First Day of Wine School, Boston University

Last fall I took Level I of Boston University’s Wine Studies program, and tonight was the first class of Level II. The same instructor opened the class for both Levels, and both nights he asked the same questions of the students: why were we there, and what did we hope to learn?

What’s interesting is that both sets of answers, from two different sets of students for two different classes, were almost exactly the same. Here’s what we wanted to know:

• How to order wine in restaurant
• How to talk to other people about wine
• How to expand our knowledge of wine, and maybe move toward a career change
• How to pair wine with food
• How to round out our culinary experiences – in cooking schools, in restaurants, or in our home kitchens – and complement them with wine

And then there were those of us (myself included) who were there just for kicks. One woman said, “I enjoy wine so much that this class is like play time for me.” A guy said, “This is my idea of fun.” I said I just wanted to drink the stuff.

And we did.

In fact, we drank eight tastes of wines from around the world, from Germany and Chile to South Africa and Sonoma. Of the whites I especially enjoyed the 2006 Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc from South Africa; for the first time I really GOT the smell of green pepper I’d always heard was so distinctive to Sauvignon Blancs. Of the reds the 2004 Fitch Mountain Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon was my favorite; it was both smooth (from the ripe, concentrated fruit) and coarse (from the spicy oak tannins).

But the surprise of my evening was the aroma of the 2006 Epsilon Shiraz from Australia. That this Shiraz had an aroma wasn’t the surprise. That this Shiraz had an aroma that’s identifiable (to my nose, at least) of cumin – cumin – was both a surprise and a small victory for my nose that, until tonight, I was fairly sure was defective when it came to identifying the smells in a glass of wine.

The victory, albeit small, indicated I was making progress.

Boston University offers four levels of wine study; they get progressively more comprehensive, more specific and, I expect, more challenging. The rigor of this kind of study appeals to me, but not just because I’ll know more. Knowing more isn’t the end goal. Knowing more means that my wine experiences will be all that much more interesting and pleasurable.

For example, in class tonight I learned about “tannin management,” which a winery achieves through better crushing techniques. And I learned that the same grape will take on the unique personality of the soil it’s planted in, even if the grape isn’t native to the soil. That characteristic, in other words, enables grapes to resist becoming a monoculture crop, like generic corn or soybeans.