The Workshops

These aren’t your typical wine tasting classes! Our 90 minute workshops foster a deeper exploration of wine—its history, its connection to culture, and its ability teach us to focus our attention in ways that are both personal and transformative.

Wines that Make you Work: Welcoming Complexity and the Unexpected in Wine

Ed Sheeran or John Coltrane? The Hunger Games or Infinite Jest? The Fast & The Furious or Citizen Kane? Sometimes we are in the mood for some easy listening, light reading, or a cinematic romp. Other times we want to grapple with the weighty, the weird, the complex. We all love wines that are approachable, but what about the ones that make us work?

It's far too easy these days to get a quick dopamine hit. But we can seek out art that requires our sustained attention, confounds us, and challenges us. Wines that make us work offer rich rewards. Let’s explore some of them together.

What we’re reading: Excerpts from the NY Times: The Interview - Digital Drugs Have Us Hooked. Dr. Anna Lembke Sees a Way Out; The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, by Lawrence Osborne.

Wines we’re tasting: Edgy wines, angular wines, wines with untraditional noses and palates.

Ghosts in the Bottle: A Meditative Approach to Wine

Conventional wisdom tells us we’re better off not drinking alone. But, as the inimitable wine writer Terry Thiese reminds us, “...Sometimes the living people you long for simply aren’t there, so you have to make do with ghosts and wine.”

There are ghosts in a bottle of very old Madeira or back vintage Barolo. Sipping wine meditatively, we draw close to the ghosts of people or places we once knew, or even the people we used to be. Many cultures and religions offer spirits to the spirits. We will sip, write and reflect, with wine as a doorway to the past.

What we’re reading: Excerpts from What Makes a Wine Worth Drinking, by Terry Theise, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit, and others.

Wines we’re tasting: Wines that invite contemplation, hopefully, some with a little age on them.

Wine and Words: New Ways of Talking about Taste

Wine and words go together. But does being able to verbalize the qualities of a wine enhance your ability to taste it? Or to enjoy it? Attend a traditional wine tasting and watch experienced wine drinkers swirl, sip and talk to each other in what seems to be a secretive language. Blackberry, asparagus, tar, coffee. Brawny wines, tender wines, crisp wines, round wines. What is a neophyte to do? Or more importantly, to say? Especially when the glass of wine in front of them tastes like…a glass of wine?

There are books that promise to make you “wine confident,” and classes that pledge to teach you magical wine words so you won’t look foolish in front of your friends or colleagues. We are more interested in exploring the impact of language itself - on taste, perception, cultural influence and connection. Wine commentary, like language, is always evolving. We’ll taste using the common (or is it the dominant?) language of wine. Then we will taste in more personal and creative ways. We will talk to each other about what we notice. Our only promise to you is that this course will provide a new perspective on the language of wine!

What we’re reading: Excerpts from Knowledge, Wine, and Taste: What Good is Knowledge (in Enjoying Wine)? by American philosopher Kent Bach, Checking in on The New Languages of Wine, by Meg Maker (From Terroir Review).

Wines we’re tasting: A variety of wines, all worth talking about.

Talking about Terroir: Wines that Speak of Home

Where were you born?  Where do you live?  Do you call New York City home?  Or is it Cleveland?  Or Boca Raton?  The impact of place on a person is undeniable, shaping everything from the way you talk, to how quickly you walk, to whether you prefer ketchup or mustard (or avocado!) on a hot dog.  Wine is no different. People who love wine are passionate about the concept of terroir, the idea that the unique combination of a vineyard's location, climate, soil, and the practices of the winemaker can shape the character of a wine.

But wait! Does it really matter if a wine is mass produced using modern technologies, such as temperature-controlled fermentation and machine harvesting - especially if the price is right?  We’ll taste for ourselves to see, as well as tasting wines made from the same grape but grown in different regions of the world.

What we’re reading: Excerpts from The Wine Bible, by Karen MacNeil, Arbitrary Stupid Goal, by Tamara Shopsin, and others.

Wines we are tasting: A variety of wines from different regions made from the same grape, including biodynamic and/or organic wines.

Wine and Attention: Tasting with the Senses

“The formation of the faculty of attention is the true goal and unique interest of all studies.”

–Simone Weil

The kiss of the cork leaving the bottle. The color of the wine on the walls of the glass. Plum and truffle on the nose. The taste of blackberry and cloves on the palate. Is there another beverage that so richly (and deliciously) rewards our attention?

We believe that tasting wine with all of our senses is one way we can reclaim our attention In a world that constantly pulls us in a thousand directions. We’ll explore the impact of music on taste, “blind smell” common aromas in wine, and create visual tasting notes inspired by those of Master of Wine, Sarah Heller.

What we’re reading: Excerpts from Radical Attention, by Julia Bell, The Philosophy of Wine, by Roger Scruton.

Wines we’re tasting: Wines with complexity, worthy of our attention.

What Makes a Wine Worth Drinking: Are You Your Own Best Critic?

In today’s world, we’re all critics. Whether you Letterboxd the latest movie you saw, or Yelped your favorite restaurant, it seems like fewer and fewer people are consulting the “experts.” The same might apply to wine. If taste is subjective, and “judgments of taste are matters of opinion and not matters of fact,” as philosopher Barry C. Smith posits, then “each taster is the final arbiter, and no person’s opinion of wine is better than anyone else’s.”

So what, then, is the role of the professional critic in judging a wine? And if we decide to rely on our own evaluation, can we agree on criteria for what makes a wine worth drinking? How can I even be sure that the cherries I’m tasting in my Cabernet are the same as yours when we both know there are really no cherries in that glass at all? And why does the wine I drink at home taste so different from the same wine drunk with friends in a restaurant setting?

We’ll learn how experts assess a wine, do some blind tastings of our own, as well as tastings preceded by the critics’ notes. Recording our impressions, we’ll share our findings to determine areas where we agree and diverge. Are you your own best critic? Let’s find out!

What we’re reading: Excerpts from What Makes a Wine Worth Drinking, by Terry Theise, and The Objectivity of Tastes and Tasting, by Barry C. Smith.

Wines we’re tasting: A variety of wines from different regions.