I finish my first week teaching the introductory wine class at the Dallas branch of the Cordon Bleu today, and I have enjoyed it. A couple of observations:
• Most of the students, who are younger than 30, don't seem to drink wine. They know it's out there; it just doesn't much interest them. This contradicts any number of studies that say that the students' generation (the Millenials) is becoming more interested in wine.
• Many of them know about Two Buck Chuck, the inexpensive wine sold only at the Trader Joe's grocery store chain. This is especially interesting, since there are no Trader Joe's in Texas.
• The idea that the government, as in some European countries, can regulate what grapes are grown where and which grapes can be used to make specific wine strikes many of them as silly. I mention this because -- especially in Texas -- so many people are worried that the schools don't do a good job of teaching the values of free enterprise.
• The 1855 Bordeaux wine classification is even more confusing than I thought, and I thought it was pretty confusing already. It's one thing to know; it's something else entirely to explain it to 30-some odd students. How do you come up for a good answer to: "Why did the French do it that way?"
Rather than try to reason with the youngsters you should tell them, ala Bill Hicks, that 2000 years of experience has led European wine producers to the conclusion that if the Government doesn't mandate best practices in production, that the end result will be that everyone ends up drinking sugar water (that's what they call Coca Cola over here)....
(I do think Bill would have put it roughly in that way, albeit the tirade would have been laced with expletives)
Posted by: JC | January 11, 2008 at 05:49 PM