Sign up Now for Chicago Wine School "Basics"
Course, to be held in Lisle
We're thrilled
to bring you a great opportunity to learn more about wine, and help you
make better buying decisions. Patrick W. Fegan, director of the
Chicago Wine School, will be
presenting his "Basics of Wine" course in Lisle, on consecutive Friday
evenings, November 5th to
December 3rd.
Mr. Fegan has
studied around the world, and is a recognized expert educator and author.
He has been teaching wine-related courses through the Chicago Wine School
for 20 years.
In his Basics course, Mr. Fegan covers the following
topics:
- How grape growing and winemaking affect wine styles
and flavors
- The art and technique of wine tasting
- Major types of wines: reds, whites, rosé
- Dry, medium and sweet fortified wines
- Champagne and sparkling wines
About his
classes, Mr. Fegan remarks: "We try to put students at ease about the
subject...we offer students solid information in a manner that neither
intimidates nor confuses."
Whether you are
new to the world of wine, or looking to round out your knowledge, you can
benefit from attending Mr. Fegan's course. Each session includes
presentation of content and tasting of 5 - 6 wines.
Again, the
Chicago Wine School Basics course will be offered on five Friday evenings,
starting November 5th, at The Upper Crust restaurant in Lisle (located
just east of Wine Expressions, across Main St.). Classes run from 7
- 8:30 pm. Tuition for the complete program, including all materials
and wines tasted, is $170. (Sorry, the wine club membership discount
does not apply here.) You must be 21 years of age or older to
attend.
Contact Patrick Fegan directly to register:
Chicago Wine School
312-491-0284
PWFegan@aol.com
Also, our feature
article this month is from Mr. Fegan, and it explores different ways that
wines can go "bad" in the bottle, helping you determine whether you've
opened a bad bottle, or whether you are merely experiencing the natural
(and harmless) effect of aging. Read the article below for details.
We hope to see you in class!
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In this issue:
Feature: Bad Bottle Blues
It's a Beaujolais Bash!
Holiday Shopping Plans
Ladies Night Out: Dec 6
Weekend Tastings
Port Tasting: Dec 3
Store Hours
Legal Notice on Ordering Wine
Bordeaux
Wrap-Up
We had a GREAT time at the Slow Dating
Bordeaux event, held October 9th at The View restaurant.
Click here
to view pictures from this fun evening!
Store Location
We are located in downtown Lisle at the southwest corner of Burlington
Ave. & Main St.
Extra parking is available behind our building.
Hours of Operation
Mon - Sat 10 am - 8 pm
Holiday Hours:
From Nov 7 - Dec 19,
we'll also be open
Sundays 1-5.
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Feature Article
Bad Bottle Blues
by Patrick W. Fegan. Reprinted with
permission.
You’re
the host of your party at a good restaurant and the wine you just ordered
doesn’t smell right. Or, you’re back at home putting the final touches on
that lamb roast and the bottle you bought tastes like it should go with
cardboard soufflé. At the restaurant, you might feel embarrassed or
intimidated if you don’t feel expert enough to recognize the problem and
refuse the bottle. At home, you could avoid the intimidating scene and
fall back on that other bottle (you did have a back-up, didn’t you?). In
either case you are disappointed, for your plans, at least temporarily,
have gone bad.
Most Americans are wine-ignorant. If we know the names of
three grapes and five places of origin, our friends deem us the wine
expert; if we don’t, we are probably beer-drinkers. At social occasions
where wine is served, therefore, we feel uneasy and are quite prone to
being mis-led or even brow-beaten by the resident Wine-Nazi. But ignorant
doesn’t mean “unable to” or “stupid;” it just means “not knowing about”
and that can be remedied by understanding a few concepts. If the learning
experience is not a sufficient incentive to read on, then consider the
economic one: few people, whether they earn $5,000 or $500,000 a year,
want to pay for having a bad experience.
Wine is an agricultural product. And like corn, tuna or
potatoes, once packed it can chemically and/or physically change (and
unlike many other packaged products, the small amount of alcohol together
with acids and tannins in the wine acts against normal infections: no one
ever got salmonella from drinking wine). Often, these changes are for the
better, as anyone who has ever tasted a good old Bordeaux can attest.
Sometimes, however, because of improper bottling, poor shipping, bad
storage or the like, the changes are for the worse. You have learned to
recognize when that hamburger is past its prime or when your orange juice
is “off”; it’s the same thing with wines. What follows are descriptions of
some of the more obvious wine disorders and how to recognize them.
Bottle
Stink
Humans call it “morning mouth;” in wines, it’s “bottle
stink,” the odor some wines give off just after they’ve been opened. It’s
common in wines that have been in the bottle for some time, and the remedy
is to aerate it by decanting or simply by swirling your glassful. Odds are
it will dissipate. Humans brush and gargle, wines aerate.
Oxidation
This is the problem of too much aeration. Modern wines are
produced in such a way so as to minimize contact with air. And while the
oxygen in the air brings some benefits to wines—notably for fermentive
yeast growth and through its mellowing and stabilizing properties during
ageing in the wood—winemakers take pains to keep the amount of
oxygen’s contact with wine low. One reason is that too much oxygen darkens
the color of wines, turning a pale straw “white” wine amber or a ruby red
wine brown. In aroma, it takes away the freshness of fruity smells and
replaces them with a flatness that enologists describe as “aldehydic.”
Likewise in the palate, the “zing” is gone, replaced by a dull, soft and
lifeless character.
An exception to this is fortified wine, such as Sherry or
older tawny Porto, wines which by long tradition have been made in the
presence of much more oxygen than is usual in table wine production. For
various reasons, primary among which are their higher alcohol content and
their gradual exposure to air, these wines do not suffer as much from
oxygen as would your average Chardonnay or Cabernet. And we have learned
as wine drinkers to accept this greater than average amount of oxidation
in our fine Sherry or tawny Porto. But they have that “oxidized” character
from which we can learn.
Therefore, if that 2002 dry white table wine on the list
comes out dark yellow and smells more like Sherry than Chardonnay (or
whatever), you might like it—who knows? Everyone’s taste is different—but
the odds are that it is oxidized and you have grounds for refusing to
accept and pay for it.
If you have a few weeks to a few months to experiment, try
it yourself. Take a bottle of wine—the lower the alcohol the better—pull
the cork (or unscrew the cap), pour it into a clean decanter or bottle,
pour it back into the bottle and then leave the bottle in some corner of
your house. Instead of replacing the cork or cap, put a piece of tissue
over the opening to prevent dust or insects from entering. Leave it alone
for several weeks and then come back and try it compared with an unopened
control bottle of the same wine.
Hydrogen
Sulfide
Few modern wines smell of hydrogen sulfide, the
“rotten egg” smell. The odor usually signals inept winemaking; and in this
day of winemaker as technician it is a rare occurrence. If it is truly H2S
that is the problem, aeration (or throwing a piece of copper into it for a
minute or so) may help dissipate it. But if it is mercaptans, which smell
somewhat similar, you are out of luck.
Sulfur
Dioxide
The “just-struck match” smell. In gas, liquid or solid
form, sulfur dioxide has been used for centuries to help stabilize wines
(in fact, during the act of fermentation, a small amount of sulfur dioxide
is produced naturally). If white wines did not have a dose of “SO2”
they would quickly become yellow wines; red wines would be affected less
readily (because of their tannins) but would also show a browning and the
taint of oxidation. Both would more easily succumb to fungal or bacterial
problems.
To make a long story short, advances in the handling of
grapes and in the technology of wine production and storage have reduced
the need for the heavy doses of sulfur once commonly used. Where a decade
or two ago, total sulfur levels of 200 ppm were common, winemakers today
rarely bottle at levels of over 80 ppm, while many use half that. Why,
then, the “contains sulfites” warnings on labels? Let’s just say that our
government responded to the complaints of some under-educated consumer
groups which had not kept up with these advances.
Corky
"Corky” is a catch-all phrase that some use to describe
everything from the smell of fine but rustically made old Burgundies to
faulty barrel-storage to actual cork problems. If the wine smells musty,
like a wet basement or “barnyardy,” but tastes all right, you are probably
enjoying a glass of good European wine from a small estate where they
still do things the “old-fashioned” way: cleanly-made wine but in an
environment of dirt-floors and fungus on the walls which have maintained
colonies of various—and harmless—bacteria and molds which affect the wine.
Compare farm-raised beef-steak to wild venison steak.
If it smells “musty” and tastes astringent, it could either
be the result of a bad cork (tainted by various means) or storage in a bad
cask. If a second bottle smells and tastes okay, the first was probably
corky; if the second bottle, too, is musty and astringent, odds are that
they were stored in bad barrels, especially if both wines were from the
same case or lot.
Proviso
Now, some words about handling these situations and about
fairness. If you are faced with what you very much think is a bad bottle,
don’t be shy. A good wine steward should handle it professionally: I
usually ask him or her to try it: “don’t you think this is corky (or
oxidized or whatever)?”
In most cases, you have no problems: the restaurateur (or
retailer) will in most cases simply get credit from his supplier so it
doesn’t pay to argue with a customer. In other cases, you’ll get a sense
of whether or not he or she is stonewalling, and you can pass that bit of
news on to your hundreds of friends who were thinking of patronizing the
place. So, don’t back down. But, don’t be a jerk. If you bought a 1976
Cadillac but didn’t like the mileage, or if you went to a Schwarzenegger,
Stallone or Van-Damme movie and expected a wee bit more dialogue, most
people wouldn’t take your objections seriously. Likewise, if you order a
$60 bottle of Meursault, a dry, nutty and oaky white wine that is in
perfect shape but you don’t like it because it was dry, nutty and oaky, is
that really the restaurateur’s problem?
Copyright © Patrick W
Fegan
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Holiday Shopping Tips
Be sure and include Wine Expressions on your holiday shopping list!
We have a great selection of elegant gift boxes that are sure to please,
featuring our fine wines, micro-brew beers, cognac and single-malt
scotch.
See our website
for a complete list of our standard gift boxes. You can also
design your own custom gift.
Wine club memberships are another great gift idea, and a fantastic
way to learn about and experience new wines every month.
|
Schedule
of Events
Our special
celebrations of Bordeaux wines on Friday evenings has ended. We're
back to our normal tasting schedule, and we look forward
to seeing you soon at an upcoming event:
Prairie Sampling:
Friday, Oct 29
4 - 6:30 pm &
Saturday, Oct 30 1 - 6:30 pm: Wines from the Rhone Valley
Friday, Nov 5
4 - 6:30 pm &
Saturday, Nov 6 1 - 6:30 pm: Wines from South Africa
Friday, Nov 12
4 - 6:30 pm &
Saturday, Nov 13 1 - 6:30 pm: Wines from Australia Part
3
Friday, Nov 19
4 - 6:30 pm &
Saturday, Nov 20 1 - 6:30 pm: Wines for Thanksgiving
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Special Port Tasting
On Friday,
December 3, starting at 4 pm, we'll be hosting another tasting of fine port wines.
This is a great opportunity to learn more about port wines, and taste
several outstanding samples.
Cost is $30, and advance reservations are required. Call today to
reserve your spot at this unique and high value event! |
