Holiday Gifts for Wine Lovers

As Thanksgiving's roast turkeys become the weekend's turkey sandwiches, it's time to start thinking about the next holiday on the calendar . . .

Do you have a wine lover on your shopping list? A wine class or one of our packaged wine boxes make perfect gifts.

We offer flexible gift certificates available for specific classes, specific wine boxes, or pick any amount of your choice and allow your friend or loved one decide how they want to spend it.

Certificates are available by mail or by email.

Contact us to discuss the details or place your order online!

Happy Holidays!

WSA Brings the Wine Class to You!

The WSA is headed out of the classroom and into your home with our new "Wine Class in a Box" Program! Join us each month as we hand select our favorite wines to create a collection of portable "classes" that are delivered right to your door. Each six-bottle "class" is delivered in a carrying tote, complete with producer / wine style / regional information, maps, serving suggestions and WSA tasting notes. We also offer a monthly value case with 12 Bottles Under $12. It's like having your very own personal wine educator or sommelier in your kitchen or dining room!

September's "classes" include The "Heart of France:" Loire Valley Wines and Dr. Strangewine: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Unusual Grape Varieties.

Through September and October, we're offering free home delivery for all boxes, so now's the time to check it out!

Find out more or place your order here: http://www.wineandspiritarchive.com/classes/shop

WSA Tastes Gamay and Decides Oregon Does it Better!

Of all the Mix Magazine tastings we participated in, the Beaujolais tasting was probably the most disappointing. These light-bodied, summer-appropriate reds have crept up in price, but not in complexity. Much of what we tried was dull, uninteresting and not worth the price.

Enter Oregon gamay-based wines! Katherine Cole snuck a few of these into the tasting and they immediately stood out, offering multi-dimensional flavors of red fruit, baking spices and earthy notes, all backed by a fuller, richer body than what we find in Beaujolais. Hopefully, this a grape Willamette Valley winemakers will continue to experiment with!

You can read more about our Beaujolais tasting here.

Payment Plans Available for WSET Courses

Interested in taking a WSET Wine Certification Course this fall, but struggling to get the financing together? Payment plans continue to be available for these courses at no additional cost to students. Here's how they work: 1) we break the tuition costs into 2 to 4 monthly installments, 2) you make a monthly payment on either the 1st or 15th of the month, and 3) as soon as your first payment is received your course materials will be shipped out to you. The only requirement is that your final payment be received at least 2 weeks before the course's end date.

And for those of you who work in the wine industry, don't forget to ask your employers if they will help cover the cost of your training. Many are willing to cover or share tuition expenses!

Upcoming WSET Wine Courses

WSET Advanced Course, Portland, OR, Sept. 14 - Nov. 30

WSET Intermediate Course, Portland, OR, Oct. 14 - Dec. 9

WSET Intermediate Course, Seattle, WA, Nov. 7 - Nov. 8

WSA Students and Alums Visit Trisaetum and Anne Amie

As part of our most recent WSET Advanced Course, we took our students - as well as a few alums - down to the Willamette Valley to tour the vineyards and wineries of Trisaetum and Anne Amie Vineyards.

At Trisaetum - a new winery located in the Ribbon Ridge AVA - we toured the winery's newly constructed, state of the art facility. The winery's top flight technologies included an air filtration system developed by Nasa and what - by the end of our visit - we came to know as the "bug-sucking-machine": a grape processor that uses a vacuum to remove all leaves, dirt, bugs, water, and other debris from the grapes. This "cleaning" process, followed by a double hand-sorting of the fruit is thought to be an important contributor to the ultimate quality of Trisaetum wines. We were all certainly sold on the 2007 off-dry Riesling we were served upon arriving at the winery . . . A huge thank you to Greg, Alice and Courtney for the tour and tasting they arranged for us!

With a little time to kill, WSA student Jeremy Saxton arranged a quick stop for us at one of his favorite wineries - Lenné Estate, where we sampled some beautiful Pinot Noirs. Thank you to Lenné for accommodating us on such short notice!

Next, we headed to Anne Amie Vineyards where WSA Alum Ksandek Podbielski showed us the vineyards, pointing out several AVAs visible from Anne Amie's beautiful back patio as well as the winery's new vegetable garden. Thomas, Anne Amie's winemaker, then took us into the cellar where he explained the flow of fruit through the facility and his own philosophy on winemaking. The visit ended with several comparative tastings. In the first, we tasted the difference between two bottlings of the same wine - one under screw cap and another under cork. Both were beautiful, but we all agreed that the wine under cork was showing it's age much more quickly, while the screw capped wine tasted much younger. Next - as part of Thomas' discussion on how he creates his bottlings - we compared two different blends. Each blend was made from the same three barrels, but with a different ratio of wine taken from each cask. Given that the two blends contained the same three wines, the differences between the two were quite distinct and offered great insight into the blending process. Thank you to Thomas, Ksandek and Katie for making this such a wonderful stop!

WSA Alumni Get Tasting

This month WSA alums are getting serious about tasting and are launching tasting groups in both Portland and Seattle. The objective: hone tasting skills, connect/reconnect with other WSA alumni and to taste some delicious wines!

How The Tastings Are Organized:

Well . . . that all depends on which alum is hosting this month. Some tastings might focus on a specific region, others on a specific grape variety, and still others might have no focus at all. But all tasting will offer the opportunity to get together with other knowledgeable wine tasters and and to get serious about wine (all while having fun, of course).

If you are an alum of a WSET wine course and did not receive details about these upcoming events, please be in touch so that we can send you more information!

Check out Mimi's Interview in FOODday

Want to know more about Greek wines? Check out Mimi Martin's (Wine & Spirit Archive owner) interview in the Oregonian's FOODday section.

WSA Alumni Party

On Saturday, April 4 we celebrated our second annual WSA Alumni Party - this time at Anne Amie Vineyards. It was a great chance to catch up with past students and to introduce students from different classes to one another. It didn't hurt that the weather was sunny, warm and near perfect, allowing us to open up the doors to Anne Amie for a gorgeous view of the valley and several different AVAs.

Each alum brought a "secret" bottle of wine, wrapped or decanted, and we spent the evening trying to guess what was in each bottle. The wines were a tasty, interesting and sometimes weird mix, hailing from Franken to the Finger Lakes and everywhere in between. Some delicious bottles were even made by students.

A huge thank you to everyone who participated. See you next year!

Wines of Austria Class - April 16

Join WSA co-owner, Adam Rhynard as he takes us on a tour of the Wines of Austria. We'll begin with a discussion of the terraced-hillsides above the Danube River, tasting the area's mineral-rich Rieslings and savory, complex Grüner Veltliners, but the delicate reds of Burgenland and botrytized sweet wines of the Neusiedlersee will not be neglected. After this course, it will be easy to see why Austria is considered one of the finest wine producing countries of the world.

This class is part of our 2009 Wine Passport Series; sign up for multiple classes and save!

Fill Your Wine Lovers Toolbox - Join us for the Introduction to Wine Series

Ready to get a strong foundation in wine tasting basics? Then our three-part Introduction to Wine Series is for you.

In this fun and interactive series, we'll guide you through the world's major wine styles and will fill your toolbox with the wine terminology you need to confidently understand any wine list. This is a tasting-focused class, so come prepared swirl, sniff and spit. By class end students will be able to identify major grape varieties by taste, to describe wines using classic descriptors (such as grassy, oaky, buttery, etc.), and to distinguish between "old world" and "new world" wine styles.

We hope you'll join us!

http://www.wineandspiritarchive.com/classes/introductiontowine.html

Wines of Piedmont Class - Saturday, February 28

Everyone at WSA is looking forward to our upcoming Wines of Piedmont Class scheduled for next Saturday, February 28.  The class will be taught by Darryl Joannides, owner of cork: a bottle shop and formerly chef/owner of Assagio Restaurant.  

Class Description: 

Piedmont's rolling hillsides, nestled at the base of the Alps, provide ideal growing conditions for some of the world's most prestigious wines.  The variations in slope, aspect and soil found in these hills support a broad range of grape varieties and wine styles.  The most famous wines of Piedmont are certainly the elegant and age-worthy Nebbiolo-based wines of Barolo and Barbaresco, but the region supports other charming and distinctive varieties as well including Barbera, Dolcetto, Freisa, and Grignolino.

This class is part of our International Wine Passport Series, so sign up for one of our "frequent flyer programs" and save!

Visit WSA on Facebook

It's official.  After much hesitation, WSA is now up on Facebook.  It would be a shame - now that we're up - for you not to visit us! 

Visit us here to become a friend . . . 

And here to become a fan . . . 

WSA Alumni on the Move

Congratulations to WSA alums who have either been recently promoted or have moved on to bigger and better things. 

Down in wine country, you'll find WSET Advanced Graduates Morgan Ennis and Mich Nelson in new tasting room positions.  Morgan recently left her position at Cork - A Bottle Shop to become Tasting Room Manager at Daedalus Cellars and Mich recently left Stoller Vineyards to join the Erath Winery team as Guest Services Supervisor.  Mich reports that her new position is "the perfect fit."

Further south in the Eugene area, WSET Advanced Graduate Lorne Mews is still at Benton-Lane Winery but has been promoted from National Sales Manager to Vice President. Congratulations Lorne!

For those of you still dining out in this depressed economy (and for the sake of our restaurant-based alums, we urge you to!), visit WSET Advanced student Lisa Marcus at Le Pigeon and WSET Advanced Graduate Amy Rehagen at Toro Bravo.  An easy assignment given that these are two of our favorite Portland restaurants.

Braiden Rex-Johnson, WSET Intermediate student also has news.  In addition to her other writing projects, Braiden is now a regular contributor to the Seattle Times Pacific Northwest "Taste" Column and is a monthly contributor to Amazon.com's Al Dente Blog.  And WSET Intermediate Graduate Laura Brady, president of Lux Wines, just announced a new wine sales website, including a bridal registry.  Check out Laura's new site here.

Want to know more about what WSA grads are up to?  Visit our graduates page.  

2nd Annual Alumni Party - Saturday, April 4

We love to keep track of our alums and catch up on what they're up to and - with well over 100 WSET graduates - our annual WSA alumni party is always the easiest way to that.  If you're an alum or current student, we sincerely hope you'll join us Saturday, April 4, at 4:30p.m. down in Carlton, OR.  

A huge thank you to alums Ksandek Podbielski and Kim McLeod for offering space out at their beautiful Anne Amie winery for the party!

More details including pre-party winery/vineyard visits and after-party dinners will be circulated soon.  In the meantime, get this event on your calendar!

Payment Plans for WSET Courses

For many of our students - particularly those seeking to enter the beverage industry - WSET certification courses are a big investment.    

If you're interested in registering for a WSET wine certification course, but can't swing the tuition in one lump sum, contact us about payment plans.  Payment can be spread over 2, 3, or 4 monthly installments at no additional charge.