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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Hey Jake Koseff, why are wine people so snotty?

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jul 28, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Jake Kosseff is the company wine director for both Wild Gingers and the Triple Door. He is also one of Seattle’s best-known sommeliers, a household name among winos who pops up in publications both local and national.

Kosseff earned his reputation at now-defunct Cascadia restaurant, a restaurant mentioned far and wide for its excellent wine list. He’s also done time at Campagne and Blowfish Cafe, among other places.

Despite all this, Jake Kosseff is not in any way snotty.

Which is why I had no problem asking him this stupid (and—bonus!—vaguely insulting) question.

You can’t deny it, Jake: Wine people have the reputation for being more competitive and guarded about their knowledge—more so than cocktail and beer people for sure. What’s with the snotty attitude?

That’s easy: Wine people just know more than cocktail or beer people, so it’s harder for us to spit it all out in one quick meeting!

Seriously, I love wine and beer and cocktails, and there’s tons to know about all of them. I think that GOOD wine people, just like beer and liquor people, are very generous about their knowledge. Most of the sommeliers that I have worked with are smart, open, charming people who realize that the best way to get people excited about wine is to share as much information (and only as much information) as a guest wants.

Wine is such a big topic on its own, experts really don’t need to intimidate people, the amount of knowledge associated with it is intimidating even for us. The good thing is that you don’t need to know much to appreciate wine, but wine gets even better the more you know.

So wine folk haven’t earned their reputation for being snotty and exclusive?

There’s some basis to this reputation, though much less than there used to be. Fifteen to 20 years ago, it seemed like snootiness was a prerequisite to working in a fancy restaurant (think tuxedos, white gloves, and people with vaguely continental accents saying “buuut of course”), and the standard-bearer of fine dining was often the sommelier.

That isn’t so much the case nowadays. But, on occasion, there’s still a snooty sommelier to deal with. This is often because they don’t know what they are talking about, and think that they can hide this by being snooty. If you bump into one of these beasts, you should either make fun of him/her mercilessly or go to a different restaurant.

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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Chris Lara from Matt’s in the Market offers some transparency on the stemless glass situation.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on May 25, 2010 at 10:44AM 2 Comments

Chris Lara, formerly of Crush, is now head sommelier at Matt’s in the Market, where he regularly creates knock-out wine parings with Chef Chester Gerl’s rustic dishes. He knows a thing or two about wine glasses.

So let’s ask him a stupid question about them.

Chris, why are wine glasses losing their legs?

Every time I go out these days someone is serving me syrahs and sauv blancs in squat glass bowls. For me—especially with champagne flutes—it takes some of the fun out of wine drinking. Thoughts?

The reason wine glasses have stems is so we don’t warm the contents with our body heat, (something we want to do with brandy or cognac in a snifter). Holding wine by the bowl or cradling it will warm whites to much, and heat reds. Also, most wines like air, and stemmed wine glasses provide it and even regulate how much air gets in.

So then serving wine from stemless glasses is just wrong?

Well, “when in Rome," as the saying goes. I was in a hip bar in Vegas a couple of years ago and we were having Champagne at $28 a glass out of stemless flutes! But this was what that bar was going after. It just fit.

Taking a young cabernet from Napa Valley and swirling its contents around and around only helps to evolve that cab. You could still do this in a stemless glass, it’s just the heat that you need to worry about. Keep in mind too that a restaurant might choose stemless glasses for cost-cutting purposes. Wine glasses can wreak havoc on a budget, stemless glasses break less.

Ah, the bottom line. That I can understand. So how do I know this “hip” restaurant I’m in is serving me the appropriate stemless glass?

Look for small slender bowls for whites, larger, rounder bowls for light-skinned reds (pinot noir, nebbiolo), and larger, taller bowls for deep-skinned reds (cabs, syrah). Champagne should be in a slender tall flute. Most wines that are appropriate to serve in stemless glasses are youthful, easy-going wines. The kind you drink every day.

Got it. But one last thing: what do you think of serving wine in juice glasses? Because I think it’s the saddest thing in the world.

Rustic juice glasses were the way to drink wine for so long. Imagine grandmother making a farm fresh dinner and Uncle running down to fetch a beautiful wine crafted by the family. You ate and drank, life was magical. There was no call for a Bordeaux glass or aromatic tulip.

In the past 80 or 90 years we have stepped from just drinking wine to appreciating its every nuance. Wine glasses haven’t just come along for the ride, they’ve driven the revolution.

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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Waterfront Seafood Grill’s head wine woman talks local sparklers and the foods that love them.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Apr 30, 2010 at 11:40AM 1 Comments

Kristen Young, director of wine at the Waterfront Seafood Grill, has been committed to service from a very young age—she grew up hanging coats and shaking martinis at her parents’ dinner parties in Ohio.

After moving to Seattle in 2001, she worked at Campagne and Nell’s, developing her passion for fine food and wine. Before moving to Waterfront, Kristen opened Tilth with Chef Maria Hines, overseeing the wine program and front-of-house operations.

Here, a stupid question for Kristen Young.

I like to support Washington’s wineries but I love champagne. Are all the best sparkling wines from France, or can I get really high-quality sparklers made in the Northwest?

There are some excellent options for drinking and supporting local sparkling wine. One of the best that Washington has to offer is Domaine Ste. Michelle’s Luxe. Chateau Ste Michelle focuses on the traditional process of fermenting in the bottle, which gives the wine very elegant and fine bubbles. Also, the grapes (in this case, all chardonnay) are mostly sourced from Heily Vineyard in the Columbia Valley. Cooler climate sites like Heily showcase natural acidity and minerality. These grapes are treated with respect: hand-picked, carefully pressed, and aged five to six years.

Sold. Any tips for pairing sparkling wine with food?

Two basic types of pairings come to mind. First, there is the “like with like” matching, such as raw oysters served with a clean and mineral-driven sparkling wine. I would suggest the A. Margaine Premier Cru Blanc de Blancs.

Then you have yin-and-yang pairings—fried chicken and a brut rosé, for instance. Probably my favorite sparkling wine in the country is the Soter Brut Rosé from the Willamette Valley of Oregon. It is so versatile. You can pair it with oysters, truffled popcorn, beef tartare, salmon, poultry (especially fried chicken)… There are endless possibilities.

Fat and acid are best friends when it comes to food and wine pairings. Fried chicken needs the contrast of crisp and lively bubbles to cleanse the palate. It’s the same reason that French fries and beer go well together, or potato chips and Coca-Cola for that matter.

Should I serve sparkling wine with dessert?

It can be tricky. You always want to serve a dessert wine that is sweeter than the dish with which it is being served. Mismatching weight and intensity is a common mistake when pairing sweet courses. Lighter desserts like angel food cake or lemon souffle will work well with a Moscato d’Asti (a sweet, low-alcohol sparkler from Northern Italy).

Quite often, however, sparkling wines are too dry for desserts.

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Tags: Wine, A Stupid Question for a Sommelier, Sparkling Wine , Wine and Food Pairings

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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

New Oak, old oak, no oak: Campagne’s Cyril Frechier demystifies chardonnay.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 24, 2010 at 02:52PM 6 Comments

From 1990 to 2007, Cyril Frechier, now wine and spirits director at Campagne and Cafe Campagne, was the wine director and GM of Rover’s restaurant in Madison Valley. Born and raised in France, he honed his skills attending wine master classes in London. “The exhilaration and inspiration received from these lectures,” says Cyril, have never left him.

Here, a stupid question for Cyril Frechier.

You hear a lot about chardonnays being oaky or not oaky. What does that mean exactly?
Since Roman times, sturdiness, watertight structure, and flavor-enhancing compounds have made oak the favorite wood type for shipping and storing wine the world over. The more relevant and obvious benefit to the consumer are oak’s organoleptic (I love that word) properties.

I’m glad you love that word, Cyril, but I should probably cut in and explain that “organoleptic” refers to the wine’s sensory properties—taste, color, odor, etc. Alright, carry on.
Oaky flavors are commonly described as vanilla, coconut, burnt toast, caramel, tobacco, spicy, cedar, and clove. Some white-grape varietals are natural partners for these flavors; chardonnay chief among them. Reds that can handle oak’s sometimes overbearing flavors include cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah/shiraz, tempranillo and, to a lesser extent, pinot noir.

How “oaky” a wine is depends on the provenance, brand, size, manufacturing requirements, and percentage of new barrels that are used. Old barrels can be neutral, while new barrels will impart 100-percent oakiness.

Okay, back to chardonnay. If I don’t like oaky chardonnays, does that mean I won’t like any chard?
As in most things in life, balance and harmony is key. Excessive oak flavors will obliterate chardonnay’s more delicate floral, herbal, and citrusy characteristics. But oak, when well handled, can add layers of flavors and complexity that unoaked chardonnays rarely display.

But how can I tell, looking at the label, if a chard is oaky?
Look on the bottle’s front and back label. Any mention of oak, vanilla, toasted flavors, etc is a dead giveaway. Words like Reserve, Special Cuvée, and Estate can point to a fancier, more expensive bottling in which new oak barrels may have been used.

Alright, homework time. Can you suggest two chards—one unoaked, one oaked—to compare side by side?
Here are two from the Willamette Valley in Oregon: Chehalem 2007 Inox Chardonnay takes its name from the abbreviation of the French word for stainless steel. This wine is 100 percent stainless-steel fermented. It’s light, crisp, fresh, and delicious. Ponzi Vineyards 2006 Chardonnay Reserve: A good example of how oak can enhance chardonnay fruit when in the hands of a deft winemaker.

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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Think you’re allergic to tannins? Fonte’s super-smart sommelier has an alternative diagnosis.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 02, 2010 at 11:19AM 0 Comments

The questions in this series aren’t really stupid. But the whole wine thing can be so (unnecessarily) intimidating. Good thing for you I have no shame.

Tysan Dutta graduated from Vassar College at age 19, so it’s only natural that she went to New York City and became a bartender—something had to make up for all that studiousness. While she worked the bars of Manhattan, however, her inner nerd emerged again: in the form of a passion for wine education and particularly pinot noirs.

Her pinot love brought her to Portland where she served as sommelier at the famous Heathman Hotel, among other places, then moved to Seattle for the chance to pair wines with the fabulous fare at the Herbfarm. Tysan left the restaurant last year and became general manager and Sommelier of Fonte on First Avenue. Somewhere in there she also managed to pick up a masters degree.

Here, a stupid question for the very intelligent Tysan Dutta.

I hear a lot of talk about tannins, but what the heck are those things? Do I want my wine to be tannic or not? Also, is it true you can be allergic to them?

When wine drinkers refer to tannins, they are usually referring to red wines. Tannins are caused by the skins, seeds, and occasionally the stems of wine grapes during the fermentation process of winemaking, and through the effects of barrel ageing.

Think of tannins as the brawn that go along with the brains of the acidity and the beauty and grace of the fruit. Much like the perfect soulmate, that perfect glass of wine should have quite a lot of all the qualities we like—but have them in balance with one another. In a soulmate, some of us prefer more brawn and less beauty, and others prefer more brains and less brawn. I always think of wine in terms of food, and because of that I tend to prefer a slightly higher amount of brains (acidity) to my brawn.

Tannins play out in the wine in positive ways by creating structure and a slightly drying effect on the palate. When they are over present, however, they can be overwhelming—if you’ve ever noticed the fuzzy feeling on your tongue after eating spinach or drinking oversteeped tea at a Chinese restaurant, you’ve felt the effects of too much tannin on the mouth!

The most common complaint in regards to tannins results from red wine infanticide—drinking wines immediately after purchase instead of allowing them to age. Because of the current marketplace of wine drinkers, many winemakers make their wines ready to be drunk upon release. But a lot of the top French, Italian, Washington and Californian wines benefit from at least a few years cellaring before consumption. A very general dummy-proof guideline is that the more a bottle of red costs, the more likely it is that it’s going to require ageing. The shop where you buy your wine or a quick search online can usually give you some general ideas of how long you should wait before popping the cork.

People sometimes think a wine allergy is due to sulfites or tannins, but a friend of mine who is a naturopathic doctor explained to me that the most common allergy people suffer from is actually an oak allergy—thus why red wines (often aged in oak) bother more people than white wines (often aged in stainless steel or neutral containers). Using this as a guideline, those who currently think they are allergic to red wines in general might expand their vinous repertoire by testing a few red wines that do not use oak in their winemaking process! Who knows?

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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

The wine director at Willows Lodge likes to chew his wine.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 18, 2010 at 01:26PM 3 Comments

The questions in this series aren’t really stupid. But the whole wine thing can be so (unnecessarily) intimidating. Good thing for you I have no shame.

If you live in Woodinville, lucky you. You get to hang out and drink wine at the Willows Lodge and Barking Frog restaurant with funny, modest wine director Jeffrey Dorgan—the kind of oenophile that gives the whole enterprise a good name.

A Seattle native, Dorgan was introduced to wine while waiting tables at the Space Needle in the 1980s. “It was back in the day when white zinfandel was king,” says Dorgan. “But we would take field trips to Chateau Ste. Michelle through work. I began to realize there were some pretty amazing wines in our own back yard.”

Here, a stupid question for Jeffrey Dorgan.

When I’m attending a wine tasting where everyone is spitting, does etiquette require I spit too? Is there a proper way to spit into the bucket/cup (without making noise or spraying, for instance)? Also, how long should I keep the wine in my mouth before spitting?

If you are attending a tasting and everyone is spitting you are more than likely at a trade tasting. The majority of wine professionals spit—consumers do not. Most of the time when I am at a consumer tasting I am the only one spitting. I do get a few dirty looks and even comments like: “What a waste of a great wine.”

My staff accuses me of “chewing” my wine in order to make sure I get the full effect, but there are no tasting faculties in your throat so you do not need to swallow to taste wine. As a Wine Director I taste 30 plus wines a day. If I did not spit I would be drunk by the time dinner service started and would probably be passed out in the corner before service was half over. But if you have a designated driver or plan on catching a cab, by all means drink away!

You can always practice in the shower if you are a novice to spitting. Here’s how to do it properly: Make sure when you taste that you get a good-sized mouthful. Swish it all around for around 5 to 10 seconds so that the wine hits all areas of your mouth and tongue, then purse your lips and spit with force. Do not worry about making noise, it is totally acceptable. Aim for the center of the bucket—do not get too close as you might get backsplash. If you are spitting in a cup, hold the cup up to your mouth and place your lower lip inside the rim of the cup.

One final note: If you are at an outdoor venue with grass it is acceptable to spit directly on the ground, but be watchful of others around you. At an outdoor tasting I turned and spat without looking and ended up spitting a large mouthful of red wine all over a man’s tan slacks. A little embarrassing.

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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Met Grill’s Thomas Price weighs in on vintage.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 10, 2010 at 09:37AM 0 Comments

The questions in this series aren’t really stupid. But the whole wine thing can be so (unnecessarily) intimidating. Good thing for you I have no shame.

This time our expert is Alaska native Thomas Price, head sommelier at the Metropolitan Grill. Price got his break in the restaurant biz at the tender age of 14, dishwashing at a Juneau diner.

By 21, he was a server and bartender at an upscale burger joint in Anchorage called Harry’s, that’s where he fell in love with wine. In Seattle, he has worked at Ruth’s Chris and Etta’s. He and his wife Jessica were the owners of since-closed Luau Polynesian Lounge in Wallingford.

Here, a stupid question for Thomas Price.

I know that a wine’s vintage year is listed on the bottle and on restaurant wine lists, but what does it mean to the drinker? Are there good years and bad years? Does vintage matter more with European wines than American and Aussie bottles? Also, if I love a wine, can I count on loving it in future vintages?

In my opinion, wines from the Old World (Europe) are generally more vintage-driven and vary more from year to year than wines from the New World (North America and the Southern Hemisphere). Washington State is in the middle of a spectacular run of vintages (excluding 2004, when Walla Walla was wiped out by a freeze). I was talking with several different winemakers recently who are already ecstatic about their 2009s in barrel! I personally think the 2007s are delicious across the board.

A question about vintage is a great opportunity to involve your sommelier or server: This is what these people do, they should be thrilled to help you in this confusing component of enjoying wine in a restaurant setting. Additionally, vintage charts are available online or from a variety of wine periodicals.

As to liking a wine consistently from vintage to vintage, if you like the style of a producer—Old or New World—you will probably enjoy those wines year after year.

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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Seastar’s sommelier tells us when we can (and can’t) send the bottle back.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 25, 2010 at 01:00PM 4 Comments

The questions in this new series aren’t really stupid. But the whole wine thing can be so (unnecessarily) intimidating. Good thing for you I have no shame.

This week’s expert is Yashar Shayan, a sommelier at Seastar Restaurant and Raw Bar (Bellevue, South Lake Union). Shayan says he loves the way wine allows you to “experience the world’s cultures and history one glass at a time.” Another reason he became a sommelier: “I thought it would make me look cool.”

When he’s not at Seastar, Yashar helps out in the cellar at Woodinville winery Efeste.

Here, a stupid question for Yashar Shayan.

When I order a bottle of wine, can I send it back if I don’t like it, or only if it’s bad? Also, how can I tell if it has gone bad?

Many restaurants will take the wine back simply because you don’t like it. We won’t force you to pay for, and drink, a wine that you don’t like, because we like our guests to enjoy their dining experience.

Personally though, when I have wine, I don’t really analyze it on that first taste. I don’t look at color and legs, or consider things like complexity. When I get the first pour, I smell it and make sure it’s drinkable, meaning it doesn’t have any off smells or serious faults like TCA (a compound present when a wine is “corked,” more on that below) and oxidation. From there, I’ll take my time and examine the wine over the entire course of the meal, see how it opens up and how it interacts with various foods. I’m almost always surprised how a wine that may not have really grabbed me at the beginning has me wanting more by the end.

The main reasons a sommelier pours you that small taste of a bottle before serving it are: 1. TCA (I think we should stop calling it “corked” and figure out a new, more accurate name for it) and 2. oxidation. Corked wines, which smell like moldy newspapers or damp basements, get that way when chlorine (specifically a group of chemical compounds known as Chlorophenols) interacts with fungi found in nature to produce the compound 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, or TCA for short. Though the cork is the most common carrier of TCA, it can lurk on a variety of surfaces porous enough to grow fungus. I’ve had shoes with “corked” soles, I’ve eaten carrots and scallions that were tainted with TCA (or something like it), and even been served corked water at restaurants. This means that wines using cork alternatives—yes, even screwcaps—can be tainted if they pick it up from a bad barrel or another source before bottling, but that’s far less common.

An oxidized wine is exactly what it sounds like, a wine that’s gone bad due to overexposure to oxygen. To me, oxidized wine smells like vinegar or an apple that was peeled and left on the counter for a day or so. That vinegar smell is caused by acetic acid, which you’ve smelled in your bottle of vinegar at home. The old apple smell I typically associate with Acetaldehyde. If you find your wine is oxidized when it’s freshly opened, it could mean that the cork was bad in the sense that it didn’t seal perfectly. Screwcaps can also fail here if they were damaged or crushed during assembly or shipping. I have opened several bottles of the same wine and found they all seemed bad, which led me to think they were oxidized before being bottled.

Neither TCA nor oxidation is dangerous. In fact, there’s generally nothing in a bottle of wine—good or bad—that’s harmful to humans. Still, you should always send back a bottle if you think it is off.

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MORE STUPID QUESTIONS!
Dawn Smith explains what to do when a sommelier hands you a cork.

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Tags: Bellevue, South Lake Union, Wineries, Booze 101, Wine, Sommelier stuff, A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

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A Stupid Question for a Sommelier

Purple’s wine expert tells us what to do with the cork.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 15, 2010 at 10:00AM 4 Comments

Okay, the questions in this new series aren’t really stupid. But the whole wine thing can be so (unnecessarily) intimidating. Good thing for you I have no shame.

This week’s expert is the lovely Dawn Smith, the Wine Director for the Restaurants at Bellevue Towers: Purple Café and Wine Bar, Barrio, and a third top-secret project she’s not allowed to talk about.

“I came to wine through food,” says Smith, whose first-ever instructor (at an International Sommelier Guild class) was Shayn Bjornholm, then also the wine director at Canlis. “I continued my wine education with more advanced classes and about a year-and-a-half later Shayn called and asked me if I would apply for a floor sommelier position at Canlis. Crazy! I got the job.” The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Here, a stupid question for Dawn Smith:

Why does the sommelier hand me the cork after her or she opens the bottle of wine I ordered, and what am I supposed to do with it?

“The primary reason a sommelier hands you a cork,” says Smith, “is so that you may inspect that the wine has been stored properly." The older the vintage, the more important that it’s been stowed right: "on its side, away from light, vibration, and at a constant temperature of 55-58 degrees.”

A moist cork means your bottle has been sitting pretty, but you might also want to smell it to check for taint. (Stop giggling). “The cork from a ‘corked’ wine will smell of cork taint—often described as damp cardboard or wet basement,” says Smith. But, she says, “this is not really the most reliable way to judge the soundness of a wine. Corks, particularly older corks, can smell a bit funky even though the wine is pristine. Most sommeliers will smell the bottle or actually pour a small taste of the wine to confirm the quality before offering it to the guest. Gratefully, most faults in wine are detectable on the nose so you never have to experience the foul taste.”

You can also inspect the cork to make sure you get what you ordered. “Most corks will have the producer and vintage of the wine branded onto the portion of the cork that is within the sealed bottle.” When the sommelier brings the bottle to the table, he or she should show you “the label and state the vintage, producer, name of wine and area of production,” but inspecting the cork is your final chance to ensure you’ve got the right juice.

So there you have it: when it doubt read the cork, make sure it is moist, and smell it, if you are feeling saucy. Then, drink up.

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Tags: Bellevue, Booze 101, Wine, Sommelier stuff, A Stupid Question for a Sommelier