Geek Trip II

Last
summer I wrote about going to the Society of Wine Educators
Conference and getting my wine geek on. This year the
conference was in Monterey, which is a part of California
wine country that I had not yet visited yet, so I was
looking forward to this trip for many reasons. I started
with the pre-conference event, which consisted of a two day
seminar on Spain. If you just responded internally with
“cool” or “that sounds like fun” please do continue reading.
The seminars were even more appealing this year, especially
in areas of winemaking that I would be like to be more
familiar with, such as the Organic versus Sustainable
Viticulture. There were many classes like the
aforementioned, with a natural emphasis on AVAs in the
Monterey area, as well as seminars on selling and marketing,
and even one on how to be a better blind taster. At the end
of my previous article I encouraged others to attend the
Society of Wine Educators Conference. It was more than a
“the more the merrier” invitation; an underlying concept was
in play. I’ve mentioned this before and with the Conference
on my radar it is always worth mentioning again.

So, why should you attend a
conference such as this? In some scenarios, like the
previously mentioned Spanish Seminar, the top combined
scores in the theory and blind tastings will win a paid trip
to Spain for a further in-depth education. Now, I’m not sure
if I qualified for the trip, but I certainly did to be a
Spanish “Ambassador” which is an opportunity to teach about
Spanish wine on behalf of the Spanish Wine Academy. Yes,
this is a paid gig, much as SOPEXA does for me now for
Bordeaux. In cased you missed it, the Bordeaux seminar came
to Boston on August 21 to 23. Contact www.wine.gurus.org for
future events. So if you qualify as a wine geek, i.e. you
love wine, you love learning about wine and love sharing
knowledge about wine, and you know that with some extra
study someone else is going to pay for a trip to Spain or
Bordeaux with greater connections than you (probably) have,
how can you pass opportunities like this up?

What you learn is certainly
not limited to the seminars themselves. The people around
you, some who come from all over the world, add to the
wealth of knowledge that is around you. Having a
winemaker’s, importer’s, educator’s, or retailer’s
perspective on the lesson at hand can be a much different
one than yours. Even little things are amazing how they add
up. For example, in blind tastings I was having difficulty
identifying Malbec from Argentina. Then someone mentioned to
me that their identification note was apple. “Apple,” I
thought, “in red wine?” You know, they were right and now
it’s my note as well. The value of blind tasting in a group
is truly measurable for increasing your skill in a blind
tasting environment. This again was enforced during a
seminar called “Beyond the Pale”. Six wines from grapes that
are traditionally non-oak were poured blind. The presenters,
an MS from Texas and an MS candidate also from Texas listed
the different characteristics of about ten traditionally
unoaked grapes and what it is about them that are hallmark
notes and characteristics. It’s a hard exercise in the best
of environments. By removing all bias of what the wine is,
we have to truly look at all aspects of the wine and judge
it on its merits alone. And via the thought process of the
detective work to understand what the wine is, the end
result does make us a better judge of wine.

The Society is certainly
not the only conference worth attending, and the following
are just on a national scale. Events like Hospice du Rhone
and Pinot Camp are just a few of the many events that cause
us to roar like only wine geeks can do.

This year I saw only one member from the Boston Wine
Community that happens to be a long time member of the
Society. So Boston, again I say – who’s coming with me next
year?