When it comes to learning about wine, the important thing to remember is that it’s about accumulating knowledge for the sheer joy and interest of it. It’s not about showing off to your friends how much better a palate you have than they do. It’s not about how much you pay. In fact, there are some very tasty wines that don’t cost much at all, which is why you see that bottle of Charles Shaw Chardonnay to the left there.

We asked everyone to pick a favorite, but we also asked if everyone liked what they were tasting. Now, admittedly, somebody may have been being nice, but everyone said they liked all the wines. Which means they liked the Two-Buck Chuck. As we have said many times before and will say again, if you didn’t know you were drinking Charles Shaw, you’d probably like it. You wouldn’t say it’s the best wine you’ve ever drunk – and we’ve tasted some chards that blow Two-Buck out of the water and then some. But you would like it a lot more than you’d think and would probably find it a perfectly acceptable table wine for everyday drinking.

It was the wine in the bag labeled Number One that most of you picked as French. It wasn’t, but you did pick up on a couple characteristics that would normally point you in that direction, so pat yourself on the back if you did. It was one of the lighter wines (one of our guests said it had a rather flat taste), and it also had a bit of a funk on it that Anne often associates with French wines.

It was….

Gen 5 2010 Chardonnay:

This one is from Lodi, California. The thing about chardonnays from Lodi is they tend to made in that very French style and can have a distinctive funk about them, which this one did.  Mike also got peach and melon flavors, some nice acids and moderate oak influence, with a touch of lemon at the back. Very good finish, which means it didn’t bite back at all as we swallowed.

The Two-Buck was hiding in the Number Two bag. Almost no one picked it as the French – which means its Californian style stands out, but it was certainly the most popular, with about half our guests tagging it as their fave..

Charles Shaw 2010 Chardonnay:

The nose was very fruity and has some oak. The mouthfeel was rich and fat – good for a sipping wine. The flavors were white grape, melon and a little apple, with a slight touch of sweetness at the end. The finish was decent – and it’s pretty typically where Two-Buck falls down as a wine.

And lastly, the 2009 Emile Chandesais Bourgogne Chardonnay

The nose was very subtle not fruity. The acids were crisp. The mouthfeel was medium and balanced. There was some citrus and a hint of minerals or salinity in the flavor. It is one of those wines that would go well with some unusual sounding pairings such as salted caramel.

The Charles Shaw chardonnay can be found at Trader Joe’s. The Gen5 and the Emile Chandesais can be purchased at BevMo are part of their 5 cent sale right now.

But wait – there’s more.  Anne will join Petrea Burchard for a lively reading of some bits of Irish literature – something Anne hasn’t done in a long time, so she’s really looking forward to it.

But wait again, there is still more! We’ll also be featuring a blind tasting of some chardonnays, where you get to figure out where they came from.

So why do blind tastings? Isn’t all that business about tasting and discerning the varietal down to the vintage and vineyard a bunch of hooey? It is, but that doesn’t mean blind tastings aren’t fun. And there’s another good reason for trying wines without knowing what you’re drinking – you can focus on the wine, itself, without the usual preconceived notions of what makes a wine good getting in the way. You know, things like the bottle’s price tag – which affects us more than we think it does – or where it’s from. After all, French wine must be better than Californian. Or Californian must be better than French wine.

Trust us, with the ever-expanding range of styles and varieties out there, it doesn’t hurt to train your palate to look for certain things, not so you can go lording it over your friends, but so you can identify what it is you like and don’t like.

Nor should you feel bad about not knowing a lot about different wines and their styles. As we found out at a recent blind tasting, sometimes knowing a lot can get you more messed up than just simply guessing.

Webster’s will be open until 8 p.m. There will be a showing of art by a local artist. And there will be wine and corned beef. And lots and lots of fun.

Dena Drews at work, courtesy Amalie Robert Estate

It was a pretty basic interview Anne was doing with Lisa Rigisich regarding the recent Pinot Days Los Angeles festival that happened at the end of January. Rigisich asked us to help Dena Drews and Ernie Pink pour wine from their winery Amalie Robert Estate at the festival.

Like we were going to say no. But not only did we get a chance to pour some insanely gorgeous pinots with Dena, and learned a lot about what they’re doing with their wines, we got to know Dena, especially, and just loved her passion.

She and Ernie started their winery back in 1999. Both were working in the technical industry – Dena was a software consultant and getting pretty tired of getting on a plane to go to work.

They found land in the Willamette Valley of Oregon and planted the vineyard, finishing in April 2000. They started building their winery in February 2006, and it was ready just in time for their first estate crush in October of that same year. They grow mostly pinot noir on their 40 acres, but also have some chardonnay, pinot meunier, syrah, and viognier.

Ernie Pink and the good soil that grows their wine

Ernie also gave us one of the better answers we’ve heard when we asked why people should learn about wine.

“An educated consumer is a better consumer,” he said. “If you know what you’re drinking and why it is what it is, you can have a better appreciation for it or you can know that it’s not my style and why it’s not my style. Why other people get it is beyond me, but it’s not for me. Or vice versa. I really like the depth, I like the acidity. I like the way this pairs with duck confit. and I know why. I know there’s whole clusters in this. I know the barrel regime. I know these guys – they really manage the field. I understand what they do and why it’s done that way. People who understand those things can better appreciate the wines that they’re trying.”

So, while you don’t need to know everything about how a wine is made, it does help when you’re perusing that massive row of wines at the supermarket to know that if a wine is made in a similar style to something you know you like, you’ll stand a better chance of finding something tasty to drink. And that’s ultimately what it’s all about, isn’t it?

The idea is to open a significant bottle – generally the one you’ve been saving for That Special Occasion, and yet no occasion special enough has yet occurred. Truth be told, that’s not generally an issue in our household. But for many wine lovers, one does tend to accumulate bottles and one does tend to save one or two really special ones to be opened when the time is right. Alas, too often the right time comes after the wine has oxidized and otherwise gone bad.

Brecher and Gaiter retired their popular column on December 26, 2009, but Open That Bottle Night, which officially became the last Saturday in February in 2000, seems to be living on. Several blogs and newspaper articles this week popped up encouraging the event. Apparently, there’s even a few charity fundraisers based on it. We say hooray! Aside from being massive fans of Gaiter and Brecher – who proved you could have good taste and still be open to something less expensive – we love the entire concept of finding a meaningful bottle and making a point of opening it.

Now, if you’re new to wine, chances are you don’t have any bottles that have been hanging around waiting for just the right Special Occasion to open. That does not mean you can’t participate. Why not make your special bottle a wine you’ve never tried before? Maybe you’ve never had the nerve to go to a wine store and buy something costing $20 or more. Maybe you’ve heard of oddballgrapes like negrette and wanted to try it, but never had the right time or occasion. Or maybe there was a bottle you drank on your first date with your beloved. Or maybe there is a bottle in your closet – a wine you picked up on your first time to wine country tasting wines.

Saturday night is the night to do open it and share your experiences, either here or on some other blog. But do share them. Wine is a wonderful thing and what makes it even better is the sharing.

We’re not sure what we’re opening – haven’t figure out what dinner will be (and that is an important first step). We are looking forward to a special dinner – and if we open what Mike suggested earlier this week – a great movie, too. Wine makes dinner special and sometimes you just need a good excuse to enjoy something out of the ordinary.

Event organizer Mike Farwell, of Noir, chatting and enjoying pinot noir

As grand tastings go, this was a relatively small one, with less than 100 wineries represented. But what it lacked in size, it made up for in elegance. And we also discovered another fun story in Phantom Rivers winery – four guys who made wine at home got drunk one night and decided to go pro together. Can’t wait to do that profile, although if we’re going to interview the whole crew, we think we’re going to have to go out there.

A big shout out to Mike Farwell and his crew for a wonderfully run event and successful enough that the only thing marring it were the cramped quarters at the Altadena Country Club. Farwell is one of the co-owners of Noir Food & Wine, in Pasadena.

Aside from the fact that there were some truly amazing wines featured, Anne discovered something interesting. When tasting the wine by itself, more often than not, what hit her palate were the tannins and some roughness in the back of her mouth. But as soon as she nibbled on some of the wonderful cured meats from Noir, or the cheeses from The Cheese Store of Pasadena, then drank some wine, everything smoothed out.

The lesson learned is that wine is all about the food. Not every food goes with every wine, but it’s not that big a deal. There are light pinots that do very nicely with fish – Mike enjoyed an Alma Rosa pinot noir a couple years back with a bit of salmon and it was so good, he almost cried. White sparkling wines go with just about any meats, including heavy beef. As long as it’s something within the same flavor range, you’re probably going to be okay.

Think about how flavors match each other. If you have pancakes and maple syrup, then drink some orange juice, the juice is going to taste extra sour in comparison to the sweet syrup. Whereas if you nibble a nice sharp cheese, then eat a bit of sweet apple with it, the flavors complement each other and actually taste better together.

It’s the same thing with wine. Wine is a combination of light acid flavors and fruit. If you’re drinking a wine that has a little more acid in it, such as a pinot noir and trying to nibble a more acidic cheese, such as an aged Vermont cheddar, the acids in the cheese and the wine are going to fight each other and taste icky. But if you’re eating a more buttery cheese, like a triple creme Brie or mild, nutty manchego, then the acids and fruitiness of the wine are going complement the cheese and the two together will be like a small symphony in your mouth. Both flavors combine to taste better together than by themselves, a reality Anne found particularly intense with the wines.

But then Anne overheard one man telling (no, ordering) a couple young women to not drink the wine with the cheese – that it would mess up the wine.  But these cheeses were chosen to go with pinot noir and did very well with the wine.

Which actually is another lesson to be learned – the more someone starts pontificating about wine, the less reason there is to listen to him/her. There are no absolutes in the wine world except one – the wine you like is a good wine, and no one, but no one, should tell you otherwise or make you feel judged (which is what happens when folks act like they know more about wine than you do) because of what you like to drink.

But mostly, we had sparkling wine, aka bubblies. These were not champagnes because the wines are not from the Champagne region of France, and yes, we’re being a little anal about that. Well, heck, if you’re going to try to get it right. Anyway, all three of our bottles came from our local BevMo! (currently in the throes of another 5 cent sale – buy one, get the second for 5 cents). The only problem with that is BevMo! does tend to sell out rather quickly.

Winemakers at last year's Pinot Fest, courtesy festival organizers

Yes, it’s another Grand Tasting Festival for the pinot noir grape, but this time it’s happening in our backyard, at the Altadena Country Club.

It’s the Pasadena Pinot Fest, from 1 to 5 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 11. You can go to the site www.PasadenaPinotFest.com to get tickets and more specifics, but it’s looking like it’s going to be a good one.

We had to ask Mike Farwell, one of the festival founders, just what is it about pinot noir that gets folks not only so excited, but why they get so geeky about it.

Farwell is somebody to ask, too. He not only started the festival by having tastings out of his own huge collection of pinot noirs (including quite a few Burgundies – the French region where the grape is grown), he’s one of the co-owners of Noir, in Pasadena, a wine bar and restaurant dedicated to the wine.

“Pinot noir is, by far, the most aromatic wine grape,” Farwell said. “There is no wine grape that rivals it in complexity. It has so many ways that it expresses itself. Sometimes it’s really intense, sometimes it’s really delicate. No other grape has that. No other grape comes close. It’s the perfect grape.”

But what about all the clones (which are what it sounds like, different clones of the same variety, cloned to get slightly different results)? Farwell agrees that might be going a bit.

“It’s kind of fun, but it’s a little unnecessary,” he said.

With around 200 wineries represented at the festival, Farwell does recommend taking it a little slowly.

“I think if you don’t drink everything, it can be much more interesting experience,” he said.

He recommends spitting and drinking lots and lots of water. And don’t feel like you have to try wines from every table. In fact, Farwell suggested making a list of the wineries you like and try them.

We’d like to amend that – not because we disagree. But one of the values of a festival like this is that you can try wines from wineries you wouldn’t ordinarily try, such wines from out of state or from wineries you’ve never heard of before. It’s not going to cost you any more or less, so it’s the perfect time to try something new.

We’ll be there, though only to try wines ourselves and figure out who we’re going to feature next.

So if you do go and find a winery that you want to know more about, be sure to comment below.

Welcome to a new feature on OddBallGrape.com: Wine Class. These are posts dedicated to all those who want to learn more about wine, or even refresh what they already know. Feel free to comment and ask questions.

People ask us all the time what’s the big deal with wine? Why are people so obsessed with this nose or that flavor or this grape or who makes the best and 100-point scores and all that stuff?

So the first thing we want to point out is that you do not have to be “into” wine to enjoy it.  If you can’t tell a cabernet sauvignon from a pinot noir, you can still appreciate that this glass of red tastes good.

But there are some very good reasons to learn about wine, not the least being that when that glass of red really tastes good, it’s nice to know why so that you can find other glasses of red that also taste good. Or to be specific, that taste good to you, because we are all different and what tastes great to us might taste rather blah to you and vice versa.

Also, it’s fun to learn about wine.

“It’s one of the great pleasures of life,” said Lisa Rigisich, one of the co-founders of the Pinot Days festivals around the country. “It’s one of the only drinks that takes you somewhere.”

Rigisich went on to point out that learning about wine is one the ultimate mash-ups of intellectual and sensory stimulation. You use at least three of your senses when appreciating wine: Sight for the color, smell for the nose, and of course, taste. We suppose you could add touch, in that you do get some mouth feel. And there are audio components – the sound of the cork leaving the bottle, the sound of the liquid pouring and the clinking of glasses.

Knowing about wine makes it a lot easier to deal with the rows of bottles on shelves when you go into the supermarket to pick up something on the fly for a last minute invitation. Or when you’re at a restaurant and presented with a book the size of War and Peace listing a bazillion wines you’ve never heard of and the sommelier (wine waiter) hasn’t either. These things happen and add to the stress many of us feel about something that really should be pretty low stress.

It’s just fermented grapes, for cripes sakes! Granted fermented grapes that can be pretty freaking transcendent, but you shouldn’t feel like you need a degree in enology just to choose a decent bottle for dinner.

But then you might want to learn more, because wine is a lovely thing to have on a dinner table, because it does slow you down after another insane day at work, because it just plain tastes good. And, again, it can be fun.

There are also a couple reasons why you might not want to learn more about wine, chief among them because you’ve got something to prove. Anne had a colleague once who made a big deal about how much he knew about wine, and framed everything in terms of what “my friend Larry” said. If you’re only interested in how much a bottle cost, or how many points some wine critic gave it, then there’s really not much to learn and if you really need to, you can look that label up on some snooty site and real off what the writer there thought.

Wine is not a label. If you drink labels, you’ll discover that they all taste like the glue on the back of a postage stamp back in the day when postage stamps had to licked. We know. We’ve had to lick a few labels to get them on our bottles.

People ask us all the time where can they go to learn about wine. Well, aside from reading OddBallGrape.com on a regular basis, wine events, such as Grand Tastings and festivals, are a great opportunity to learn. You can taste all sorts of different wines and better yet, at many of these events, you can talk to the winemakers and learn what went into the bottle.

Now that may seem like a lot of work when you just want to taste something. But as we were reminded over the past weekend, the more you learn about wine, the easier it is to figure out what to buy for, say, that snooty boss or disparaging in-law. Or for your own table.

And this is the time of year to do it. Why? Because all this is one of those rare times when there isn’t all that much work to do in the winery. And if your vineyard is pruned, not much to do out there, either. Which means all the winemakers are now out and about trying to sell all that wine they so lovingly made.

A case in point is the Pasadena PinotFest taking place on February 11th at the Pasadena/Altadena Country Club. While it is Pinot-driven, many of the winemakers who will be there also make other wines. Keep in mind, a lot of these producers are small family-farm businesses, so an event like this is another way to get closer to your food and drink, if that appeals to you.

Outside of our Los Angeles area, there is the annual Family Winemakers of California tasting event in Del Mar on March 11th. This is open to the public as well as the trade and this is where several hundred winemakers will be pouring many hundreds of different wines. The common denominator is that all of them are small family-owned businesses making it a way to Occupy the vineyard, as it were.

But for OBG fans, it’s time for the first Webster’s Fine Stationers tasting of 2012! Coming up on Friday, February 10th – note the different day from our traditional  third Saturday of the month event – we will be featuring a Valentine’s Day theme, and there may be even more cool surprises, so stay tuned.

Courtesy Lisa Rigisich

We had a great day at the Pinot Days grand tasting in Santa Monica. We caught up with a couple old Faves (big shout out to Wes Hagen of Clos Pepe, who gave us a really great interview).

Boy, were there a lot of different pinot noirs and a lot of very passionate, very intelligent folks out there pouring. And a lot of people were tasting. We don’t have the final numbers, but it sure looked like everyone pretty much poured everything they had. We left relatively early and there were several wineries whose wine was gone.

This was a slightly different tasting for us – we ended up helping to pour for Amalie Robert Estate winery, since their owners/winemakers had to leave to go back to Oregon early. Turns out we weren’t that needed – we poured out just as co-owner Dena Drews was ready to call her taxi to the airport (her partner in life and in winemaking Ernie Pink had already left). But it was an interesting experience.

Aside from the fabulous wine that Pink and Drews make, it was fun talking about how the wine is all estate grown, produced and bottled – and why we needed to mention all three. Wines can be fermented other places than where the grapes are grown – which we well know, since we buy all our grapes for our own humble home winemaking efforts. So if a wine is estate-grown, you know the grapes all came from the owner’s vineyards. But that doesn’t mean the owner didn’t ship them elsewhere to be fermented or bottled. So the fact that Amalie Robert Estate wine is all three means that Pink and Drews are pretty much doing everything.

More on them later, but some other fun things we did included a quick tasting of several New Zealand pinot noirs. Alas, we were not impressed, but it was fun to try.

One sad note, it’s entirely possible that the Barker Hangar, in Santa Monica, where the event was held, may not be there next year. There’s a serious movement afoot to do away with the Santa Monica Airport, which may or may not include the hangar. Lisa Rigisich told Anne last week that they have looked at a couple other sites for the festival, but we do hope the hangar, uh, hangs in there.

Finally, major kudos to Lisa and Steve Rigisich for pulling off another great event. Pinot Days has become a career for them, but it’s also a passion project, and it shows. Things appeared to go really smoothly. Michael, who volunteered with set up the day before, noted that things went really well that day.  All in all, a fun day and well worth going.