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VENETO TRAVEL DIARY PART 1 – ITALY’S FAMOUS FIZZ

Posted on May 13, 2016
Prosecco Superiore wine

It is becoming increasingly rare (at least in my experience) to have a perfect journey. I mean one where all your flights leave on time, the security lines are short and painless, the immigration people are friendly and your bags make a speedy appearance upon arrival. I feel like this is a good omen for my trip.

I arrived in Venice this morning to ominous clouds, but mild spring weather and lush greenery. My colleagues and I were met by a smiling driver who whisked us away and shortly thereafter deposited us at the grandiose, if somewhat dated, Hotel Astoria just outside of Conegliano (pronounced Conelyano). Tonight, the Vino in Villa festival kicks off. The annual event aims to showcase the superior quality of the DOCG Prosecco from the region of Conegliano Valdobbiadene. A smattering of wine journalists from around the globe have been gathered to learn more about the region and its famed bubbly. The goal? To pass on the good word that Prosecco is more than a cheap and cheerful Champagne alternative.

Let’s start with the basics…  Prosecco is an Italian sparkling wine made throughout the Veneto and neighbouring Friuli Venezia Giulia regions in North Eastern Italy. The principle grape is called Glera. Not a particularly memorable variety for still wines due to a fairly neutral character, Glera is an excellent sparkling base. It boasts lively acidity, and peachy, floral notes. As with many European vineyards, there is a quality hierarchy. The lowest tier is Prosecco DOC, which includes grapes grown anywhere in the two above mentioned regions. This level of Prosecco can be made dry (brut), slightly off-dry (extra dry), or semi sweet (dry)…yes, the nomenclature is confusing! It can also be still, lightly sparkling (frizzante) or fully sparkling (spumante). The spumante style is most common. Above this tier, we get into the Superiore level, to which this week-end pays homage. The official name for this higher quality appellation is: Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG (I know, the name just rolls off your tongue, right?). It can only be made in the Treviso province of Veneto on the rolling hills between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene. It is here that the Glera grape goes beyond simple, peachy fizz to take on real elegance and charm.

The next 3 days will consist of a total immersion in all things DOCG Prosecco…tutored tastings, vineyard and winery visits, food and wine pairings and so forth. I will endeavour to share my insights with you in a series of daily ramblings. I warn you in advance that I may dally into some raptures about the food. It is Just. So. Good. Here.  For example, today at lunch, we paired the brisk, refreshing, citrusy and faintly saline Le Manzane “Springo Blue” Conegliano DOCG Prosecco brut with herb sprinkled swordfish tartare & strawberry mayo. The main course was grilled sturgeon cooked to perfection with a pretty, floral extra dry Valdobbiadene DOCG Prosecco from Agostinetto “Vigna del Baffo”. The smooth, subtly creamy, poached pear finish underscored the rich, textured fish perfectly. All in all, a great start, topped off by a saunter around the lovely Conegliano castello and doumo. Birds are chirping, and the sun is lazily sinking down below the hill of vines outside my window. Time to dress for the welcome dinner. More tomorrow…

Life

ITALY AWAITS…!

Posted on May 12, 2016
Distretto

I have been a little remiss in posting recently. This is simply because the big count down has begun…  I am T-26 days from the Masters of Wine exams. So, as you can imagine, I have had my head permanently in the books (and my nose in the glass) for the past couple of months.

The dread and anticipation is bringing me close to fever pitch. So the world’s greatest husband (mine), is sending me away for a week to cool my heels. I am making the potentially risky move of taking a week off. I have been tempted into accepting the gracious invitation of the Italian Chamber of Commerce to attend the annual Vino in Villa (http://vinoinvilla.it/en/) festival. This annual event honours the top quality Prosecco from the Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG.

Watch this space for a week long travel diary on my musings, tastings and so forth. I will also treat you to a cheeky little jaunt to Valpolicella before I head home. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it….!

Life

IT’S ALL A MATTER OF TASTE

Posted on April 7, 2016
Wine Shop

I went to a very interesting tasting last Sunday, hosted by the gracious and talented Ontario-based wine writer Natalie Maclean. There were wines from all over the map to taste, over 70 in all. While there were some real stand out bottles on offer, what really struck me were the tasters.

All sorts of ages, styles and backgrounds were represented; lots of sommeliers, writers, product consultants and the like. The idea was to amass a common pool of reviews for the wines, all fed onto Natalie’s website. Idle curiosity got the better of me, as it usually does, and I found myself looking at the scores and comments of my peers after posting my reviews. They could not have been more different. Where one taster found intense, black berry aromas, another found the same wine closed and earthy.  One wine deemed fairly light, was called full bodied by another reviewer. A wine slammed with a lowly 80pts was worth 90pts for someone else. Here we were, a pool of experts, with vastly different views. And herein lies the beauty of wine. It’s all very personal and depends on a large number of extenuating circumstances.

And herein lies the beauty of wine. It’s all very personal…

The label – if you have heard good reports on a wine from friends, colleagues, respected reviewers, etc. you will likely approach it in a more favourable light. And vice versa. It is human nature. If you watch a movie that a friend raved about, or that just won a slew of Oscars, you are primed to love it. And this feeling is very hard to overcome. Even if you thought is was painfully bad, you would still try and praise the cinematography or something. Whereas, if the same film was panned, you would have no trouble dismissing it as trite rubbish.

What you just ate or drank – ever tried drinking a glass of wine shortly after a cup of coffee? I bet you didn’t love it. The bitter coffee tannins likely exaggerated the sensation of astringency in the wine. What about a tart, light-bodied Pinot Noir after a big, bold Napa Cab? The second wine likely seemed thin and reedy. The obvious course of action is to ensure your palate is as neutral as possible before starting, and then tasting from lightest to fullest. But when are things ever ideal?

External stimuli & mood– is there an argument going on in the background? Does the lady next to you smell like she bathed in patchouli? Are you in a hurry to beat traffic? All of the craziness going on around you can throw off your focus and lead to snap judgements. Just like your mood. Picture it, Sicily 1922 (I digress…), seriously though, picture your last vacation. The scenery is stunning, you are relaxed and happy, and just loving the sweet, frothy, peachy bubbles served before dinner each evening. So you buy a couple of bottles to take home. And when you try it again in your kitchen, it tastes …sickly sweet, the bubbles fall flat instantly, and the finish is cloying. The holiday romance is over.

Your personal, sensory library – when I was a kid, we used to pick black berries every August at the seaside in England. The smell of fresh, and baked blackberries is highly evocative for me. If I find that singular smell in a wine, I am happy. But someone else’s version of blackberries could be a cheap brand of jam their mother used to buy, and the associated smell would be quite different. All over the world, people’s lexicons of smells are vastly different. Many aromas we identify are unknown to African or Asian drinkers who have not been exposed to the same fruits or spices and so on. And the exotic fruits that they find so easily will not be detected by many of us westerners.

We take an airplane trolley’s worth of baggage with us into each wine tasting without even realizing it.

The list goes on and on. We take an airplane trolley’s worth of baggage with us into each wine tasting without even realizing it. So what’s a novice wine lover looking for a little guidance in the bewildering aisles of the liquor store to do? First of all, trust yourself! If you like it, that’s good enough. Wine is meant to fun. It doesn’t matter if the Wine Spectator didn’t like it. If you poke around the internet long enough you will find another reviewer who does. Second of all, know that we all have personal bias. Even critics that only taste wines blind have styles they prefer. While better tasters can objectively praise a wine they don’t like but recognize is well-made; they will never rave about it in the same way they would a wine they adore. Try as I might, I will rarely score a hugely extracted, teeth staining, overtly fruity red as well as a lighter, more elegant and restrained style. So go forth and sample widely from a range of wine folk and you will end up finding someone that has a similar palate to yours. It’s a bit like finding a favourite author. You know that when you curl up with their latest book, you’ll probably like it. Now try settling in with the book AND the glass of wine…heaven!

Life

THE CIVILIZING ROLE OF WINE

Posted on March 22, 2016
role of wine

In these troubling times – with the world in such turmoil – spending all of my time and energy on wine studies seems a superfluous pursuit. Wine is a luxury good, not a necessity. And shouldn’t we be focusing on essential needs in these dark days?

The more I think about it, the more I disagree with this sentiment. Ernest Hemingway once said that “wine is one of the most civilized things in the world”.  Like art or music, the role of wine (especially fine wine) is to broaden the mind and heighten the senses. Consumed in moderation, wine encourages noble sentiments like compassion and understanding.

“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world”

In ancient Greece, all major political and philosophical exchanges were fuelled by wine. During the great symposiums, where the fundamental topics of the day were debated, the role of wine was to get conversations flowing. “In vino veritas” was the sentiment of the time. And in today’s world, where racism, hatred and populist regimes are threatening to overtake us, it appears we need this social lubricant more than ever. We need to be reminded that we are capable of creating and sharing beauty.

At a simpler, and perhaps more fundamental level, we need the sheer pleasure wine brings. When I think back on my life, every celebration, every moment of happiness, and even the times of great sadness were accompanied by wine. At Christmas dinner, a hearty cheers with vintage Port. On my wedding day, a Champagne toast. When my father passed away, a raised glass of grand cru white Burgundy.

So if the world goes to hell in a hand basket, you will find me in the cellar with as large a crowd as a can gather, polishing off the Pauillac.

Who is Jacky Blisson? Read all about my wine credentials here.

Life

a day in the life of an MW student

Posted on January 22, 2016
masters of wine student

When I graduated from university, I remember thinking to myself thank god…I’m out! I am NEVER going to school again. No more last minute, desperate attempts to finish essays or cram a ton of facts into my wee brain before a big exam. No more week-ends feeling guilty about all the study I wasn’t doing. And then, after a mere year out in the “real world” I realized that I had absolutely no interest in my field and found my job utterly tedious. Doh! So…back to the classroom. This time in Burgundy, with far more scientific content than I bargained for, in a language I spoke very poorly. When I finished that incredible, exhausing experience, my first thought was, now I REALLY am done.

Fast forward 10 years, to the seminar I attended in Napa & San Francisco this past week. An intense flurry of blind tasting sessions and theory preparation for the notoriously hard Masters of Wine exams. In less than 6 months’s time, I will put myself through this 5-day feat of endurance with a pass rate of less than 10%! So, of course, the obvious question keeps running through my mind. Why on EARTH am I putting myself through this again? And, more importantly, why am I TELLING everyone about it, considering the spectacularly unfavourable odds of passing? I try to reassure myself by saying that it is the journey, the knowledge that I am obtaining, that is important; the simple fact of pushing myself to excel at something. Then again, maybe this is all some elaborate scheme to make my wine drinking habit seem classy and professional. Yeah, probably a little more the latter…

So what does a Masters of Wine student do at a seminar? Well, while it is far from the challenges faced by a rocket scientist, it is nonetheless intense. Imagine yourself, bleary eyed, staring into your coffee cup at 7:30am. While you were doing that, I was pouring 12 mystery wines into 12 glasses. At 7:45am each day, a deathly silence would fall, broken only by sounds of sipping, slurping, spitting and furious pen scratchings. I had 10 minutes per wine to write detailed arguments, using “evidence from my glass”, identifying the grape(s), origin, quality level, style, winemaking techniques, vintage, residual sugar level, commercial appeal and so on. My “move” was to start each tasting by wasting a couple of those precious minute looking around the room in a blind panic watching everyone tasting and nodding their heads smugly, while my mind emptied of all useful information. Then I proceeded to calm down, taste, make notes and then take more-or-less wild stabs at determining the wines and writing logical, vaguely intelligent sentences. Once the buzzer sounded the end of these daily torture tasting session, the feedback began. Here is why you are absolutely and totally wrong…and so on.  Some days, I did fairly well and started feeling a little cocky. Other days I wanted to borrow Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.

The afternoon sessions were a mix between lectures and field trips. The Masters of Wine program is as much, if not more, a theoretical degree. Tasting well is just the tip of the iceberg. You also need to acquire in-depth knowledge of all major aspects of viticulture, winemaking, quality control, business, marketing and latest industry issues and trends. It is this holistic approach that drew me to the MW, over a sommelier program. That, and the fact that I am far too clumsy for fine wine service in a posh restaurant. The idea behind the theory session is to prepare us for the dreaded exams, where we will be expected to write 3 ~1000 word essays in 3 hours on highly technical subjects, with a wealth of real world examples, in a confident, authoritative manner. Again, my attempts at these time essays generally began with a couple minutes trying to tap into the old memory bank while only useless bits of fluff trivia or lame song lyrics floated to the surface.

The idea is that, come June, the hours of dilligent studying will pay off, I will discover a newfound serenity, and pass on the first try! Cheers to that…

 

Life

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…and a couple of red too.

Posted on December 24, 2015

So here we are on the eve of the most wonderful day of the year. Important decisions need to be made. The critical moment is upon us…what to drink with the bird? In my family, this meant trips down to the cellar with my father for lengthy (and chilly) deliberations. Would we go the traditional route and serve red Burgundies…a lightbodied red for a subtle meat? Or perhaps a more original choice; something fruity and round to off-set the dryness of turkey. Barossa Shiraz became the go to wine for a number of years.

Of course, choosing the turkey wine was just the tip of the iceberg. There was also the post main course tipple, the after dinner digestif and, for certain members of the family, a wee dram to finish off the night. With a heaping plate of turkey and stuffing consumed, and sometimes (often) a second helping too, we often ran a serious risk of not finding enough room for Christmas pudding. This is where our French traditions save the day, in the name of the trou normand, jokingly referred to as “the norman hole” in my family. This consists of a shot of chilled Calvados with a small scoop of apple sorbet. The sorbet cleanses the palate while the alcohol burrows a perfect pudding sized hole in the stomach.

With the feast at its end, my father, with a wicked gleam in his eye, would push back his chair and say something that infuriated my mother like “that was edible”. The lovely little crystal glasses would be brought out and the heavy decanter. To celebrate the births of each of his three children, my father bought from the best port houses that declared the vintage. He dreamed of opening the bottles with us to celebrate the key moments of our lives: important birthdays, our weddings, the births of our children and so on. It has been almost 8 years since his passing, and the number of dusty, old bottles are sadly dwindling. The trips to the cellar are still an integral part of Christmas, though they hold a bittersweet note now.

So, in loving memory, this year we hold up our port glasses with Offley Boa Vista Vintage Port 1982. It is glorious; incredibly fresh & vibrant with roasted hazelnut, dark chocolate, blackberry & figs. On the palate it is velvetty and smooth, with a layered texture and a long, nutty finish.

Merry Christmas one and all!

Life

The Humbling Act of MW Blind Tasting

Posted on November 3, 2015
MW Mock Tasting Exam

Distance learning is a tricky thing. You can easily be lulled into a false sense of confidence working from the comfort of your living room. Nothing brings the reality of your progress (or lack thereof) crashing down around you like a course day. Last Thursday and Friday, I kissed my baby goodbye and headed to New York for a two-day Masters of Wine training session.

I get a lot of sidelong glances when I tell people what I am doing. They kind of smirk a little and say “so basically you sit around and drink wine all day? Gee, that sounds like hard work!” . Well, all I can say is…it is!  It is not necessarily the most vital profession out there, but it is challenging. Here is what a day of MW training looks like:

You start the day with 12 wine glasses in front of you and absolutely no earthly idea what is in each glass. Generally, with blindtasting, you have a few cues that help you cheat a little… the shape of the bottle, screw cap vs. cork, and how well you know the person who poured the wine. I have a dear friend from South Africa who, 9 times out of 10, will serve French or South African wine everytime he presents a mystery bottle. This narrows down the options nicely! Unfortunately, in an MW blind tasting exam, the wines are really BLIND. They can come from a wide range of countries, a huge number of grape varieties and are poured into identical bottles before the tasting. When the examiner says go, you have exactly 2 hours 15 minutes to taste, analyze, make an educated guess and then respond to numerous questions on each wine. This equates to just over 11 minutes per wine. And the questions are not multiple choice. They require paragraph style persuasive argumentation on the grape variety, origin, vintage, winemaking techniques, overall quality and so forth – all based on the “evidence from your glass”. For example, simply stating that the wine is a 2013 Pinot Noir from Sonoma will get you about 3 points out of 20 or more. You need to give all of the reasons why you came to this conclusion, in a clear, detailed yet concise way. All the while watching the minutes slip away, and fighting the panicked feeling that you have guessed wrong or that, even if you are right, you’ll never finish in time.

As it turns out, it is not nearly enough to simply taste a particular wine over and over again until you can pick it out blind. Success in this game is based as much on theory as on actual tasting. You need to memorize the fact that Pinot Noir is thin skinned so the wine is generally paler in colour, and more translucent that a lot of other red grapes. You also need to know where it grows and the style of the wine in different regions to help you narrow down the origin. Common winemaking techniques also need to be learnt. In fact, the book learning may even outweigh actual tasting. I once correctly guessed a Rutherglen Muscat dessert wine from Australia that I had never had before, purely because it matched the description I had read.

I’ll be honest and say that the two days of tasting in New York were not my most successful. I had a few too many deer-in-the-headlights moments, stuck in front of a wine I just could not identify. And while after the first day, I was sorely tempted to hide under the covers and forget the whole ridiculous idea of this degree, the next day I had gained fresh perspective. Making mistakes at this point is almost better than getting everything right. I know what I need to work on and how to go about it. So it’s back to the drinking table for me, with a glass in one hand and a wine atlas in the other!

Life

Uninspiring

Posted on October 9, 2015
SAQ Selection Rhône

I buy a lot of wine. A LOT. At the more affordable end of the spectrum, the LCBO tends to beat the SAQ in pricing so I do some shopping there whenever possible. But as I live in Montréal, the majority of my wine is bought at the SAQ. Also, they have a far superior range of French wines (surprise, surprise). So I was very much looking forward to the launch of the SAQ’s new loyality card “Inspire”. Visions of huge cost savings danced in my head. And then, finally, the big day came! I could sign up for my card. I raced to the SAQ website where a big INSPIRE banner ad informed me that “it would be crazy to miss out”. They didn’t have to tell me twice. I am not crazy! So I clicked on the link to find out that I will get a…wait for it…1$ rebate every time I spend 200$. Wow.

Here is the deal as I have understood it: for every 1$ spent, the SAQ awards you 5 points. Once you have accumulated 1000 points, you get a 1$ credit on your card. Granted, this is just the regular, every day deal and does not account for promotions whereby, for limited periods, you can get double points or more if you purchase certain, specified items. A glass half full, we-have-no-other-choice-but-to-shop-at-the-SAQ-so-just-need-to-take-what-we-can-get, type of person would surely tell me to stop complaining. Until now there wasn’t any sort of reward system for spending lots of dough at the liquor store. Comparatively, this is not bad.

So, while I am a little disappointed, I will acquiesce for now and hope that the “Inspire” program does finally live up to its promise. And, to be fair, the cost savings aspect is only one part of the overall concept. Using your card at purchase will allow the SAQ to catalogue your buying patterns and offer you personalized wine suggestions. They also plan to offer contests, events, workshops and all sorts of other fun stuff. I suppose, if I were a gracious sort of person, I would say that this sounds alright. But my stubborn side still thinks that 200$ for a 1$ discount seems a little uninspiring.

Life

THE DEATH OF JOY: Comparative tastings and the standardization of style

Posted on August 3, 2015
Comparative wine tastings standardization

It is human nature to want to compare; to establish a bench mark and then try to measure up. In our Darwin-esque “survival of the fittest” mentality, we are trying to survive by determining who is best and how to emulate them. We love to give out trophies and scores and proclaim that x is better than y, and that all should prefer x. And the supposedly genteel, refined world of wine is no different.

I regularly read articles on comparative tastings that look to rock the establishment with proclamations that new world, less well reputed vineyards are superior to their renowned old world counterparts. In a famous 1976 tasting dubbed “The Judgement of Paris”, Californian Chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignons beat white Burgundies and red Bordeaux in a series of blind tastings.   Just last week, an Australian publication proudly announced that the new wave of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir producers from the Yarra Valley and New Zealand are better than Burgundy, often for half the price.

While I understand that new regions, looking to gain in respect and notoriety from wine consumers, can help their cause by likening their wines to revered vineyards. And I relate to the need to set a goal and aspire to achieving the greatness we perceive in others… I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that the wine industry seems stuck in a comparison rut.

I love the freshness, the fruit purity and precision of a good Central Otago Pinot Noir. And I love the elegance, complexity, and structure of a Chambolle-Musigny. I especially appreciate the fact that both styles exist to compliment different meals and occasions. Why determine that one is better than the other? Who decides what the best criteria is to make such a choice? And why should we trust their judgement?

The writer that hailed Yarra Valley as better than Burgundy based his decision on “freshness, primary fruit and verve”. Burgundian winemaker, Benjamin Leroux, argued that the majority of his fellow producers were not looking to highlight those characteristics but rather focus on structure. Two different approaches and preferences, that ultimately both result in great wines. So why not simply celebrate the wealth of diversity in styles?

Yes, it is irksome to pay so much more for the supposedly great wines from fabled vineyards, than purportedly better wines from newer origins. But so far these constant comparisons have not resulted in significant price decreases for the former. They just drive up prices for the latter… Great for the grower, but not so much for the drinker!

Mark Twain once said that “comparison is the death of joy”.

Our obsession with determining a uniform best, rather than savouring well-made wines from around the world for their individual charms, is a glum affair.

In the 1990s/early 2000s, when winemakers in Bordeaux and Châteauneuf-du-pape saw that more extracted, oakier wines were receiving higher Robert Parker scores, there was a rush to replicate the style and a generation of copycat wines emerged. I for one would rather have a wealth of styles from the light, fresh and fruity to the big, bold and tannic and everything in between. For, as many different types of wine that exist, there are an equal number of different consumer preferences, palates, dishes to pair with and so on. In my humble opinion, that is the principle joy of wine.

Life

The Tax Man Cometh

Posted on April 6, 2015
Box of Red Wine

Despite our best attempts to drink the entire contents of our cellar before leaving France, we still found ourselves with 200-odd bottles that we didn’t quite get to. This was my fault…letting the team down with my dull sniff-and-spit pregnancy regime. So what to do? No problem we thought, in our sweet, naïve way. We will just ship our wines in the container with our furniture. We will save ourselves scads of money not having to pay the high liquor board prices! We will bring rare, interesting offerings to our friends and family craving diversity. It will be like a public service; an act of charity. Cue applause now.

Until the large bucket of ice cold water landed on our proverbial heads. All personal effects for a returning ex-resident are tax-free…hurray! Except for alcohol. Of course! What was I thinking? Why on earth should the provincial government let me bring in wine bought long ago, in another country, for my personal consumption, without taking a hefty cut? This makes perfect sense. So we gritted our teeth and paid the almost 4$/ bottle, rationalizing it to ourselves in that it is still cheaper than buying the same wines and vintages here. The bitter memory was just starting to fade slightly when we had another wonderful surprise! After a lovely morning spent making our customs clearance declaration, our friendly customs officer presented us with the federal tax bill! Because it is clearly not enough to pay provincial taxes to bring sinful, wicked alcohol into Canada; the federal government also needs to make a couple of bucks. Our new friend explained to us that there is a solution to bring in wines tax-free. Excellent! Are you ready? Wines are tax exempt under the legal limit of 1.5 litres per person (aka 2 bottles)! 100 trips back and forth across the Atlantic to beat the tax man… Genius!

So 6$/ bottle later, we have wine…much wine. And it all looks pretty and pristine so far. No pushed up corks, no drips, no perceivable quality alteration. Totally worthwhile!