Clark's first words of the class were: "Out of everyone here, there's only 3 of you that are home winemakers. The rest of you are either professional winemakers, or own a winery. So I'm going to make this a very high level class." What tha'? Tom and I were both there, so that's 2/3 of the home winemakers?
The discussion was high level, and I felt like my brain was on overload (not exactly what I had in mind...I figured I'd be sipping on wine and getting a tour of the wineries. Not exactly writing and being asked to remember complex formulas.)
In the end it was extremely stimulating. The first day was all about chemistry, measurements, suflite formulas, etc. etc. Tom, his Aunt Dorothy (a serious winemaker by the way, she owns a winery in Iowa called www.wideriverwinery.com) and I retreated to a tasting room nearby to review our 'homework' for the night. Our heads were spinning as we thought about everything that we went over.
Day 2 was better. The first exercise was for everyone to picture the wine that they wanted to make. Who did we expect the customer to be? Where did we picture them drinking the wine? What feelings did we want them to have when they drank it? From there we were supposed to work backwards to how we would make this wine, what type of grape we would use, what time we would pick the grapes, and how the design of the bottle and the mood of the tasting room would fit with this wine. Very interesting stuff. The weekend finished with a lecture on how we should be "artistic" with our wine. Let the wine go where it wants to go...nudge it in the right direction, but don't get caught up too much in the #'s. Think of it as a symphony that you're conducting, with many moving parts....PHEW! That's what we've been doing the whole time! Forget this chemistry crap!
The best part of the weekend was the connections we made, and we took advantage of it on day three. For those that are keeping track, day 3 was a Monday. Tom and I went wine tasting, and we first visited Alan Viader at Viader Wines. Awesome wine, and our boy Alan turned out to be the head winemaker (he was real modest the whole weekend. When we got there his picture was all over the tasting room.) We then went over to Madrigal Wines, where a classmate set us up with her boyfriend, who gave us a 3 hour tour of the winery, even though he's never met us. He pulled wine out of barrels to have us taste it, and asked us our thoughts. Shit, Tom even told him at one point that he thought one thought a wine smelled "Bretty." The winemaker agreed. Bret is when a wine has a little bit of a growth to it. I could tell you full word for bret, but that means I'd have to go look it up.
And now I'm home measuring the PH of my wine, and my head is still buzzing from all the info I learned. How am I going to remember all this? I guess we'll just have to make more wine...
