My Favorite Class at The Danish Institute of Study Abroad

Today was my last day of classes at DIS, the Danish Institute of Study Abroad. In a week, I will be returning to the states. It feels extremely surreal. Before this year, the longest I had ever spent away from home was 6-8 weeks. Now I have been gone for 9 months. Reflecting on the academic year, there have been some great classes, and a few pretty awful ones, but the best class I took this year, the class that I learned the most in, wasn't actually a class I am going to get credit for. My favorite class was a club. Gastronomy club - to be exact. Shocker.

Gastronomy club, and European wine club second semester, was an event that I always looked forward to during the school year. Each class met 6 times during the semester, consisted of about 18 people, and was a center for people who loved good food, wine, and let's face it - getting a little bit tipsy on a Monday or Thursday night. Taught by the fabulous Ian, I learned more about the world of wine this year than I had from working 3 summers in wine stores. Of course, being able to actually taste the wines helps significantly.

Gastronomy club consisted of tasting 4 wines, usually of a single country, followed by cooking regional dishes to pair with the wines. For instance, one class the focus was Italy, where after learning about a few different regions, such as Veneto, Piemonte, Puglia, and of course, Tuscany, we made fresh pasta, bread, and a few simple sauces. Other classes were all about the food, for example fish, where we paired Rieslings, Chardonnays, and Sauvingnon Blancs with a wide array of seafood.

It was in those classes that I learned mostly about basic grape varieties, their general smells, color, and taste. I was taught that a lot of wine, especially smelling it, is subjective, as our memory makes us pick out certain nuances that others may not notice. While there certainly are a number of fairly ridiculous adjectives to describe "the nose", including leathery, muddled, and my personal favorite; flabby, what may smell like hay to one person could smell like their grandma's backyard to another. In that way, wine tasting is rather personal. In terms of food, I was not really introduced to any new methods of cooking, but Ian bought the best of the best ingredients - foie gras, Muscovoy duck breasts, quail eggs, sushi-grade tuna, making cooking extremely fun, and absolutely delicious.

Gastronomy club prepared me for my whirlwind tour of France and Italy with my mom over the Christmas break. My mom has always been the one to pick the wine, and obviously being older, and at the time, the legal drinker, she would be the one to taste it. That is now no longer the case. During our trip, we chose the wines together, and when the waiter appeared with the bottle, my mom would point to me as the taster. It was with a sense of pride that I sent a bad bottle of wine back in Paris, not letting my still fairly inexperienced nose and palate question the acidic liquid in front of me. I relished in the conversations I had with vineyard owners in Tuscany, who clearly perceived me as someone who knew her stuff, and thus brought out the best of the best for my mom and I to try. I could not wait to return to DIS to start a new semester of wine tasting.

Since the cooking aspect was a lot of work, Ian reduced the class to exclusively wines, calling it "European Wine Club". In each of the 6 classes, we tasted 6 wines, taking a break halfway through for some light snacks such as olives, cheese, pates, and a ton of bread. This class was not just focused on grape varieties, but also the different countries around Europe. We learned to tell the difference between the grapes and wines from France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Spain, and the regions within each of those countries. Each class focused on a certain country, with the exception of a class where we tasted 3 Pinot Noirs, (Ian's favorite, and mine too) before moving onto Spain.

The more I tried, the more clear it became just how different one wine is to the next. Even if it is the same grape variety, something as simple as the vintage can completely change the smell and taste. Wine is not just white or red, it is so, so much more. Call me a dork, or a wine snob, but I think it is the most fascinating beverage. It is a drink with a life - it has a birth, a prime, and eventually, a slow decay. And like you or me, each bottle is somehow different from all the others.

My crowning achievement this year happened last Thursday, our last tasting, where Ian covered all 6 bottles of wine and had us blind taste them. I proceeded to correctly guess the grape, country, and region of all 6 wines. A Colombard and Ugni Blanc from France, (we hadn't had that one before, so I guessed Chablis, Ian said it was close enough!) 100% Chardonnay Champagne, a predominately Cabernet from the left bank of Loire Valley, a French Pinot Noir from Bourgogne, a Barbaresco from Piemonte, and a Tempranillo from Spain. Being able to accurately name all these wines was such an achievement to me, as I could physically see my evolution from knowing little to nothing about wine to quite a bit - probably more than my mom, and maybe even my dad ever did. How many young adults my age can truly say that they can do more than tell the difference between a glass of red or white? Gastronomy and wine club has taught me so much about an area that I knew little about, but had always wanted to know more. It also gave me the tools that I need to continue to expand my knowledge of different countries, regions, and grapes. Thanks, Ian, for a truly fantastic class.

You may think that I am a complete wine snob now, but to tell you the truth - I am looking forward to a glass of 3 buck chuck when I return to the States. Old habits die hard, I guess!