(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.
