Using their senses of sight, smell and taste, students in a Boston University wine study course are swishing, sniffing and sipping their ways through four German wines, epitomizing how the sophisticated choice has lost the pretentious image it once had among younger crowds.
Because wine’s origins are no longer mostly French or Italian, the drink has become more acceptable, said Stacy Woods, a 35-year-old student in an advanced section of the Metropolitan College course.
“I see kids between 21 and 25, and they’re drinking wine,” Woods said. “When my parents would go out to dinner, they’d get their cocktails and martinis. . . . Now when you go to dinner, you order wine.”
Some School of Hospitality Administration students, especially those studying gastronomy, take the class as part of their required studies, said SHA wine professor Alex Murray, who joined the teaching team in spring 2005.
The American perception of wine has changed considerably in the last 20 years, as it has attracted younger audiences and gained popularity as a beverage, Murray said.
Murray said he and his colleagues dreamed that wine’s popularity would eventually soar when he entered the business in 1980.
“I talked with some of my colleagues as early as 1982 or 1983 about making wine a lot less pretentious,” Murray said. “How do we get people to try it with foods, and how do we do all these things? Guess what? Today they are.”
Murray said other reasons for the age shift are the control of the bitter-tasting acid called tannin, which naturally occurs in wine. The wider popularity also came from a 1991 60 Minutes report showing how France’s red wine consumption has lowered its citizens’ rate of heart disease, he said.
The four evening classes, hosted by the MET Center for Lifelong Learning, are something of a rarity among wine enthusiasts, because of the variety of information offered to students.
Woods, a mother of three, said she had worked as a wine consultant, but BU’s class helped her arm herself against wine distributors who only provided information in an effort to sell their products.
“Your brain all of the sudden starts to be washed in the wine industry,” Woods said. “I think the most important thing about the class is these guys aren’t trying to sell you anything.”
While the class has a low-key environment that heavily involves its students, the instructors include two Masters of Wine: Legal Sea Foods beverage operations director Sandy Block and Bill Nesto, a former sommelier — a wine steward, trained in the drink’s history — at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
“[The Master of Wine] exam is without question the most difficult and highly regarded general knowledge certification in the wine industry,” Nesto said. “We had a team which was just superb, and we also decided at a certain point about five years ago to develop our own program.”
The classes include a trip around the world of wine, detailing the geographic and climactic impact on vineyards. Students also taste wines each night, and more advanced classes perform blind tastings, in which students do not know the identities of certain wines.
“It’s very, very technical,” Woods said. “It gives you a good broad scope of the wine industry and wine making and regions. It’s a really soup to nuts kind of thing. It’s not just about what you’re smelling in a wine, or what you’re tasting in a wine.”
