West End wine merchants enjoy fruit of their labor

 (This is for all my fellow wine drinkers AND wine aficionados. We join so many of our friends on nearly weekly trips to area wineries for food, beverages, live music, and dancing. Here's a story I did from a couple very lengthy, in-person interviews with lots of questions for a spring 1989 West End Word piece. I have no idea how I received all those extra, highly-detailed facts about wines!)

Are wine aficionados born or made? Considering the contrasting backgrounds of two Central West End establishment owners, the answer maybe ‘yes’ to both choices.

Steve Casagrande, co-owner of Bevco Wines and Liquors, 5127 Delmar Blvd., was born into the business.  The 76-year-old father of this 1964 St. Louis University Business graduate still runs his own wine-selling entity in Casagrande’s native Spring Lake, NJ.

“I worked for 20-plus years as a CPA for an international firm,” Casagrande said. “This is my retirement—working 18 hours a day. But I don’t really look at it that way because I’m doing what I enjoy doing.”

Casagrande, who shares ownership with wife Karen, has quite an eclectic background in wine. He has lived near some of the famous European vineyards, collected wines, lectured, judged wines in Missouri and Kentucky, and is an original member of the Augusta (MO) Wine Board.

Meanwhile, John Sappington, co-owner of West end Wines, 309 Belt Ave., Has discovered that his more recently-found love for wines keeps growing with age.

Sappington entered the wine business in 1975, shortly after completing graduate school with a degree in classical studies from Washington University. He says he fell into the field because he needed money and enjoyed tasting wine.

“I was just a consumer who knew very little about wine, but I was always interested in food, cooking, and related things,” said Sappington, who has shared a two-year partnership with fellow Central West End resident Melanie Harvey.

“It seemed interesting enough for a temporary job, but I became even more interested when I learned more about it,” he said. “Now I’m very happy with it because it’s a continual learning process. There’s a tremendous amount of information. It’s a lifetime study.”

Obviously, the greatest fascination surrounding wine is centered around its distinct taste. Physiology is of the utmost importance in that respect. Different areas of the tongue can detect sweetness, sourness, acidity, and astringency.

People swirl the wine glass to aerate or cause heightened activity in the molecules. They then sniff the wine to experience the much higher density of those active molecules.

“My perception is that there’s a lot of ritual to it which seems kind of silly to some,” Sappington said. “Sniffing corks at the table doesn’t tell you anything about wine. But tasting starts with your eyes—evaluating the color and clarity. It proceeds to the nose—the wine’s aroma. People get intimidated by tasting criteria, but it’s really supposed to determine whether you like the wine or not.”

The most important knowledge to be gained from wine sampling is a consistent approach to differentiating preferences for some wines over others.

“All the testing is done to build up your individual taste memories,” Casagrande said. “One way to help you do that is to put a little time into learning terminology. Terms are important as they relate to sensory perceptions. They help you classify taste memories and communicate with others about them.”

Terminology is especially important considering people’s sharply different opinions about what is good or bad wine. Various areas of preference include sweet to dry, heavy to light, and extremely concentrated versus a close to water consistency.

Color is another area of individual preference. It is often dependent upon how the grape is vinified, although red wines are often akin to the color of grapes. Pinot noir grapes are often used in red burgundies, while a Swiss grape called Rote has les color and is used to make lighter wines.

Blush wines, whose name was changed from rose by a group of Californians in 1973, is made from a red grape whose skin was removed earlier in the process than it would be with red wines. Champagne differs from wine in that it goes through as many as three fermentations within the bottle.

Headaches have long been a problem in wine drinking, with 10 to 15 per cent of the population susceptible to them. The cause is the buildup of sulfur dioxide, and the solution is to expose the opened bottle to air for 15 minutes before drinking.

To a lesser extent, the preservative tannin has been known to cause headaches for those drinking young red wines. But a greater concern to vintners is the belief that wine drinking leads to serious alcoholism.

“Alcohol in moderate amounts is actually prescribed to people with high blood pressure,” Casagrande said. “Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘A nation that drinks wine is not a nation of drunkards.’

“You have to realize that wine is food, basically, or at least a natural accompaniment to food. I lived in Italy for three years. They drink about a bottle a day per person. There’s no drunkenness there because they drink wine in moderation with food.”

That brings up another question. What type of wine should be served with various foods? To some, that seems as trite a consideration as the processes some use to sample wines. But there are certain truisms.

“It’s based on certain flavor affinities,” Sappington said. “Certain wines and foods marry so nicely from a chemical standpoint. Red wine and beef is a combination that seems to work better than white wine and beef, while a lot of seafood dishes go better with white.”

Naturally, price is another consideration in choosing a wine. But according to Casagrande, the highest priced wines are not always the best. He refers to a variety of mediocre Missouri white wines which are far more expensive than some good Italian imports. On the other hand, he believes that Missouri’s fruit wines are often better despite their relatively lower cost.

Sappington cited factors other than sheer quality in determining the price of wine.

“It basically boils down to one or two factors,” he said. “First, the cost of producing wine, and second, the ability of the winemaker, or more likely the people between the winemaker and the consumer, to sell it. It will also be based on the wine’s reputation and its demand and supply.”

Additional information on wine may be obtained from “Wine Spectator,” a magazine designed for consumers; Kevin Zraly’s book, “Windows of the World Wine Course,” local wine tasting group called Les Amis du Vin (The Friends of Wine), and various programs through the St. Louis Community Colleges.