Whistler Cornucopia | Drink Seminar: Blind Tasting Like a Sommelier
We were in Whistler celebrating 30 years of their annual, shoulder season food and drink festival, Cornucopia. The two week long event includes parties, tastings, dinners, and seminars. It welcomes both novices and afficionados of wine and spirits. As someone who has written enough and drank enough, I fit somewhere in the middle and love taking a few of the seminars here to improve my understanding of what it is that goes into my glass and hits my lips.
This year we would attend three such seminars. The first of which was “Blind Tasting Like a Sommelier”. I found this to be the perfect class to start the weekend end off with. It spoke to the basics of wine drinking and tasting and taught us how to describe what it is we are having through sight, smell, taste, and texture. And then identify what something like it is worth and how much we ought to pay for it. This was especially poignant as I was with my friend who has only more recently embarked on her wine journey.
We were taught what to look for in wine, but understanding that there is so much to consider and so many grapes in the world. That being able to identify the bottle blind is no easy task, even for a trained sommelier, such as our host.
As per the event description, on the Cornucopia website: “Blind tasting is one of the most glamourized and astonishing skills in wine. It can feel almost impossible that by smell and taste alone, a trained sommelier can place a wine on the world map and potentially even the year in which it was grown. Join Jason Yamasaki, Best Sommelier of BC and two-time competitor at the Best Sommelier of Canada, for an interactive and instructive tasting that takes you inside the mind of a professional sommelier and reveals how wine experts train to recognize origin, variety, style, and quality in the glass. You will walk away with a new way to taste wine and a little bit of sommelier instinct installed in your own palate.”
Our mystery wine line up was two glasses of sparkling, three whites, and three reds. We were advised to use each grouping as a comparison point for one another, that identifying is easier when you have a benchmark.
Beginning with sight we were taught to look at clarity, if the liquid was clear or hazy. The intensity of its colouring, pale or deep. And what colour is it from a range of shades. Then consider texture, like are there bubbles, tears, or sediment?
When it comes to smell you want to be able to get your nose as far in to the glass as possible. Then smelling the pit of your elbow in between when you need a break, and to refresh your olfactory senses.
Here we smell if the wine is clean or flawed. If it is the latter we want to make out if it is because of a cork or if it is oxidized. What is the intensity like? Delicate or full on? What is the age and development between youthful or developed? And if we can make out any familiar fruit scents of oak, vegetal, herb, earth or anything beyond that we are smelling.
Then when it finally came time to taste we were looking to see if it was dry, kind of dry, or more sweet. Dry is when no sugar is added and sweet is the sugars you are tasting. Is it high in acid? What are tannins like for the reds, and what is the mousse like for sparkling. Is there more alcohol, which you can tell through a heavier body and the way it is sitting in your mouth. What is the intensity like? What are the flavours? How does the wine finish?
As a group we worked our way through each, calling out our own descriptors and then guessing what each wine was. The fun part was the reveal, pulling bottle from out of brown paper bag, and seeing if we were right in our deductions.
A few of my take aways from this very informative class is that the fresher tasting the wine higher the acidity, which means the grapes are from a cooler climate.
For sparkling wine, mousse is the textural representation of the size of the bubble. This tells you how the wine is made. If the bubbles are injected like a soda stream, like the process of the bubbles, they will be fast, large, and aggressive. Whereas the finest champagne bubbles come from a secondary fermentation that lasts from 18 months to 5 years. Wherein bottles are slightly turned a little everyday for maximum carbonation.
And we closed the seminar with a list of working vocabulary on how to best describe and talk about wine. Wine words that work in real life.
Our next two seminars were on Chardonnay, as a wine that is often hated on. The first was meant to help change our minds, “What Did Chardonnay Ever Do to You?” It took us on a journey around the world, showcasing the diversity of this elder of modern grapes.
Whistler Cornucopia | Drink Seminar: What Did Chardonnay Ever Do to You?
Originating from Burgundy in the 1600’s, as one of the most malleable grapes. It adapts to a variety of soil types and climates and ripens earlier than other grapes. And for those reasons it is beloved by wine makers.
As we tasted our way through nine different worldly bottles we discovered the versatility of Chardonnay and witnessed for ourselves how it shows up. Not just oaked like I previously believed, but there were many unoaked options and a selection of both blended in a series of different ways degrees that each affects the outcome.
As per the Cornucopia website, “Wine veterans and explorers, Paul Watkin and Keith Nicholson are bringing back this popular seminar of Cornucopias past with renewed gusto! They will show you that Chardonnay produces a vast array of delicious styles, from mouth-watering freshness to rich, mouth-coating expressions to fantastic sparkling wines.”
Featured Wines:
* Poplar Grove Chardonnay, BC
* Gerard Tremblay Petit Chablis, France
* Fantini Chardonnay, Abruzzo, Ital
* Pascual Toso Chardonnay, Argentina
* Louis Jadot Bourgogne Chardonnay, France
* Dirty Laundry Reserve Chardonnay, BC
* Mt Boucherie Reserve Chardonnay, BC
* Closerie des Lys Pays d’Oc Chardonnay, France
* Viberti Giovanni Filebasse Piemonte Chardonnay, Italy
* Domaine Roland Lavantureux Chablis Villages ‘Veux Carnes’, France
From a Chardonnay that is fermented and aged in stainless steel to be able to taste the personality of fresh Chardonnay and not its interventions. To one that is also unoaked, but earns its full bodied creaminess through a second malolactic fermentation. This takes it from tart acid and fruit notes to lactic acid and a milky cream. For this one I wouldn’t immediately think Chardonnay, but here we were and here this was.
We tried one from Argentina that was fermented in stainless steel and aged briefly in oak barrels, giving it toasty notes. And slowly built our way to equal parts stainless steel and oak fermentation for a balance of freshness and subtle oak. To only French old oak aging for a more pronounced flavour, but still passive when compared to new and American oak that tends to be more aggressive.
The seminar was more like a friendly discussion where we offered up, as a group, what food each of us would like to pair each wine with. Most of which were lighter options like shellfish and salad or truffle popcorn and shrimp eggs Benny. The diversity of food pairings we came up with really showed how approachable Chardonnay can be.
My greatest takeaway from this seminar is that chilling wine is the best way to hide a lower quality vintage and that not all Chardonnays are oaked, and you can still get full aged notes from a Chardonnay that has no oak or no malolactic fermentation.
Here, we also got a taste of an unoaked Burgundy Chablis burgundy that had notes of wet stone and mineral. This would then take us to our next seminar the next day.
Whistler Cornucopia | Drink Seminar: White Burgundy Without the Price Tag
“White Burgundy has become one of the world’s most sought-after wines. As demand continues to grow, so too do the prices and scarcity. You get it: once you’ve discovered great White Burgundy, there really is no going back. Join Jason Yamasaki, JOEY Restaurant Group Sommelier, to taste a lineup of wines from producers and regions around the world that capture the freshness, texture, and elegance that have made White Burgundy the benchmark for Chardonnay. You will walk away with a plan to keep your fridge, your cellar, and your wine glass full of wines that deliver the same satisfaction, without the jaw-dropping Burgundy price tag.”
Featured Wines:
* Chateau de la Gravelle Muscadet
* Drouhin Bourgogne
* Vasse Felix Filius
* Laroche Vaudevey Chablis 1er Cru
* Inama Soave
* Tilia Chardonnay
* Tantalus Chardonnay
* Bailly Lapierre St-Bris Sauvignon Blanc
We started from what our host called the “Pinnacle of white wine”, learning what about Burgundy that we love and cherish and what has caused its increased demand. This has now created a limited amount with not enough to keep up. Examples were given where prices have increased from $75 to $186 in the last 10 years.
Apparently white wine sales have eclipsed those of red wine and we are seeing a change in drinking habits from those now wanting more crispier and more refreshing flavours.
We then explored why Burgundy and our host’s coined “Burgundy effect”. That burgundy is at the cross roads of all the things we love about all white wines, all in one region. Burgundy wine is restrained, it has persistence. It is evolved with texture, weight, shape, and depth.
We then tried two such wines from Burgundy to prove the above, then followed it up with six other carefully curated global wines that would be comparable. Some of which in the same arena, but different grapes, others different continents with similar processes.
The goal was to find affordable proxies for under $32 and is available at your local BC liquor store. And for that our host was successful. There were ones the group liked more than others and some that were close enough that we wouldn’t be able to tell Burgundy from Australia or BC.
My takeaway here was discovering how grapes grown in soil with heavy limestone and sea shells and oysters affect the creamy quality of Chardonnay.
We also tried grapes new to me like the Muscadet, that despite the name was no where near sweet like moscato. But is best with oysters as it matches a mionette.
I also discovered the Garganega grape that only grows in the Suave region of Italy. It is described as being neutral with a fairly bitter end.
In conclusion, Cornucopia drink seminars are a great way to discover something new, brush up on existing knowledge and drink 8-9 glasses while doing so.
