To Somm or Not to Somm: The Communicative Method of Wine

It's been a good six months since I've been meaning to sit down and watch the recent-ish documentary Somm. Every month or so another one of my friends or family stumbles across it and contacts me asking if "I've seen that new documentary yet- the one about the wine..."  Anyway it's been a busy fall between traveling to and from weddings and wine events and I hadn't seen it until I had the fortune of it it as an option for an flight movie option on our way to Aspen last week (Delta has redeemed itself in my book- free bags with Delta Skymiles Amex and personal TV screens... Hallelujah!).

I wasn't sure what to expect or even if I was going to like the movie - the sommelier diploma has long been something that I've eyed with awe and with skepticism. My courses with the International Sommelier Guild last year often approached wine as an objective liquid. Classes felt like we were putting it into a box with rights and wrongs focusing on the details and not the story or the experience as a whole. A lot of times it wasn't fun, and I often felt that we were losing the forest for the trees. Yes, being able to tell a good wine from a bad requires a fair amount of knowledge, but the knowledge was packed so hard that it suffocated itself at times. I missed the conversations about how that particular bottle came about, the special occasions it's graced, and which piece of the winemaker's heart was in it.

I guess you could call me a communicative wine theorist. This term harks back to my second-language education days graduate school days of theory. Learning a foreign language and learning wine aren't quite that different, really.  Back in the 1950s, second-language acquisition was almost entirely taught by what is called the grammar translation method. It was a method by which students would study the grammatical rules and vocabulary of a language and practice, hardly speaking or watching natural conversation, by rote memorization. Lessons were only conjugating verbs, grammatical exercises and direct translation, and most students who exited the class could not put a full, comprehensive sentence together when speaking or writing to a native. As the years passed, the the 60s and 70s held several very strange methods of second language acquisition (one of these being the silent method, during which osmosis was expected to do the trick with no practice...just think sponge) - we'll call those years growing pains. Eventually, however, in the 90s and now in the 2000s with the widespread use of English and the growing need for people actually being able to communicate in English across the globe, the communicative method has emerged.

Conversation over wine at Villa della Torre

The communicative language teaching method means less of a focus on rote grammar and more emphasis on teaching students to model their speech and  writing after actual native speakers. This means use of authentic materials, many communicative  activities, and only the teaching basic grammatical rules which will then be applied flexibility to the students' own idiolect. (Idiolect: an individual's own way of speaking, often with syntax, semantics and structure which slightly differs than that of those around them.) Each person put their own spin on the language, and although there are general rules which language follows, it changes based on exposure, region, individual, and several other external factors. The person's language is fluid, and teaching a second language must recognize that and allow for that.

Costanza at the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School at Regaleali

The same kind of theory can be applied to my approach to wine to some extent. To be a master sommelier you must commit yourself entirely to the grammar translation method, and I'm not sure that's how I approach wine. This doesn't mean that I do not want to be able to name all of the regions in Burgundy or all of the crazy levels and qualifications of German Qualitätswein - I hope to one day do that, and  in fact, I have spent a good deal of time and money on certifications and lessons in just that. But at the end of the day, when I speak in these terms I do not feel as though I am completely speaking about the wine the way that it is meant to be spoke about. I feel that I am speaking robot, grammar translation wine. I instead want to learn about the communicative part of wine, one that I can share with people other than just sommeliers - I not only want to know the grapes that are in it and the year that it was me but I also want to know who made it where it came from, what food was made to be drink with. I want to know the story behind the wine, not just if it is in a barrique or a bottle.

When I have learned the story or -ideally - have actually visited the place that the wind came from and spoke with the people whose love and labor is reflected in each bottle- that is when I feel like I am speaking wine. I use my own idolect then - my own experience with the wine, and in describing it, my own experience with flavors and exposure  I believe that you can't taste a wine without its and your experiences pouring themselves into your tasting. What wines can I describe best? Allegrini, Tasca, Giacosa, Castello di Neive, Antinori, Ferrari, Vinolibero, wines at Fontanafredda, Villa Dora, Nicola Trabbuco, - I haven't been to all of these properties, but I have done my research, and knowing where it comes from changes the wine.

So back to the documentary. The introduction intrigued me, whenever the four candidates are introducing themselves and their love for wine. I distinctly remember one instance where one of the candidates was describing the experience of wine. He said "it is almost like a way to travel around the world."  But that world in the movie was just a bunch of maps and regions with grapes varietals, alcohol levels, tannins, acidity, aromas and bouquets. It was also a world of fierce competition with one another and oneself. The world of right and wrong that is only enjoyable once you prove yourself to someone who in the end won't be there at your wedding, the birth of your child, or you funeral. It's a world where you emanate someone, be the greatest of the greatest by following the greatest of the greatest, not being yourself. There was no idolect in Somm.

Villa Dora - it's not just the volcano in that wine, for me

Right now I am reading Oscar Farinetti's book Storie di Coraggio: Vino Ti Amo. I just finished the first interview where he speaks with the Costantino Charrère of Les Cretes in Val d'Aosta. Farinetti asks the man where he learned his trade and found his ambition The producer answers in two simple words lo specchio. The mirror.

At one point during the film the candidates for discussing a blind tasting. The conversation was focused on whether certain wine was either Brunello di Montalcino or Barolo - both are big Italian wines that are widely respected, and both can age very well - and the candidate couldn't tell which it was. But they are completely different. My first thought and this is not whether or not the cherries and tobacco of Brunello could be confused with the dead forests of leaves and dried violets of the Barolo, but with how could you possibly mix up a cool, dew-covered wine of Piedmont with a sunny wine of Tuscany? The wine as whole expressed not only the tannins, alcohol, and flavors, but the territory. It was communicating and some Somm's maybe weren't listening.

I have the utmost respect for sommeliers and still am considering one day becoming one. But I also like speaking my own idolect when it comes to wine - one that knows the ground rules and is schooled to some extent, but it also draws on my experience. I think that's how wine should be.