How to have More Fun and Learn Cool Things About Wine
Larry Leigon's Secret Life of Wine Newsletter #210
Chateau Chalon in Jura, France from www.cheeseweb.eu
HOW TO HAVE MORE FUN AND LEARN COOL THINGS ABOUT WINE
A step by step guide to life long learning about Wine
©Larry Leigon, September 2024, all rights reserved
Please send your comments or questions to me at larry@larryleigon.com. The more I hear from you, the better I can write about what you really want to know.
INTRODUCTION:
I spent 50 years in the wine business. Seems like too long doesn’t it?
But I have learned a couple of things about wine along the way. I’d like you to know as much as you have interest in knowing.
Learning about wine is often made way more complicated and arcane than it needs to be. Everything is taught in pieces but no one relates the pieces to each other or a through line—
It’s like writing a dictionary and then throwing all the pages on the floor then putting them back together in the order you pick them up.
The pieces are right, but not helpful.
NEW GUIDE
I am writing a new guide on how to learn about wine your whole life. Hence the title for this issue.
Not just a class or a tasting. You’ll get all the information but this time, I’ve put the dictionary pages back in the order the way they started out.
This issue is a small piece of a part of it. This format doesn’t allow for more detail. But it’s something for you to react to.
This coming guide aims to be useful not just for the weekend, but for the rsst of your life. As you grow in experience and knowledge, it can grow with you. Along the way, I will point out choices you have about learning wine that you probably never knew you had and open up experiences you would have missed out on.
Places to go. Sights to see. Wines to try out. People to know. Recipes from wine country.
I’ll be giving you recommendations from 50 years of experience for what to do next, whatever level of tasting you are now. And you will help guide me by your comments and questions, beginning with this issue.
YOUTUBE
Before it’s a book, the guide will be short videos on YouTube where you can comment and ask questions and guide me to what you want to know. If there is interest, we can start a Facebook group with both free and paid sessions to start to talk with each other right now about what you most want to talk about.
Until the English got hold of it back in the 18th century, wine was fun. That would be for most of world history. Maybe it should be again.
If you can taste food you can taste wine. And if you’re already good at both, let’s make you better and see if you can help others to get better too.
Let’s take the embarrassment and intimidation out of wine, and open up the wonder and the magic of connecting with each other. It’s great to hear how other people react and how what they think compares to what you think.
WE CAN BEGIN HERE:
If you have questions or comments on this or any other issue I hope you will take just a second to drop me an quick email at larry@larryleigon.com.
Vin Jaune Arbois from https://www.laruchedespassions.com/vin-jaune-arbois
COOL PLACES IN WINE
Cool Place #1 Jura, France
The three things to know about Jura
Jura
Jura lies n a valley between Burgundy and Switzerland. It’s wines are unique, world famous and sometimes expensive depending on how old they are. The thing is some of them they live 250 years. Gallo doesn’t do that.
Famous people from Jura—Louis Pasteur who discovered germs and that washing your hands could like, you know, prevent plague.
Travel: A great place for a wine vacation. Little villages, rivers, mountains, castles. Cows.
Here are three things to know about Jura:
“A bottle of Jura vin Jaune that was bottled two years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence sold in a landmark auction for the highest price ever recorded”—AFAR, apple news.
That’s why “YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS!”—© larry leigon, 2024, all rights reserved
A bottle of wine dating back to 1774 has sold at auction in eastern France for a record €103,700 ($120,800).
The bottle of Vin Jaune (yellow wine) comes from the eastern Jura region and was made using grapes harvested during the reign of King Louis XVI.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44267449
They were organic I suppose, because, like, fertilizers hadn’t been invented yet.
Louis XVI is now more famous for who is was married to (Marie Antoinette). than anything he did. Although he did collapse the entire French monarchy.
That grape harvest of 1774 was the last harvest before the disastrous wheat harvest of 1775 and subsequent lack of bread which caused the French Revolution.
Marie is famous because when they told her the peasants were revolting because they had no bread, she said, “Let them eat cake.”
Cold. Very cold.
The next year in 1776 the Americans revolted against the English King, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence … and all that.
They were very big on Revolutions back then and not very big at all on Kings.
But the wine from those grapes in Jura lasted 250 years into modern times. Cool.
See? Like I told you, “You Need to Know This!” . To be a better wine taster, see if you can find a bottle or two and taste them for yourself. Or look at a map, maps are very helpful.
I gave you a link below to where you can buy the wines.
1-Jaune is a blend of white wine grapes that is fermented in a blanket of yeast in a process a lot like Sherry..
More on Jaune here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jura_wine
If you want to taste some in the USA, start here: https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/jaune/1/usa
2-Vin de Paille
A wine made like Italian Amarone from grapes that are spread out on the ground and dried away from the vines. That concentrates the flavors.Definitely a technique to learn to recognize to advance your own wine tasting skills.
3--Vin de Liquer
This is a wine very much like Port except it’s not made in Portugal. It’s called Mistela in Spain. Brandy is added to the wine and it ends up 16-22% alcohol. It comes out differing degrees of sweetness depending on the winemaker. =Another distinctive taste to master on your way to wine mastery.
Check it out:
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/jaune/1/usa
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44267449
Cows
I would be remiss here if I did not mention the cows. Montbéliarde cows with little tinkling bells around their necks. Like in Switzerland. Like in “Heidi”, the famous children’s book.
Remember the movie “Heidi”— the one that in 1968 interrupted the football game between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets where the TV network cut away at the end so nobody saw the Raiders score two touchdowns in 9 seconds?
Those cows almost caused a second American Revolution.
Larry Leigon