Wine Class Is in Session

Filed in archive Wine Tasting on September 27, 2006

It's fun to do wine tastings at home with just me and the mister, but I still feel pretty intimidate when there are more than just the two of us and I have verbalize my wine thoughts so to speak.

A wine class would be fun, and I think it is a great way to get used to speaking up (in a hopefully non-threatening environment) when it comes to wine tastings. Of course, I tend to be a career student, so maybe that's another reason why this "Wine Tasting for dummies" class sounds so interesting.

From Classes teach wine to the masses: Halfway into "Wine Tasting for Dummies," a class Ayre offers a few times a year at Savvy Cellar Wines, her students had already proven they possessed discriminating noses.

As the dozen or so students moved through four wines - a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, a Washington state chardonnay, a pinot noir from the Santa Cruz Mountains and a cabarnet sauvignon from Napa Valley - they filled in a grid pertaining to each wine's appearance, smell and taste.

In two hours' time, they learned how the experts judge a superior wine based on categories such as clarity, color, acidity, balance and finish.

Ayre founded Savvy Cellar Wines in December 2005 with one goal: to make top-rated wines accessible to people at affordable prices, and to help customers understand what wines are all about.

To that end, Ayre offers a class every two months in topics such as wine and food pairings or wines of California. The shop sells wines for $39 or less, and only those that are rated 90 points or higher by trade magazines.

"From most people's perspectives, learning about wine can be too overwhelming, so they tend to not even bother," said Ayre. "We try to demystify it and show people that it's not too complicated to understand."