Terroir of the Class: A Personal Experience at the CIA (of food, that is)
Terroir of the Class
A Personal Experience at the CIA (of food, that is)
By Dennis Myers
If Napa Valley is to be characterized as the New World Mecca of wine growing, then the prestigious Culinary Institute of America West Coast campus is the region’s seminary for food and wine studies.
Punctuated by the spires of the former Christian Brothers winery, the school has the look of a sacred enclave where students religiously devote time (and lots of money) to culinary pursuits at the highest level. Also known as the “Greystone” campus, the school is not far from Route 29 and near the outskirts of St. Helena in Napa Valley, just two hours north of San Francisco.
Early in the 1990s, the CIA (not to be confused with the government bureau), headquartered in Hyde Park, New York, recognized that a location in the West Coast’s burgeoning wine region could be instrumental in advancing their influence on the culinary arts. They were right. Surrounded by world-class vineyards and the exceptional restaurants of the Napa Valley, the famous school has successfully broadened their professional culinary programs and their influence is indeed felt all over the globe.
The teaching kitchens are five-star educational facilities, surrounded by terraces of organically grown herbs, vegetables and flowers, all used on campus. Culinary events and training sessions are conducted in the main building around a series of cooking islands in a 15,000-square-foot teaching area. A top-rated restaurant, the Wine Spectator Greystone, is open to the public there.
The Rudd Center for Professional Wine Studies was recently added to the building’s roster. It is, essentially, a laboratory for the study of tastes, especially wine, of which I have now found myself a student.
Most vintners believe that an important factor contributing to taste, especially of wine, are the characteristics of the land and the climatic influences upon it, aka terroir (pronounced “tear-waare”). They believe the terroir — geologic, topographic, atmospheric and soil factors such as temperature ranges, elevation, rainfall, aspect to the sun, wind velocity, soil pH and fog frequency, to name a few — affect the growth and health of the vine and, thus, the fruit. Controversy arises over how much control winemakers can exert when it comes to influencing these aspects of the terroir.
As a culinary enthusiast, I have attended professional chef programs at the CIA in the past. On this visit, I participated in a four-day examination of all features of terroir — from the type of soil to the taste of the grape in a glass of wine. Frankly, I was feeling a bit terroir-ized, knowing from my first glance inside the Rudd Center’s “Napa Valley Vintners Sensory Classroom” that I was playing in a league way above my wine-tasting skills.
For one thing, before me stood three tiers of tasting stations with glistening wine glasses precisely arranged in rows. There was a set of eight wine glasses ready for each student’s first tasting. The instructor’s table was equally equipped with glassware, as well as eight wine bottles in brown unmarked bags, ready for pouring.
Shortly, the fourteen other students assembled. Formal introductions confirmed I was in impressive company. There were three buyers for large wine distributors, one local vineyard owner, three employees from Napa wineries and two spouses of chefs destined to be sommeliers in their own restaurants. The rest were collectors. And me, a chef in my own home (although near-professionally equipped) kitchen with just enough wine knowledge to make me dangerous.
The lecture and first tasting started promptly at 9 a.m. (a little early for my taste buds but I guess rolling with the program is part of being a professional). Like all the instructors at the Rudd Center, Rebecca Chapa’s credentials are stellar. She’s a Certified Wine Educator and holds the Diploma Wine and Spirits from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust in London. She chairs the Los Angeles International Spirits Competition, and is a Contributing Editor for Wine & Spirits Magazine as well as a prolific writer for other wine publications as well.
Her degree in wine and spirits was earned at the prestigious Cornell University’s culinary school. Add to these credentials consulting assignments and competitions all over the world, and I could sense this frosh was in for a real education. On top of that, Chapa is serious about the terroir, including the dirt and rocks that literally comprise it.
In a nutshell, the terroir class examines the environmental influences that impact vineyards and, as a result, affect the aroma, flavor, body and style of wines made from those vineyards. Technically, that means everything that touches the valuable fruit used to produce wine is evaluated to identify the grape’s heritage.
This includes understanding the viticultural factors as well, such as site assessment — rootstock, grafting, vine spacing and a myriad of other variables that wine growers have grappled with over the centuries. And that doesn’t even count what happens after the grape is picked!
My classmates and I were all staring at the now-poured eight glasses of white wine (and spitting cup) in front of us, and, soon, all of these considerations would be factored into our assessment of their contents. At first, my senses felt overextended trying to decipher this colorless — pardon me, “straw-colored, medium-bodied, slightly acidic with hints of chalk and grass” — wine’s origin. After an hour of discussion about the characteristics of the first two selections, the bottles were unveiled and the origin of the wine revealed, the Alcance region of France. Who’da known?
A small sample of the region’s soil was neatly piled next to the bottle. Eventually, terroir started sinking in and making sense, mostly because our lecturer spent considerable time describing how the regions were formed long before man inhabited the earth. Remember, Chapa has a dead-serious attitude about dirt and rocks. The Alcance was once an ocean later to be covered by earth as a result of glacial movement — thus, the importance of this shifting substance, aka terroir.
The best part of the class was the field trips, including Frog’s Leap Winery where we met John Williams, the owner and veteran vintner in Napa Valley. His demonstration of the difference between organic farming and conventional methods showed us the actual affect on the ground. Williams used a spade to turn the soil easy in a row of his grapevines. Yet, across the road in a field using advanced drip irrigation and conventional fertilization techniques, the soil was hard and difficult to break.
That demonstration illustrated part of the controversy. Skillful wine experts are said to be able to affect the taste of New World wines to the point where they match exclusive wine regions of the Old World — regardless of the terroir. There are all kinds of influences that can be used, including oak barrel usage, fruit ripeness, micro-oxygenation and additives, among others. Any winery with an effective marketing program emphasizing the Old World likeness and such “artificial” wines can command premium prices compared to wines reflecting the actual terroir.
That was the case with Frog’s Leap versus the neighboring vineyard. Williams’s excellent organic wine, carefully grown to adhere to stringent organic certification guidelines, garnered a lower price (and profit). Thus, the controversy.
Back in the classroom, Chapa never gave up on us. By the end of the fourth day, we were instructed to “identify Old versus New World wines in a blind tasting with greater than 65 percent accuracy.” There, the proof was in the pucker! Most of the class received 100 percent reward for their tasting skills.
I managed to get two of the three identifications right — even though two of the answers were reversed and, therefore, technically incorrect. But who’s counting? By my math, I passed the 65 percent test! More importantly, we all left the class better-versed and educated about the influences the terroir had on winemaking techniques — and we found there was a testable and taste-able difference.
The CIA has a wide selection of wine and culinary courses designed for all types of interests. Maybe I’ll look into another topic right away before the terroir-ized attack sets in again, just to prove to myself that this wine-tasting stuff can be easier than it looks.
