Episode 71: The ABC's of Wine with Expert Sommelier Claire Spooner

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Paige: You are listening to “Coffee with Gringos.” I’m Paige Sutherland.

Ian: And I’m Ian Kennedy.

Paige: And so today, we have a special guest: Claire Spooner is in our studio today and she is going to talk about wine. She is quite the expert. So, Claire since you are new to the podcast, tell us a little bit about yourself.  Where you're from, how long you been here, what you do.

Claire: So, hello. My name is Claire, as you've just been told. I was born in London, but went to Mexico when I was nine months old. I grew up there, so I was there all my life. I've been in Chile for two years working as a restaurant manager of a high-end style restaurant.

Paige: So, you're also a sommelier.  

Claire: There's two different courses, main courses. So, there's one that's super focused on sommelier, which is very focused on service. And then the other one, which I did, is the WSCT. And that one's a little bit more broad and usually salespeople in wine take it and not only, it has a part of service, but it's not huge on service. So that's the one I took, because there's more centers of it around the world. It’s recognized around the world. And service, I do have a hands-on approach. So, I learned by doing a bit.

Paige: Awesome, yeah. So, me and Ian, obviously we're in Chile, we drink quite a lot of wine, but I know very little about it. I know what's red and white, that's probably the extent of my knowledge. So, Claire, please, educate us a little. So, walk us through a little bit about when you have a glass of wine, how should we drink it?

Claire: Well, the first thing, I mean, the idea really is to enjoy wine, right? Just so it doesn't matter so much if you do it the correct way or not, it's still a drink, you should just enjoy it. But if you want to analyze your wine a little bit more. I mean, the first thing you do will be look at appearance. By appearance, hopefully, you'll have a white or…yeah, white is the best, but you can use something else like a serviette, maybe I don't know something. And you can analyze the color, see how deep the color is. And that can give you an idea as to the style of wine, see if there's any faults. Now then faults can be, for example, if you see said sediment. It doesn't have to be a fault, but you can know that maybe it was an unfiltered wine which can mean that an unfiltered wine will give you other types of flavor profiles or aroma characteristics. Then you want to analyze it smell. It's aromas, you don't use smell, really—you should use aromas more, it sounds a bit better. In aromas, you're firstly, looking for faults to make sure it's faulty or not. Then you also want to see what kind of aroma characteristics you can get. So, for example, if it has primary aromas, secondary aromas or tertiary aromas. Tertiary aromas are more to do with the age, secondary will be with the actual like wine process, and then the primary aromas are more to do with more, the grape variety and just some processes and wine. And then after that, while you get to the good bit of tasting it. And I mean it's important to notice that so much focus will be, for me at least, will be in its aroma. I love to see the bouquet of wine. And then after with the aroma, with the taste sorry you'll be analyzing many things. Its aromas, flavor profile, then you'll also be seeing its tannins. Then you will be seeing the acidity, the sweetness level in the body, the alcohol and all of these things will play a part into then, finally, your conclusion. And your conclusion, not necessarily if it's good or bad, it's just talking about the personality of the wine you're drinking. So yeah, so that would be basically what I would do when trying a wine. Yeah, or you just drink it.

Ian: Wow that was a lot information.

Paige: Do you normally do that when you drink wine?

Ian: I have to say I do almost none of those steps when drinking wine.

Paige: I just take off the cork, straight from the bottle…

Ian: Right down the hatch. No, but that's really good to know because, yeah, like we said, we don't really know much and I'm sure a lot of our listeners don't know very much either. So, it's good to hear from an expert like yourself. Now, I do have one question…can you explain a little bit better what tannins are? I know I've heard this word before but I have to be honest, I don’t really know what it is. So, what is a tannin?

Paige: I was gonna ask that.

Claire: So, tannins are present in many, many things, okay? In the wine, you will find it mainly in the skin of a grape, also in the seeds, okay? And in the stem. And then you'll also get tannins from the barrel. From the wood, that if it's aged in wood or not. Or it can have, like, planks of wood if they're just trying to imitate that. So, tannins will come from various elements but mainly from the skin. That's why when we talk about wine in general, you talk about tannins only for red wines. Some rosé wines, as well. But whites, it's not as much, but it doesn't mean that they don't have tannins, because they can have tannins from the barrel and from their skin. It's just not as present, usually. What tannins do, tannins are this astringent feeling. So, if you try wine, and you do, like, a mouthwash, yeah? And what's left on your teeth, like that feeling that you have, like a powder. I don't know how to explain it. It’s kind of gritty, that will be tannins. Tannins are important for wine pairing, as well, because you need to, I mean, that it's a very present feeling or not. So, it's important to know how tannic the wine is or not.

Paige: For a good wine, do you want more tannins? Do you want more of that kind of feeling in your mouth?

Claire: There's no good or bad if it has low or high tannins. It's just a profile. Okay, so there can be wines with low tannin which are fantastic. But then there are wines that are super tannic, which are also fantastic. It depends on the profile of wine that you're looking for or what you like. So, for example, as again like Italian wines can be super high in tannins and a lot of people don't like that feeling. For example, some wines can be low in tannins in which can be easier to drink. So, it can be more appreciated, it just depends on what you want.

Paige: And quick reminder, don't forget if you want to advance your English more, learn more, go online to dynamicenglish.cl where you can take private classes, you can take group classes, you can even now take classes online.

Ian: I have a question about food pairing. You said that the number one rule is just you should enjoy the wine that you enjoy—a drink is a drink. But do you ever feel like, do you ever cringe when you see someone, maybe they order seafood with red wine instead of white wine? Or maybe there's some, some unwritten rules to how you pair certain types of food with wine? Or for you is it just enjoy what you enjoy?

Claire: I'm very much towards enjoy what you enjoy. Although, when I eat, I usually do think about the wine accordingly. Now then, the cringe, not at all. Like, I think there's, like, the traditional pairings that they just work well, they really do. They just work, but then there's some pairings which are breaking the stereotype. I don't know what to call it, what is seen as correct or wrong, which is quite interesting. So, for example, in the restaurant where I work right now, we are pairing some seafood dishes with red wines. Like, we are breaking a little the tradition.

Ian: The mold?

Claire: Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, when you think of a wine pairing, I mean, it doesn't have to be perfect. It has to have a reason of being, and it doesn't mean that my interpretation of that reason is the same one you would interpret. It's just like a form of expression, like an art, I think. But it's incredibly complex to find a good wine pairing like a perfect one. I mean, you'd have to have a huge selection of wines. You’d have to try many things, like, it's not easy at all. It's not easy so you generally would go more, in my opinion, you go a bit more finding a good friend with the wine rather than romance. I don't know if that makes sense.

Ian: Yeah, I like that analogy.

Claire: Yeah. But no, I would always say just choose the one you like and just enjoy it. Because I think wine has this snobbish outlook, I don't know.  It's very, it's still quite snobby and it shouldn't be. You should just, you know, enjoy your glass of wine. And if you want to learn more, it will, you know, you'll know a lot more about wine and you will probably enjoy it more, at least that happened to me. But actually, it was nicer when I didn't know more, a lot about wine because I would just drink and enjoy. Now I'm, I'm more conscious.

Ian: Sure, it's like that old phrase, “ignorance is bliss.” It's like what you don't know, you don't worry about. So now that you know all the complexities of wine, I'm sure your mind is always thinking in all these different details.

Claire: Yeah. Like, “oh no, I can't drink this. It's the temperature, I don't quite like it.

Ian: It’s got one too many tannins haha.

Claire: Or you, one too many times, are you open a bottle and you're like, “oh no I should have opened it in a year, what am I doing?” When I could have just been sipping it, enjoying it.

Paige: Yeah, so you’ve become kind of snobby. Just kidding.

Claire: I guess so…

Paige: Well, what's nice, I don't know if you agree, Ian, but, like, in the US, wine is more elite because of the price. And a good bottle of wine in the US is very expensive, and the cheap wines are bad. Like, they're not good quality. So, I didn't drink wine before moving here, but then because in Chile, the prices are so affordable, I drink wine now more than beer. Because I can get a nice bottle of wine for cheaper than I can get a six pack. So, I think I like that about today, that it's very accessible and you can go to a restaurant and often, me and my boyfriend will order a bottle of wine, and it's like, very affordable, almost the same as a store. Where in the US, if you ordered a bottle of wine at a restaurant, it would be one hundred dollars. I would never do that. So, I like here that it feels like, you can be part of the wine community, you don't have to be rich and snobby.

Claire: No, not at all. The other day, we got, like, a four-liter plastic thing.

Paige: Of wine? Cooking wine?

Claire: No, no, the grape variety is Pais. So Pais is one of the grape varieties that will become more famous here, probably—it already is. It's one of the first varieties that was brought to Chile. It was amazing, and that whole thing cost 4,000 pesos. Yeah. Like, yeah. And it was so good.

Paige: The other question I had was because I'm new to wine. I would never order a bottle of wine at a restaurant. So now when I order a bottle of wine, they always open it up in front of you and then give you the cork. What am I looking for? I'm always like, “yeah, it's a good, solid cork.”

Ian: Good corks they got here!

Claire: No, you just have to smell it.

Paige:  And what am I looking for?

Claire: Wine faults. So, for example, in many occasions, it's best of the sommelier, if there is if you go to a restaurant where there's a sommelier, smells it and tells you, and gives it to just, you drink it. But you can find a lot of aroma characteristics or wine faults in the cork.

Paige: Like, am I looking to see, “oh this wine is aged well?” or like, “will I like the taste of this wine by this?” Like, what am I supposed to get from the smell?

Claire: The wine faults. But there's so many, you can look for, like wet cardboards smell.

Paige: And that's good?

Claire: No, that's not good.

Paige: Oh, ok hahaha.

Claire: I mean, I again I think it's something that we’ll do out of respect, in some ways. But most of our clients will probably not be able to smell the difference or some. I don't know, I mean, you could, for example, if you just smell something normal, and you say, “yeah, it smells like wine, “which you might do. Then cool, all good. But if you could find maybe something and you'd be like, “oh, this smells pretty nasty.” Then you could, you can get that in the cork. The cork will smell, quite a lot more than the bottle of wine. So yeah, so just if you see something that's a bit off, that smells strange, you can ask the waiter or the sommelier. And if you don't know, if you don't trust your sense of smell, just smell it and say” fabulous”.

Paige: Yeah, it's funny. When I first moved here, like, I think I told Claire the story, but my best friend and her boyfriend visited us and we went to the vineyard, Concha y Toro. We did this big wine tour and then we got lunch and we bought a bottle of wine, and the waiter came over, opened the cork and gave it to my best friend's boyfriend. And we all didn’t, we're all not used to getting bottles of wine at the restaurant. So, we're like, we don’t really know what to do with this. And he takes it and he licks it. And then the waiter just was like, “okay…”, and, like, took it back and left. And then, like, after he left, we're all like, “are you supposed to lick it? That’s not what we're supposed to do.” And he's like, “I had no idea what to do. I just went with my instinct.”

Ian: That's probably my reaction would be too.

Claire: To lick it?

Ian: Maybe, yeah.

Claire: You just feel it.

Paige: I remember telling Claire that story and she's like, “He licked it?” She's like, “In all my life in the restaurant business, I've never seen anyone do that.

Claire: I couldn’t do it if someone licked it, though.

Paige: The waiter was really nice because she just like, stone-faced. Like, didn't react, so we were like, “Maybe you're supposed to lick it.” But we all were like, “I don't think you’re supposed to.”

Ian: Nah, she was just being polite.

Claire: Yeah, I don’t think I could stone-face. Nope.

Paige: Yeah. So now every time I see a bottle of wine I'm just like, “I'm gonna lick it.”

Claire: No, don’t…

Ian: Don’t do that…

Ian: Yeah, so since you're an expert and most of our listeners, including ourselves, we aren't experts, what’s a “go-to” wine for you? What's the wine when you go to a restaurant? Or when you're picking a bottle, what's something that you choose and what are some types of wine that you would recommend to our listeners?

Claire: There's so many. I mean, something to follow, which is easy, if you're at a table and you want to have one bottle but someone's having fish, someone's having meat, someone's having chicken, and everybody's having different things and you just don't know what to order….I think a rosé is, it always goes well with many things. And here in Chile are quite a number of nice rosés. Then, right now the south of Chile has some very interesting wines. Are Carignan is a great variety. Or Pais. They're a very old wine. So, when we talk about an old vine, we're talking about a wine that is higher concentrations, because it's the called it stressed—the vine is stressed. So, it's more concentrated in the actual grape so its flavor and aroma profile are larger. So yeah, I’d go for a Carignan or Pais of the south. Then, okay, talking about Latin America, definitely in Uruguay, trying a Tannat. I mean, it's called Tannat from tannins—very high in tannins. Bolivian wines are quite interesting, some of them. You know, there are many countries that you don't expect are producing really nice wine.

Paige: Well, thanks for being on the show, Claire. I think we all learned a little bit more about wine. Maybe we should have drank some wine while we had this episode, but it is pretty early.

Ian: “Wine with Gringos.”

Paige: Yeah, “Wine with Gringos” at 10am. But thanks Claire for being here.

Claire: It's a pleasure.

Paige: Well yeah, as you all know, if you get lost follow the audio guide online. Thanks again for listening.

Ian: We'll catch you next time.

Paige: “Coffee with Gringos” was brought to you by Dynamic English, where you can learn English, simply by using it. If you're interested in taking classes, or just want to learn more, go to our website at dynamicenglish.cl. Thanks for listening.

Key Vocabulary, Phrases and Slang:

1.     sommelier (noun): certified, wine expert

a.     My sister went to France to become a sommelier.

2.     hands-on approach (noun): direct involvement in something.

a.     I like to have a hands-on approach to teaching English.

3.     extent (noun): size or scale of something.

a.     The city is viewing the extent of the damage.

4.     serviette (noun): table napkin

a.     This restaurant has great serviettes on the tables.

5.     wine faults (noun): unpleasant characteristic of a wine from poor handling or storage.

a.     It’s important for a sommelier to be able to identify wine faults.

6.      sediment (noun): leftover matter in wine

a.     Certain wines have more sediment than others.

7.     bouquet (noun): aromas and/or smells of the wine.

a.     This bottle of red wine has a great bouquet.

8.     tannins (noun): bitter chemicals from grapes that are found in wine.

a.     This reserve bottle has a lot of tannins!

9.     cork (noun): material covering a wine bottle

a.     Corks have been used to cover wine bottles for thousands of years.

10.   down the hatch (phrase): to drink something (hatch = throat)

a.     Thanks for giving me a beer. Down the hatch!

11.  barrel (noun): wooden container for storing wine.

a.     The vineyard produces more than one thousand barrels of wine per day.       

12.  planks (noun): long, flat piece of wood.

a.     Oak planks are used by the vineyard for storing their wines.

13.  to imitate (verb): to copy or follow something.

a.     My cousin always imitates me when we spend time together.     

14.  astringent (adjective): acidic, bitter

a.     The wine we drank today had an astringent flavor.

15.  mouthwash: to move wine in your mouth in order to taste the flavors.

a.     The sommelier did a mouthwash with each sample she tried.

16.  gritty (adjective): containing sediment or other materials

a.     Her teeth felt gritty after doing a mouthwash with the wine.        

17.  profile (noun): description

a.     This wine has a low tannin profile.

18.  to cringe (verb): to feel uncomfortable.  

a.     She cringes when she sees someone order red wine with seafood.

19.  unwritten (adjective): something understood and accepted by everyone but not official.

a.     There are many unwritten rules to drinking wine.

20.  stereotype (noun): widely held ideas or image that isn’t necessarily true.

a.     There are stereotypes that still exist with wine drinking today.

21.  analogy (noun): comparison between two things

a.     My professor uses analogies to explain her lessons.

22.  snobbish (adjective): arrogant, exclusive.

a.     There are many snobbish wine drinkers.

23.  sipping (gerund): to drink slowly.

a.     Sipping wine is the best way to determine its profile.

24.  elite (adjective): superior, exclusive

a.     Drinking wine doesn’t have to be an elite activity.

25.  affordable (adjective): inexpensive, possible to buy

a.     Chile has the best affordable wine in the world.

26.  accessible (adjective): able to be reached or used.

a.     This room is not accessible to the public.

27.  nasty (adjective): disgusting, unpleasant.

a.     Ew! Why did you buy this nasty wine?

28.  vineyard (noun): place where wine is grown and produced.

a.     My grandparents have a vineyard in California.

29.  to lick (verb): to touch something using one’s tongue.

a.     He licked the cork of the bottle at dinner.

30.  stone-faced (adjective): expressionless or serious face

a.     The sommelier was stone-faced while the clients tried the different wines.

31.  go-to (adjective): the preferred choice of something.

a.     Cabernet Sauvignon is my go-to wine.