October 05, 2007
Would garlic-crusted monkfish be better paired with Pinot Grigio
or Sauvignon Blanc? Which are the best vintage years for the
Nebbiolo grape in Italy’s Piedmont region? Which vineyard is
considered the best producer of Champagne?
Questions like these, which for years were reserved for
restaurants and wine shops, are now being asked once a week by 15
students enrolled in the University’s newly launched wine
appreciation and management course.
This isn’t to say that the subject of wine has moved from the
restaurant to the classroom; instead, St. John’s has moved the
classroom to the restaurant, quite literally. Students enrolled in
the new wine course gather not at desks but around tables with
white linen, inside the University’s newly refurbished
restaurant-style faculty lounge in Sun Yat San Hall on the Queens
campus.
Here, for three hours a week, students are served food, water
and, most importantly, wine. Entire flights of wine, in fact, but
only in small amounts — just enough to allow students to note the
wine’s cling to the glass, smell its bouquet, and briefly taste its
tannin.
To the observer, the scene in the faculty lounge is all glamour:
svelte curtains, colorful wall art and fancy glassware abound. But
for the students, the course, which is offered by the College of
Professional Studies’ Division of Hotel, Restaurant, Sport, Travel
and Tourism (HRSTT), is hard work.
“This is a difficult course, and it’s not all about fun,” says
the class instructor, Heidi Sung, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and
Director of Hospitality Management and Tourism. Though the course
is open to all St. John’s students who are over 21, Sung explains
that it is geared specifically toward those who wish to enter the
hospitality industry. All but one of the students currently
enrolled represent the College of Professional Studies’ HRSTT
division, and more than half already work in the restaurant
business. One student is a restaurant manager, another a chef,
another a maitre d’.
Sung stresses that while the course emphasizes wine
appreciation, it’s very much geared to the business of selling wine
— how you select and store it, how you manage it, how you pair it
with food — and bears little resemblance to the de rigueur
wine tasting events that Manhattan 20- and 30-somethings use to
fill their social calendars.
“It is not an ‘abc’ course,” says Sung. “It is about how to
train students in a way in which they can increase profitability in
their food-service industries. There are a lot of commercial wine
tasting classes out there without theory, which leads to
misconceptions. This isn’t one of them.”
By the end of the semester, each student will have created a
formal wine list, developed to complement a specific restaurant
menu. Many of the students simply use the menu of their respective
restaurants.
Apart from class field trips — to a Long Island vineyard, a pair
of Manhattan restaurants and a restaurant/hotel exposition — the
students pay no extra fees for the course, which includes plenty of
food and wine, as well as a handful of guest lecturers. Not
surprisingly, they are very aware of the deal they’re getting.
“I know a lot of people who would pay hundreds of dollars for
different wine tasting sessions offered around the city, so this is
a great opportunity, especially since we’re getting credit for it,”
says Iris Streater, a 21-year-old senior hospitality management
major from Bridgeport, CT, who plans to enter the hotel management
industry upon graduation.
Hot Field
Sung explains that wine appreciation has become one of the
country’s hot new trends, thanks in large part to recent scientific
reports about the healthy effects of red wine, the proliferation of
enotecas and wine shops around the city, and the steadily dropping
cost of quality labels. According to Sung, it’s all spawning a
boomlet for any U.S. business that handles wine, particularly
restaurants and hotels.
“In the past, wine has kind of been an elitist thing, but now
quality wines are far more affordable,” says Juan Eduardo
Micieli-Martinez, winemaker at Martha Clara
Vineyards, in Riverhead, NY, noting that “cheap wine” no longer
is synonymous with “jug wine.”
In addition, “Our generation is looking to try new things,” he
says. “The baby-boomer generation looks to the wine advocate to
tell them what the good wines are, but [members of the younger]
generation want to figure out what the good wines are by
themselves.”
Micieli-Martinez explained all this to the St. John’s students
as they toured Martha Clara Vineyards two weeks ago. While there,
they strolled through the vineyards, tasting various grapes and
observing how they are harvested. Shortly after, they entered the
winery’s production house, where they saw grapes being skinned,
seeded and squeezed, and later to the laboratory to watch the
fermentation process and learn about measures like alcohol level
and pH balance. From there, they headed to the large storage area,
where they watched wine being transferred into large casks, made of
different forms of sweet-smelling oak. Finally, they were escorted
into a special tasting room, where they were treated with glasses
of estate-reserve wine, made from the grapes they had eaten just
hours before.
“Seeing the hands-on process speaks for itself,” says Sung of
the field trip. “PowerPoint slides and photographs have
limitations, but this vineyard is in our own backyard, so we agreed
we should take advantage of it.”
Though the field trip fell on a Sunday and students were not
required to show up, the attendance rate was 100 percent.
Later this semester, the students will gather off campus once
again, during one of two field trips to New York restaurants, where
each student will be served a four-course, prix fixe meal,
along with two flights of wine.
The class also features visits by several sommeliers, wine
sellers and other guest lecturers, whose participation is only made
possible by St. John’s New York City location.
“I wouldn’t be able to get these specialists in Indiana,” says
Sung with a laugh.
After just one month, the course, which will be offered every
fall, has proved a hit with the 15 undergraduate oenophiles. “When
I first went into class, I had only experienced white wine, and I
never thought I’d ever drink red,” says Streater. “But now that I
know how to drink it, I prefer it. When you blend together all the
factors — what you see, smell, taste, and what food to pair with it
— drinking red wine is a completely different experience.”