Saturday will mark two of our city's biggest wine events of the year: Wine Spectator's Grand Tasting at The Venetian and the locals' favorite, UNLVino, at Paris Las Vegas. With these two mammoth functions taking place on the same day -- pure insanity, if you ask me -- it seems like the perfect time to broaden one's horizons and palate.
But what if you don't possess wine knowledge? What if your taste spectrum is limited to the Australian reds perpetually on sale at Vons? Fear not, for we are cut from the same cloth. I, too, confess to having consumed "Two-buck Chuck" from Trader Joe's. But those days are over. It doesn't matter if we don't know our pinots from our grigios, because as my new personal adviser says, "All it takes is a little time and attention" to become a master. Well, maybe not a master sommelier like he is, but close.
William Sherer is the wine director at Aureole, which means he's in charge of the biggest wine list in Vegas, including that cool, three-story lucite tower that holds 10,000 bottles and those cat suit-clad Wine Angels who swing around on cables, "Mission: Impossible"-style. Safe to say he knows what he's talking about.
And he's telling me, and you, that although wine may be complex, it can be made easy to understand.
"A sommelier has to be a little bit of a psychologist," he says, adding there's more to choosing a wine than what you're eating. "How you receive wine has to do with all the different emotions and ways you feel. I just have the luxury of knowing enough to help identify the choice."
His first tasting tip is to listen to your senses.
"If you're just getting into a wine, then there's a little natural curiosity and I would recommend building on that. When tasting, slow down a little bit. It's an opening of your senses, and taste and smell are our least-used senses. Don't focus too much. Pay attention to your own palate."
Tasting is the easy part. For the average wine drinker looking to find something new, Sherer suggests sampling extremes in order to pinpoint what sensations you like best.
"If you try the sweetest dessert wine from Germany you can find, and then one that's only slightly sweet, or if you experiment with wines with varying acidity, you can kind of fill in the big branches of the tree," he says. "It's an uphill battle to get someone to try something they generally don't like, but I believe if you don't like white wine, for example, and you keep trying, you'll find one you like."
With so many varietals and vineyards from around the globe available at shops and restaurants all over town, it seems impossible to find the right wine and might be frightening to venture away from what we normally order or buy at the store. Relying on big-name labels might keep you safe, but sorry.
"The brand name is the biggest influence in most people's minds," Sherer says. "People drink labels. They might not know that (winemakers) with huge followings like Silver Oak and Opus One are designed to be drinkable first, and complex and interesting second. There have been some subpar vintages that only a few people are willing to believe their taste buds on."
If trusting in your tastes isn't enough, he recommends studying up with "Understanding Wine" by Joanna Simon, or a sturdy reference book like The New Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia. You can read Wine Spectator, but pay no attention to the magazine's ratings.
And if you get a chance, try some 2005 Bordeaux, 2005 German Reisling and 2004 California Central Coast Pinot Noir. My adviser says they're not to be missed.
Brock Radke's food column appears twice monthly. Contact him at bradke@viewnews.com.
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