What I Have Learned, and I Hope You Can Learn From It

When I first started a wine-tasting group about 45 years ago, I wanted to taste wines from all the famous regions. So, I jumped right in and organized a tasting of Barolo from the 1978 vintage, ouch that was a painful experience for me and my neophyte friends. We all looked at each other at the end of the tasting and said, “Are these supposed to be good?”

The great result from that tasting occurred four years later when the lightbulb went on above my head while tasting the simplest of Sangioveses from a 35-liter demijohn, in the basement in a house in Siena. The elegant simplicity of that wine, not meant to age more than a year, defined the variety for me. There was not a whole lot to understand in that wine, which was perfect because it allowed me to understand all there was in that wine. When I moved up to a Chianti Classico, it made far more sense to me. I had a framework on which to build, adding a bit more structure, a different ripeness of the fruit, more definition on the palate and more facets in the flavors. My learning increased at each new level. It was not a simple thing, many steps took years to understand, and I am sure I am still missing some things now. I have often compared this learning curve to reading—the funny pages as an example of a simple, quick, and unless you’re reading Bizzaro, easy to understand entrée into reading. But if you start out by reading philosophy, you may have to read that book 50 times, and you might not ever understand it—that’s wine. I have watched an inordinate amount of people tasting wine over my career and personal life, and there is one thing that has always jumped out at me. The moment that nearly anyone tastes a wine, there is an immediate reaction—I like this or I do not like this—after that reaction there is rarely anymore learning. Instead of stopping at the point where you’ve deciphered whether you like the wine, one must look for the whys and hows of the wine; where is it going; what you are feeling from it… because if you stop your exploration at the first sip, you’re never going to learn the depths that are available from wine at any level.

What I am going to say next is heresy for a wine retailer today. We all use points to sell wine, and many of you buy them because of the points—you should not. Each critic has their likes and dislikes, for instance, one may rate tannic wines higher, one may rate them lower; one may talk about color as if it is the most important thing, another may hardly mention it. As a professional I know almost all of the likes of each critic, the regions or varieties they’re good at and those they are not. It would take a long time for someone outside of the business to learn that. The same holds true for vintage—for any great vintage I could show you an ocean of wine you would not like, or even bottles that might not even be the best expression of a certain estate. That means—and I am sorry for this—there is no cheat sheet, easy answer, or magical three things to look for; it is not an easy subject and on top of that it is subjective.

So now that you have honed your skills how are you supposed to filter through the wave of emails from K&L and decide whether a given 94-point wine is the one for you or not? I would suggest that you look at the individuals at K&L, whether through an in-store experience or via their online wine reviews. When you read the descriptions, you can get a better feel for what the wine is about. You can write to any of our staff via email and ask specific questions to help you understand, but without a doubt that will never replace an in-store face to face discussion. Try not to fixate on what words you use as descriptors, they may work for you but may not convey what is actually going on in the wine. That is my two cents worth of advice, I hope it helps you in some small way.

- Greg St. Clair, K&L Italian Wine Buyer