Why offer an entire class dedicated to wine?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nI grew up in a wine-producing family in South Africa. My family has been making wine for four generations. I grew up with wine in my blood, both literally and figuratively. I used to do a lot of wine trainings and seminars, and for a time I taught wine schools at Epcot/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s International Food & Wine Festival. I really enjoyed the educational side of my work, and I saw teaching wine courses as a huge opportunity. It really can be a useful life skill./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
What/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s very gratifying to me is that I usually start each semester with 50 wine novices sitting in front of me and by the end of semester, I have 50 wine geeks who can pick up a glass of wine and taste it and evaluate it using the correct terminology to describe it. A number of them go on to take the first level of the Court of Master Sommeliers (wine expert and qualified taster) exam. This course prepares them very well for that./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
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What should students expect to learn?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nThe curriculum is meant to teach students about how wine is made, where it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s made and what makes one bottle of wine taste different to another based on where it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s grown, which grape varieties are used and the wine-making technique. They also learn how to successfully pair wine with food and what happens when you get those pairings wrong./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
I asked a business student once, why are you taking this course? And he said, /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201cI/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019m taking this because I intend to be very successful in business. If I/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019m going to be successful, I/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019m going to have to entertain clients, probably at high-end restaurants. I want to be able to sit down, pick up a wine list, read it intelligently, understand what I/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019m reading and know which wines to order to go with the food that my guests are ordering because I think that/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s going to impress people./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201d I thought this was a really great answer./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nWhat makes a good wine?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nThat/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s the first question I ask my students at the start of every semester. I always get blank stares before I tell them, /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201cThe answer is very easy: if you like it, it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s a good wine. If you don/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t like it, it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s not./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
I always use food as an analogy. We may go to the restaurant and order the same dish. I love it; you hate it. It/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s the same dish, the same ingredients, but there may be ingredients in there that one of us likes and the other doesn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t. It doesn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t make it good or bad /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2014 it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s just about different tastes./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
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What makes each wine region special?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nIt/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s what we call /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201cterroir/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201d in wine speak, which is a French term but there is no English equivalent. It basically means the /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201csomewhere-ness/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201d of a particular vineyard site. What do I mean by somewhere-ness? It/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s the type of soil, the amount of sunshine that it gets, the slope of the land, any shadows from mountains, the amount of rainfall, the amount of wind /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2014 all of these factors come together to make every growing site unique./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
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Red wine should be stored at room temperature, right?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nAll wine should be stored at around 55 degrees. For drinking purposes, we want our white wines at around 45 degrees and our red wines at around 65. We don/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t want them ice cold, as if they/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019re in a refrigerator. I have this battle at restaurants in Florida all the time where I order red wine and it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s warm. I ask for an ice bucket and they look at me like, don/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t you know that you don/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t chill red wine? Yes, but room temperature doesn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t mean that it should be warm./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
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Cork or screw cap /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2014 Is one top better than the other?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nIt really depends on the wine./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
New Zealand was the first country to start using screw caps for quality wines that are not usually aged. It/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s not just any old screw cap, like you would find on a bottle of Coca Cola. It/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s a screw cap specially developed for wine with a little rubber seal that works to keep the wine fresh. Most wines these days are not meant to be aged for 10, 20, 30 years. We/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019re often going to go to the grocery store to buy a bottle of relatively inexpensive wine to have with dinner tonight. The screw cap is going to give you the taste that the winemaker intended./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
On the other side of the coin, you do have wines that you want to age for a while. One of the problems with the screw cap is it can act almost like a time capsule. The wine doesn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t develop as quickly as you may like it to develop. A cork will allow microscopic amounts of air in and allow the wine to develop and age. I believe cork is still the best and most appropriate closure for wines that you want to develop in the bottle, although there will be those who disagree with me on this./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
What I thoroughly dislike are those plastic /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201ccorks/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u201d that you sometimes get on inexpensive wines. Plastic doesn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t expand and contract at the same rate as glass and cork does. You often end up with an oxidized wine because as the bottle expands, the plastic closure doesn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t. It lets air in, and you have a spoiled wine./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n“When you arrive on the Rosen campus, it doesn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t feel like you/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019re at a college. It feels like you/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019re at a resort, and that/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s intentional,” says professor Robin Back. (Photo by Nick Leyva ’15)/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nWhat is the proper drinking technique?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nWhen you taste wine, you never fill the glass because you want to be able to swirl it to get some air into the wine to release the aromas.You want a large enough glass that a normal size pour is only going fill a quarter to a third of the glass to enable you to swirl it without spilling it./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
You want the opening to be large enough that when you take a sip, you/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019re sticking your nose into the glass so you can smell it because most of what we taste is linked to our sense of smell. You should hold it by the stem so you don/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t warm up the wine with your hand, unless you want to heat it up, such as in the case of a red wine that is too cold./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
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Go-to bottle of wine?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nAlthough I don/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t have a favorite wine, if I was stuck on a desert island and I could only take one wine with me, it would be a Pinot Noir. In all probability, one from either Burgundy in France or Oregon, which are the two parts of the world where they make my favorite Pinot Noirs. Why Pinot Noir? It/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s delicious. It has complexity. It has a lot of flavor. But it/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s also a fairly light-bodied red wine. It/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s going to go with your richer dishes and your lighter dishes. It/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s very versatile./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
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What sets Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s courses apart from other colleges?/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nWe teach our students about hospitality in a hospitality environment. When you arrive on the Rosen campus, it doesn/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019t feel like you/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019re at a college. It feels like you/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019re at a resort, and that/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019s intentional./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
The size and scale allow us to have a much broader offering of courses. We/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/u2019re so fortunate to have this amazing beverage lab. Most colleges would just use a classroom of some kind, but this room is dedicated to our beverage courses. We have a climate-controlled wine cellar. We have a walk-in refrigerator and storage for our spirits. We have a dishwasher and use real, proper-size wine glasses rather than plastic in order to give our students the best experience possible./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/nEvery student in Exploring Wines of the World must learn the proper way to open a wine bottle. (Photo by Nick Leyva ’15)/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/90879/n