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!