The Ladybug Wine School

Rob, Kerri, (17 other people), and I are taking a wine class offered through the University of Richmond. We had our first class this past Monday night, with me waiting with great anticipation for tonight’s class.

To give a bit of background, this class is called the Ladybug Wine School. The local Ladybug Fund provides financial support in need with children who have special needs and developmental delays to assure that their children receive critical therapy services and equipment that enables them to achieve as full a life as possible. Some of the proceeds from this class goes to this worthy fund – how cool is that. Not only do we get to learn about wine and sample some wonderful varieties, we’re also helping a local non-profit. Life is good.

This past Monday, we were introduced to wine in a whole new way. Now, I’m not gonna tell you everything; you guys need to experience this, or a similar, class yourself. But these are some of the things I thought were quite interesting:

1. Did you know that there are 24,000 names for 5,000 grapes? Me, either!
2. Out of those grapes, only 15 are commercially viable.
3. 20 grapes account for 95% of wine sales. In essence, there are only 20 grapes one must worry about. Whew.

We learned about the tannin level in wine. To illustrate, and to try to isolate where you taste tannin on your tongue, our Wine master mixed tannin with water. Wow – not too good all by itself. But it helped us recognize what tannin will taste like in wines. Tannin gives the wine aging potential. When you think of tannin, think about your Cabernet Sauvignons and Shiraz’s. Tannin is located in the grapes skin.

The Wine master also added acid (like, what’s in wine) to water as well. It was pretty yucky all by itself. And although I don’t know that I could have really picked out a tannin flavor before, I usually could pick out the acidity flavor of a wine. The wine most associated with different levels of acidity is Sauvignon Blanc – and that is usually my least favorite of the white wines.

The next water concoction we tried was sugar water. Somehow, that didn’t shock the senses or taste buds too badly. One of the sweeter wines are Rieslings.

We were even able to taste (and smell) an Oak flavor. Oak imparts a vanilla flavor and gives wine body. Most folks associate the oaky flavor and taste in Chardonnay’s (I personally LOVE a nice oaky Chard – one Rob and I tried recently was a J. Lohr Chard. Very yummy). He also said most reds have oak characteristics as well.

We also talked about flavors of wine … and when we talk about flavor, we’re really talking about how our sense of smell interacts with the wine. With white wines, we usually sense a citrus and herbal flavor. With reds, we get a red berry and earthy flavor. Our Wine master also had cups of different flavors for us to enjoy with our sense of smell, and offered a bottle of wine to anyone of us who could get the flavors correct. He left with his bottle of wine.

We also learned about light, medium and full bodied wines. The three examples we got to enjoy were a Pinot Noir (light), Merlot (medium), and Cabernet Sauvignon (full). This is important to know when you’re making wine/food matches, which is class number four. He was teasing us …

Armed with this information, we talked about how a wine needs to be in balance to be enjoyed – balance between its tannin, acid, sweet, and oak tastes. We learned that most of the time when you’re not enjoying a class of wine, one of these elements is out of balance. He demonstrated this by adding more tannin to a Sauvignon Blanc. It was not good. He added more acid to that same wine, and it was REALLY not good (I couldn’t even finish that Dixie cup!). When he added the sugar flavoring to it, it reminded me of a Reisling. The oak added to the wine reminded me of a Chardonnay, and I actually liked it. He said too bad so sad; they never age is Sauvignon Blanc in oak barrels. Oh well.

Tonight’s class promises to learn all about White Wine; then the next week we will enjoy Reds. Finally, week number four we will get to learn how to pair the wines with food. I can’t wait!