School. Of. Wine. I don’t think I’ve ever been more eager to learn. At real school, the one where you need to be an actual child, I was a terror. When I was in attendance that is, because if I could help it, I wasn’t. I turned bunking-off into an art form; me and my bezzie mate and partner in crime, Leah. I remember our classmates reporting back a quote from our French teacher who, frustrated at our continued absence burst out, “sod this kids, let’s all bog off down the pub with Helen and Leah.” My parents actually live opposite one of my old teachers, and one day he dared to ask them what I do now. My mum said his face was a picture when she told him about my career in psychology. I can’t say I blame him. Must have been quite the shock.

So I was clearly more interested in boozing than studying, but my oh my, how things change when the two are combined. School of Wine is a once a week, 13 week course, starting out with the basics of tasting and winding on through viticulture, vinification and various wine producing countries; France; Italy; Germany and Austria; Spain and Portugal; Australia and New Zealand; the USA; South Africa and South America. The course finishes with fortified and sweet wines, followed by the grand finale – sparklers and champers, with CHIPS.

Every Monday night, our group gathered around a long, candlelit wooden table in the back of Green and Blue, an award winning wine shop in East Dulwich, specialising in natural wines. You gather and chat and drink and try to stop yourself from slumping under the table by munching on hunks of bread from the local German bakery.

Kate Thal is the wonder-woman running the show. She delivers most of the sessions herself and the depth and breadth of her knowledge is staggering. I can completely relate to her, because we both hate any kind of pretension or snobbery when it comes to food and drink. This anti-elitism is the absolute foundation of School of Wine. You can always tell the difference between someone who really knows their stuff and someone with their head stuck up their own arse because the former will tell you that there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to tasting.

I’ve been through a couple of phases with wine. At first, it was just the complete and utter unknown, I didn’t know where to start. I learned a little bit, met a few unhelpful people, felt silly and overwhelmed. And then I went to wine school.

I learned about the horrors of mass produced wines; the way the grapes are so immature and badly grown that they have literally no character of their own and are ‘flavoured’ with dirty little teabags of artificial nasties. I learned about my favourite grapes and regions; the former are Riesling and Gewürztraminer, the latter Alsace and anywhere that grows Riesling and Gewürztraminer. Extensive notes back up the classes which steer you and your buds up and down rambling hillsides and through lazy 4-hour fantasy dinners of cassoulet, confit and smoky, iron-rich reds. It was a genuinely emotional journey. A grown man and I nearly shed a tear over a Loire Chenin Blanc and I drunkenly agreed to join the Women’s Institute.

If you have an interest in wine, then go go go. This is not your regular selection, but carefully chosen and genuinely interesting. You’ll taste an average of 11 each week and share out the leftovers between you. Some were cloudy, some keenly crisp; there were chilled reds, vegetal, raw, slightly dirty whites and stickies like distilled raisins. What really elevates this course though, is Kate. She is eloquent, witty and engaging. More than one of the boys had a crush on her. Hell, I almost had a crush on her. I dare you to go these classes and not come away with the utmost respect, not just for Kate but for her entire philosophy. She does it for the love, as do the producers she sources from. Some are so small that they are barely making any money from the backbreaking work that is the reality of making decent wine.

There cannot be a wine course in London that is better than this one. You can enter it at literally any level and mine Kate’s brain as little or as much as you want. You will feel inspired and if you’re anything like us, you will gush about it for months afterwards. The classes run on Monday nights, which I suppose is my only criticism. Still, it does ensure that most people are available and I still don’t feel right on a Tuesday morning unless I’ve got a sniff of a hangover. So much so in fact, that I’m going right back to school. Secondary School of Wine is nearly upon us, and I’ve got my brand new pencil case.

Do read fellow student Graeme’s post, which is brilliantly written and much better than this one.
Thanks to Ewan-M for the photo of the shop front.

Green and Blue’s School of Wine costs £325 for 13 weeks of tasting, teaching and learning. I was invited to try it free of charge.

Green and Blue Wines
38 Lordship Lane
East Dulwich
London
SE22 8HJ
T: 0208 693 9250
School of Wine

I am often asked why I don’t write about wine more on this blog, considering the fact that I drink so much of the stuff. Well, that’s because I only drink wine to get pissed.

Only kidding. In the past year or so I’ve been making a real effort to tackle the vast topic head-on but in doing so found something rather unexpected waiting for me: fear. I had identified the problem as akin to standing on the edge of a huge cliff, looking out into a vast sea of information; the bit I already knew was a little speck on the distant horizon. When I came down to the real business of it though, I felt a different kind of intimidation: a fear of the ‘wine world’ in general. There seems to me to be a lot of old guff surrounding rituals of opening, tasting and being ‘qualified’ to even talk about wine, like some of the people involved are trying really hard to make the subject more complicated than it is, with the apparent aim of making themselves feel a bit more important. Are you getting the impression this annoys me yet? Yes it does.

In the past year or so however, I’ve met people who have the exact opposite intentions, who are trying to make wine more accessible, as it should be. These people include my friends Kate Thal, owner of Green and Blue Wines; Dan Coward from Bibendum; Rob McIntosh from the Wine Conversation; Ryan and Gabriella Opaz from Catavino and the other wine lovers you’ll find on my blogroll, including Andrew Barrow, who invited me down to Brightwell Vineyard for my first foray into the world of English wines.

These people also encouraged me to attend the recent European Wine Bloggers’ Conference, in Lisbon. Now that’s what I call throwing yourself in at the deep end. As I set off on my adventure, I counted my lucky stars that a few weeks beforehand, a group of us had a tutoring session on the basics at Bibendum, where I’d stocked up on a few points of reference from the bigger picture. It’s all very well tasting wines from a certain region but if you don’t have any knowledge base to slot them into then you are pretty much screwed. Since then I’ve been tasting, tasting, tasting and feeling slightly more confident that I could take something useful away from the conference.

I’ve decided to use this post to record a few things I’ve learnt. Hopefully this might be useful to someone else out there who finds themselves in the same position. Writing it has also had a remarkably cathartic effect for me. So here we have it, 10 things I’ve realised about wine…

1. Swirling the wine around in the glass before tasting is purely to get more air in contact with more surface area of wine and therefore increase your chances of picking up any subtleties.  Examining the behaviour of the wine on the sides of the glass after doing so, or attempting to assess its ‘legs’ is mostly of no value, except perhaps to get an idea of the alcohol content. More alcohol = more viscous wine. You can of course, hold it up or against something like a white tablecloth, to get a good eyeful of the colour.

2. Just because someone else can pick up a certain flavour or aroma from a wine, it doesn’t mean you have to (and vice versa). We’ve all been there – the person next to you is all, “I’m definitely getting petrol on the nose” and you sniff and sniff, desperately searching for a hint of forecourt only to conclude that your nostrils are Neanderthals. It’s all subjective. I wouldn’t doubt myself when tasting food for example, regardless of whether anyone else is getting a finish of Stilton from the fat on their rib-eye; I know what I taste. Believe.

3. Don’t be afraid to have a good old chew on it once you’ve got it in your gob. Some people do that sucking thing, the idea of which is to coat as much of your tongue as possible to enhance your tasting experience. I’ve developed a sort of half suck, half chew, swilling it around in there as much as I can and generally trying not to worry about what other people are thinking.

4. Smelling the cork is a complete waste of time.

5. I have discovered that I can tell when a wine is corked. It basically smells like walking into a damp basement; a bit musty. Sometimes it smells only slightly musty, and this is when it is only slightly corked. Ta da!

6. Palate fatigue can be a problem. After tasting 18 wines for example, as we did on one occasion at EWBC, the untrained palate simply gets tired out and gives up. Everything starts to taste the same. It is at this point that a person needs bubbles; a person needs beer. There’s a damn good reason we drank so much Bock.

7. You I need to face up to the fact that spitting wine out is part of tasting.

8. Charles Metcalfe is a famous wine critic (and a thoroughly charming chap), who is also famous for enjoying a little sing. I honestly had no idea. Here is a (very bad quality) video of him singing at the EWBC. I think this is a must-know fact, personally…

9. If you work in the world of wine, be nice and don’t take yourself too seriously. See above.

10. EWBC is definitely worth the trip if you are a blogger at any stage of your wine adventures. Ryan and Gabriella Opaz and Rob McIntosh put a huge amount of work into organising the event and I think they should be congratulated on its success.

I would  like to thank all of them for putting up with an ignorant food blogger who is trying her best to learn. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Dan from Bibendum who had provided some amazing tastings for bloggers, and never tires of encouraging us to get involved. Cheers!

I am lucky to live just a five minute walk from Green and Blue in East Dulwich. The place is a real blessing as the staff are extremely knowledgeable and I am just, well, not. Although I’m a big wine drinker I have a huge amount to learn. So, I wander in, tell them what I’m cooking and they sort me out with a suitable bottle.

They are currently running a special ‘Awesome Alsace Food and Wine’ menu, which includes four food and wine pairings. Menus like this are perfect for me because I get to rack up some more notches on the tasting/matching post while also comparing different wines from the same region. I was excited then to join a group of other bloggers for a preview.

The owner of Green and Blue, Kate Thal gave us a bit of an intro about Alsacien wines and I learned that they are generally aromatic and generally white, as the region doesn’t have the heat to fully ripen red grapes. It does, however, have a long growing season, which apparently allows the grapes to mature and ripen slowly (a good thing).

Our first match was a 2007 Dirler Caude Muscat served with roasted artichoke hearts, which are apparently famous for being impossible to match with any wine. Although I didn’t know this (surprise surprise), I was obviously very intrigued by the pairing which, in my humble opinion, is one that works really well. Although there was the briefest moment when an unpleasant metallic taste started to materialise, it was almost instantly washed away by the truly mouthwatering experience of the match. It was like a whooshing sensation in the mouth – really fresh.

Next we tried crab (equal portions of white and brown meat – my personal preference – hooray!), served with bread and aioli and a glass of 2007 Leon Boesch Riesling. The wine smacked me round the nose with the full on honk of honey and then did the same again to my tastebuds. It was also packing some citrus and was high in acidity, making it a great match with the crab. I do remember some discussion as to whether the aoili might take a bit of lemon but Kate explained this would be difficult to balance due to the high acidity of the wine. In the end it was decided that lemon zest might be worth tentatively experimenting with.

I was very excited about the Gewürztraminer (2007 Leon Boesch) which came next because it is my favourite grape (I couldn’t care less that it is apparently uncool). I remember the exact moment I first tasted a Gewürztraminer, many years ago now -  my Dad handed me a chilled glass on a hot summers day and stood back to watch the expression of surprise and delight on my face. I am actually getting a bit emotional thinking about it now and I’m not even joking. He bought me a mixed case for my birthday this year and I had to leave it at work so I wouldn’t drink them all at once. It’s safe to say me and the Gewürz are best mates.

With this we enjoyed a wedge of Popina aubergine tart – sweet with tomatoes and peppers and caramelised onions. The richness of the wine and aubergine worked really well together and, as ever I loved the Gewürztraminer, floral nose and then buttery with apricots and a hint of white pepper finish. It was also unsurprisingly my favourite match of the evening.

Finally, we tried a 2006 Frederic Mochel Pinot Gris with a dish of smoked chicken and red peppers. I was amazed to learn that the grape used to make Pinot Gris is the same used to make the most boring wine on the planet – Pinot Grigio. This wine could not be more different – bone dry, with enough acidity to cut through the smokyness of the chicken and a kind of fruity sweetness that worked really well with the peppers. It was a really interesting match and a strong contender for my favourite.

At £25 for four tapas sized plates of food and four 100ml glasses of wine (that’s over half a bottle in total), I think the Alsace menu at Green and Blue is excellent value. I was totally stuffed at the end and I really felt I’d learned something. This is in no small part down to Kate Thal, who is brilliant at what she does, not coming across as either patronising or going over people’s heads. She has an ease about her which comes from complete confidence in her knowledge, the quality of the wines and doing her job for the right reasons.

One of these reasons, she tells us, is purely to celebrate the pleasure of consumption – the joy of losing yourself in the moment of sensory experience that is eating and drinking. I don’t know about you, but I can certainly raise a glass or two to that.

Green and Blue Wines
38 Lordship Lane
East Dulwich
London
SE22 8HJ
0208 693 9260
www.greenandbluewines.com

Green and Blue are also offering 15% off all Alsacien wines until the end of August.

My new year’s resolution for 2009 was to learn more about wine. I’m not into the kind of resolution where I have to give something up, adding something else in always seems much more attractive and achievable. Of course, wine is a vast subject so I still know very little about it in general and I certainly knew absolutely zilch about English wine until Saturday. I wasn’t even sure if I’d ever tasted an English wine but I’d heard rumours about it and they definitely weren’t good. For this reason then, I was extremely curious when Andrew invited me down to Wallingford (Oxfordshire) for a tour and tasting at Brightwell vineyard.

We started with the tour, which was beautiful, a hundred shades of green lit up in the glorious sunshine. This was my first ever vineyard visit so I learned a lot about the maintainence of the vines, including their enemies – snails and rabbits and mildew apparently – the latter being a particular problem in the UK as we have the perfect climate for it, temperate and damp. The Brightwell vineyard was apparently out of production for three years because of mildew. That must have hurt.

We then moved on from the vines to a walk around the lake, after which I was feeling rather thirsty and more than ready to get around to the actual tasting, although not before we had stopped off to have a look at the pigs.

The swines came trotting over expecting food of course and when I crouched down to get a close up shot, one of them actually tried to eat me. Well, my skirt anyway. Perhaps it wanted revenge for my consumption of goodness knows how many of its distant relatives over the years. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a tug of war with a pig but take it from me that their jaws are surprisingly powerful. I did eventually manage to retrieve my skirt, along with a considerable blob of pig saliva. Nice.

The pigs currently reside on the land where Brightwell are intending to grow Pinot Noir, something which Andrew told me sounds very ambitious. This is because the UK has a far from perfect climate for producing red wines, which is why the following tasting really surprised everyone.

If I’m totally honest, the whites weren’t really anything to write home about but the red was the star of the show (Oxford Regatta 2006), really spicy, lots of black pepper but still some good fruit and with an irony, blood-like tang. Apparently the wine is benefitting enormously from bottle ageing.

I learned that the best English wines though are generally the sparklers, although Brightwell don’t offer it at their tastings as they simply don’t have enough so we bought a bottle and took it back to Andrew’s place for round two. It was a bit cheesy on the nose, very green tasting. It was nice but didn’t blow me away. We tasted some wines from other producers too though and my favourite was probably the Limney Horsmonden 2007 which had a hint of green pepper and a toasty coconut finish, although not everyone could agree on the coconut part.

It became apparent that Mark and I have similar noses and tastebuds as he said, ‘I’m getting passionfruit on the nose’ and me with a ‘yes! passionfruit that’s been hanging around for a week’, while others looked on nonplussed. This was definitely one of my favourites. Turns out slightly funky passionfruit rocks my world.

A very short while ago I would not have had the confidence to write about wine on this blog like I do now. First, there was my mini wine epiphany, encouraged by Rob at this meal, then I started to tentatively trust my own senses with wine, just like I do with food and all of a sudden here I am, blogging about it good and proper. I’ve learned that not everyone picks up the same aromas and flavours in wine and that this is perfectly normal, which was like cutting a ball and chain – I feel more free to blog about it now I don’t have to worry if I’m not getting bloody peaches on the nose when someone else is. Aaaand relax…

You can see the full set of photos from the day here and more detailed notes from our Twitter tasting session here.