on producers, service and they have different tasting criteria). I am kind of only pursuing WSET over Court of Master Sommeliers now because I don't really plan on working as a full time sommelier (except randomly) and they are getting stricter and stricter about who they are allowing to do the Advanced test. I am pretty terrible at geography, so I actually have all of the delong wine maps framed on my walls. I used to study them while brushing my teeth or talking on the phone. Where I am/was there was always a lot of people who were into wine

I only really got into wine about 4? years ago, so it definitely is a big learning curve especially if you didn't have exposure to french or german or haven't traveled to some of these places before. Traveling has definitely also helped me sort out geography.

I've drank lots of natural wine since this post and have had a much more mixed-bag experience including crazy variance between bottles, and the dreaded kombuchay-style

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Monday, 20 August 2018 21:21 (yesterday) Permalink

i wonder if that's because it's been summer? the lack of preservatives mean they're more sensitive to temperature change

I got my WSET Level 2 result yesterday and it turns out my worrying and over-active self-criticism was rather unfounded... I passed with distinction and got 94%! Really delighted.

Well done!

Congrats!

Congrats!

All round to krakow's ...

congrats!

Thanks everyone!

djh... I could do with help dealing with my growing stash of bottles that won't last without proper storage (nothing special though, I'm afraid), as my partner is not a big drinker, so friendly ilxors welcome here.

brain, you motivated me to revisit what I was doing with wine. I finally enrolled in the wset diploma. A place in philly allows home study (which I had no clue about before) so I only have to show up for exams of which they sometimes allow you to take more than one section in a day. I hopefully will be half done with the diploma by next summer (and before they change the curriculum).

Recently drunk:

Lots of Envinate reds. I love these so much, have stocked up on Taganan tinto, Benje and Migan.

Benevolent Neglect Syrah. Super impressive, powerful, maybe not the longest finish considering the nose. Picked up a few bottles at £28, seemed really underpriced, now I see them selling for ~£50 which seems about right.

Le Coste Litrozzo rose and red from the fridge, wringing the last enjoyment out of the summer weather here.

Have really enjoyed Terre di Faiano Primitivo (from Waitrose, currently £7.50 but usually a tenner), recently.

Xp summer's just starting here so yesterday we had a bottle each of the litrozzo white and rose in the backyard

I am going to be on the lookout for the Envinate wines. I don't think I have come across any (also the closest wine shops to me suck). I also need to drink more primitivo/zinfandel but I always tend to skip right over it in stores.

They are v hard to find here (London). I got most of them sent from a Spanish shop - gourmethunters. Don’t know where you are but they deliver pretty extensively and the prices are great. Picked up a load of stuff from Sextant, Calek, Jordi Llorens etc too.

We have a spanish only wine store here that will likely carry it. I'll check it out.

Yep, they have it. https://despanafinewines.com/search/?q=envinate

Great stuff. The Albahra is nice but maybe not as interesting as the others. I find the Migan really beautiful.

congratulations to krakow!!

i had a bottle of pet nat last weekend and my wife liked it so much she called up borough wines and ordered the last six bottles they have in storage. it does feel like wine is ripe for a craft-beer style revolution on the same scale as the what american breweries have done w ipas, unfiltered beers etc. people are open to weird flavours! some people even drink saisons ffs!

Hasn't wine gone through that revolution? I thought we already had the natural wine backlash.

haha yeah that's true... i guess it depends on who you're talking to.

tracer which pet nat was it?

Hasn't wine gone through that revolution? I thought we already had the natural wine backlash.

― Yerac, Sunday, September 16, 2018 7:54 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

natural wine is like a blip on a blip on the radar compared to what beer has done.

^^^It depends on who you talk to and what you are talking about ($, distribution, homebrewing/fermenting, domestic vs foreign). I like beer; I hate IPAs because like anything that gets popular you have a lot of really shit production.

I mean among US men, that are not in LCD Soundsystem, I agree that the craftbeer movement had more of an impact.

So, this is kind of funny. I was mulling over what type of thesis topic I would come up with if I ever got to work on my Masters of Wine and automatically I was like, WHITE MEN IN THE US AND WINE.

i'm not making a value judgement--craft beer has wrought a lot of terrible product--but natural wine hasn't even made inroads to places where decent craft beer is just assumed. unless the volume of production increases significantly and decent education comes along, i'm not sure it will get there.

Craft beer in all its myriad styles really does taste different than mass market lagers though. Does natural wine really taste any different than mass market wines? That the typical wine drinker would notice?

yes

(for better or for worse)

xpost, I assume you are just talking about the US? Because in a lot of the world outside of the US and certain euro countries, craftbeer is a blip. Even decent beer is a blip.

And yes about natural wine tasting very different. The typical drinker of any beverage won't really notice if their vodka is made from potatos or grain, or if they are drinking a pilsner or lager. they just don't They certainly won't know if they are drinking a $10 bottled of chard from somewhere in all of CA or a bottle natural white from the Loire.

idk, i've had new england ipas in austria, i've had citra-hopped ipas in india, i've had friends send me neipa pics from all manner of european countries. the impact isn't global but it has certainly had an impressive spread.

idg comparing vodka source ingredients to wine at all but suffice to say i have tasted natural wines made from grapes that intermediate wine fans would know which don't conform to style at all--i have no idea if the *typical* drinker can pick these out but i sure as hell could and i'm far from an experienced taster.

I bought a $100 bottle of wine for the first time ever -- a wine-loving couple we barely know (relative of relatives) agreed to host my whole family for several days and we needed a nice gift and hadn't had time to shop around much so I just grabbed something that was highly rated and expensive, a Kamen Cabernet (sonoma). They were nice enough to drink it with us, and it was quite good, but I can't say I found anything about it to be particularly worth $100 and it's still hard for me to believe I'll ever drink a wine that lives up to that pricetag.

Meanwhile, they turned us on to a relatively cheap chardonnay that they keep stocked as their "house" wine, Chateau St Jean (also sonoma).

I mean I've seen Blyn Brewery (not exactly craft I know) for ages now in super mainstream places in Europe which I get a giggle out of. And in Chile I know you can get Evil Twin and some randoms at a couple of places. But thinking about the main beers people drink in Asia, EU and LATAM is not craftbeer. In general, normal alcohol drinkers would not be able to describe differences about these things unless they actually pay attention and make it a point to know. This is not a natural born ability. And yes, wine is probably more offputting to know about because there are thousands of wine grape varieties and multitudes of regions to know about if you want to know what you will be drinking.

The vodka thing I brought up in my example of three just because I have to study and do tastings of a lot of spirits as well as beer and sake.

xpost California wine is typically 30-40% more than it really should be. I never really buy it unless it's some weird thing I am searching for. Do you remember the year?

I was talking about North America, where the craft beer phenomenon is present. But even an Asian who only drinks lagers would be able to tell a very hoppy IPA was different than what he/she usually drinks. Like man alive I don't always taste differences in $8 vs $20 wines. That said I've never knowingly had a natural wine, and depending on the yeast I guess it could be very different (I always associate "natural" wine with no sulfites, which may not affect the flavor as much).

I've had good luck with Chateau St Jean wines too.

The difference between a hoppy IPA and a lager is obvious though, in the same way that cava and rioja are easily distinguishable. Yerac’s example of a standard lager vs a pilsner seems perfectly correct, the inexperienced/disinterested drinker is unlikely to be able to identify and describe the differences.

The example of $8 vs $20 wine is more akin to a $4 vs $5 beer. You want/expect the more expensive one to be ‘better’, but to a certain extent this is subjective, and there are a huge number of variables which can change the drinking experience. The price is also not really based on quality, so it’s an imperfect measure. This is problematic when talking about spending $100 on a bottle of wine - a huge amount of money - because expectations are naturally sky high.

The requirement to have the time/inclination to really educate yourself, the money to experiment your way to discovering your tastes/preferences, the physical space to keep wine until it is ‘ready’ etc. are all reasons why wine is inevitably less accessible than beer.

It’s a similar story with natural wine imo. Because it’s such a slippery definition you can’t really expect a natural wine to taste a certain way - Chapoutier is (I think) a natural winemaker, but their wines are a world away from the stuff you might get from a little one-man band winemaker on a volcano in Slovakia.

I think the growing prominence of natural wine, along with the fact that it’s an opportunity to be obsessively nerdy/collect things/travel, while being a more affordable interest than being really into burgundy or whatever, means that it will inevitably creep a little more into the mainstream (in the UK a budget supermarket has just become the first to stock an own-brand skin contact wine, for example).

which supermarket and wine is that ?

Aldi

Heh, I was kind of drunk last night. Sorry. I still do think, though that the huge popularity of craft beer is still pretty America (and ok Canada) male centric. And natural wine, I don't really think of no sulfites, I think more about no filtering or fining (this may be the first thing you notice about the bottle before you even drink. It's basically just letting the grapes express themselves with very little interaction from the winemaker but there are different levels from mild to extreme styles.

The price of wine is a lot of things: how it's produced (new barrels are expensive), buying grapes vs. growing it on your own land, storage on site during aging (loss of income), all the regular overhead of running a business, demand. This is why a few wine regions are starting a beaujolais nouveau style festival/release of bottles. It's the most recent harvest, fresh, simple, no wood, no storage, get income within 2-3 months of harvest

I don't think Chapoutier is on the natural wine kick. He makes a crapload of wine though.

Chris B4tes, who is a master somm was trying to diffuse a fight about natural wine vs. crafted wine (kind of confusing in light of the term craft beer). And he used bbq to kind of explain the differences between the extremes of each style. This is kind of long, the relevant part that I am pasting.

In an ideal world:
Natural Winemaking version of BBQ- Start a fire, season a locally raised (ideally by the person cooking it), responsibly farmed, healthy, humanly butchered brisket with salt and pepper, hang brisket over a few feet from the the coals, turn occasionally until ready to eat. Serve to friends and neighbors.

Crafted Winemaking version of BBQ-Dry rub and rest an A5 Kobe beef brisket with 2% salt and 1% pepper over night. Begin fire 12 hours before you plan to serve. Once coals are ready, adjust airflow to stabilize temp at 225F and load brisket fat cap up. Hold at 225 for 7 hours, making sure internal temp hits 136 within hours of loading. Use K-type thermocouple to ensure internal temp never exceeds 148 and air temp stays between 210-235 at 60% humidity (set out of range alarm if leaving the cooking area). Wrap in foil and damper down coals, and leave brisket to rest in foil, cap up, for 1 hour before serving. Serve to friends and neighbors.

In an idealogical sence, that more or less sums it up.

In practice though, it can become extreme in either direction very easily, and it is easy to become cynical about the camp on the other side of the spectrum. In the real world, it all too often becomes:

Extreme Natural Winemaking version of bbq- Dig pit. Light fire in pit. Take brisket from animal raised by cook, without any medication, slaughtered because it started to wheeze a little, by the cook in their garage with unsanitized tools. Throw leaves from the yard onto the fire, throw unseasoned brisket on top, and throw on more leaves. Cover with dirt and close pit. Leave 48 hours. Invite all the people you know who have tattoos and mustaches. Unearth the brisket pit, remove brisket to the unsanitzed board you trimmed it on 2 days prior, and slice it and serve it, wether it is cooked through or not, tender or tough, safe or spoiled. Ignoring any comments or questions of its quality or soundness by explaining how naturally it is made.

Extreme Crafted Winemaking version of brisket-Take beef trimmings and mechanically separated chicken from whichever countries are producing the cheapest usda allowed version. Mix with corn syrup, potassium lactate, sodium phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrate, and flavors, as well as liquid smoke, granulated onion, etc, and form it into brisket like shape using Transglutimate (Meat glue) to add a fat like layer to the top. Cook in giant steam injection ovens before cooling, slicing and shipping to Arby's for their new Texas Smoke House Sandwich.

Both practices/camps can make fantastic wines, each with strengths for certain needs in wine world. Both can, and are, easily taken to negative extremes.