Wine Education

This past holiday, I made the decision to share special bottles with our kids.

Most nights we have a nice bottle of wine with our dinners. It is always good wine but we tend to drink a lot of fresh Beaujolais, young Burgundy or a fairly young Italian Barbera, Nebbiolo or a Chianti.

So, wine has been an essential accompaniment to our meals but most often served like a condiment or seasoning. This time, I wanted to break out special bottles with age to show some benchmark wines, from different regions of France and beyond, to give them reference points. Whether they were interested in learning or not, they would learn through tasting.

As evidenced in the photo below we traveled over a few days to the essential wine producing regions of France - Champagne, Rhone, Burgundy, Alsace, Burgundy again, the Loire, back to Burgundy, Burgundy again and one spectacular German Riesling.

I have always considered winemaking as a craft and like any craft, some craftsmen are held in higher esteem than others for the excellence of their work. I therefore shared the greatest artisans and expressions of their work to demonstrate why these wines are so special. So without tasting notes here, I would like to raise a glass with a thank you to Champagne Taittinger, Jean-Marc Roulot, Jean-Louis Chave, Jean-Francois Coche-Dury, Domaine Georges Mugneret-Gibourg, Dominique Lafon, Trimbach, Chateau de Bonnezeaux, Eric Rousseau, Vincent Dauvissat and Von Schubert.

I think the kids are on the path to a good education. Maybe next year during the holidays, we will do a graduate course.

Santé!