L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2020 www.italoamericano.org 24 L'Italo-Americano P relude:Mei Lu, or, if you were to believe t h e b l a c k i n k C h i - nese calligraphy tat- t o o e d o n h e r a r m , Beautiful Heron, took me far away. Far away from La Sere- nissima and what I knew. She carried me off with no perceptible sound, a gondola floating in silence across the Grand Canal. I went along knowing foolish- ly little. I can't tell you much. Not even where she came from. Only that she was ethereal, mys- terious, like La Serenissima her- self. Behind the Carnival mask, mystery remained Mei Lu's per- s o n a l t e r r o i r . F a c t s s e e m e d unimportant. The subjective, the inner experience, reaction and feeling, the calle strette, narrow streets, the only ways to the heart, she said. Jade bracelet on a slender wrist; skin scented of mandarin orange: you needn't ask ques- tions, it's not about stone, skin, bone. Anyway, too many facts issue prejudice. One way or another. Early morning fog, she turns to leave. A gull flies over moor- ings in the Venetian lagoon, cries out, shattering the quiet. What goodbye sounds like. Inner experience. Feeling. Reaction. No facts required. The gull settles atop a moor- ing pole. I want to tell him that all that I'd learned or needed to know, what Mei Lu made me understand, all that mattered, amounted to this: that silk makes no sound when sliding off the body and onto the floor. Thank you for your patience i n r e a d i n g t h e p r e l u d e . Hopefully the point was made in a way more entertaining than having simply stated it: some- times, fact can pose a brilliant disguise to experience. Let's don our wine education- colored glasses: "The demand for education in the beverage sector—espe- cially wine—is high, with more program providers popping up across the country and classes selling out in major markets. The Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET), the largest glob- al provider of wine education, recently reported a 19 percent increase in worldwide enroll- m e n t . T h e U n i t e d S t a t e s l e d enrollment in the top 10 markets last year, with 11,487 students— a 48 percent increase over the p r e v i o u s y e a r . " (SevenFiftyDaily, published O c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 , daily.sevenfifty.com) The SevenFiftyDaily article continues: "Why the spike? As more consumers explore an expanding selection of wines, "more and more businesses are recognizing that education and well-trained staff are the foundations of bet- t e r c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e a n d stronger profits," says David Wrigley, MW, who oversees WSET's development stateside. WSET offers four levels of cer- tification, stepping stones to the Master of Wine (MW) cre- dential." In practice, the wine industry rewards credentials and certifi- cations earned by students of w i n e a n d g r a n t e d b y f o r m a l wine education programs, with career-advancing opportunity because, yes, money is being made. Consequently, wine educa- tion programs seem to concen- trate on wine's academic and theoretical aspects — observable and measurable — which is where the friction begins. This writer, for one, rarely desires to interpret or experience the joys of wine served on a scholarly p l a t e . T h a t s t a t e m e n t m i g h t invite debate that wine profes- sionals should make a quick, skillful assessment of a patron's orientation to wine, i.e., roman- tic vs. academic, and proceed accordingly. But inasmuch as wine's academic and theoretical have become the currency of professional wine life, where success is measured with a bot- tom-line yardstick, a bookish orientation to what's in the glass is the default. Commendably, in the above- mentioned SevenFiftyDaily arti- cle, one wine professional notes h e r w i n e e d u c a t i o n a s b e i n g "invaluable to me as a sommeli- er and a lover of wine. I can [now] root Italian wines in story and place for guests, provide context to enhance their experi- ences, and create an environ- ment to help them explore." At least the approach considers inner experience and imagina- tion, balancing, I presume, any erudite veneer. Overlooking, of course, the fact that the end goal is still the same: to sell some- thing. I t ' s i n n e r e x p e r i e n c e t h a t allows wine to flicker in the i m a g i n a t i o n . T o c o n j u r e a moment of emotion that is not quite reality, yet one that speaks a corporeal truth. A moment informed by theory and fact, per- h a p s . T h o u g h n o t d e p e n d e n t upon them. A thing's metadata should not become more important than the thing itself. W i n e e d u c a t i o n i s a g o o d thing. The wine-drinking public benefit from well-educated som- meliers, salespersons, etc. The value of wine education, though, can be strengthened when infor- mation and science give compli- ment to an admittedly more elu- s i v e , i n t a n g i b l e , i n n e r w i n e experience. We need both per- spectives. For different reasons. Lest one be left to a condition aptly described by a 1970's song lyric: When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, It's a wonder I can think at all … - from "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon T a s t i n g N o t e Il Cancelliere Gioviano Irpinia Aglianico Unfined, unfiltered, and with no added S02, this full- bodied wine delivers wonderful texture with nostalgic old-school austerity. Fruit, earth, spice, good depth and length. JOEL MACK Through wine education-colored glasses Just like Carnevale's masks, the way we speak and learn about wine sometimes can have a double identity WINE NEWS TRENDS PROFILES

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