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Posts Tagged“sasha smith”

Diploma Dispatches: Central Italy

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By Sasha Smith, NYC Correspondent So it came to me on Tuesday night as I was chewing on a mouthful of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and trying to decide if I could call the tannins both “firm” and “drying”: the Diploma is to wine what dressage is to horseback riding – arcane, academic and interesting to an extremely small, and extremely passionate, group of people. This point is not lost on Mary Ewing Mulligan, (from now on, MEM for short) who reminded us that we are “operating in some never-never land” at arm’s length from the average drinker’s experience. I…

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Diploma Dispatches: Northern Italy

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By Sasha Smith, NYC Correspondent OK, I admit it. I’ve been feeling a little smug lately. Maybe it was the fact that I did pretty well on my study group’s blind tasting exercise. Or that I devoted a good part of my President’s Day to researching the slopes and soils of Burgundy. Or perhaps it’s just that many of the wines we’ve looked at to date, from Alsatian Rieslings to Southern Rhône reds, happen to be wines I drink frequently. Whatever the reason, up until yesterday I thought I would have no serious problem passing this test. But yesterday’s class…

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Diploma Dispatches: Bordeaux

By New York City Correspondent Sasha Smith I’d been waiting for last Tuesday’s class for a long, long time. Finally, I was going to learn to love Bordeaux. Of course I’ve always appreciated it and held it in high regard, and its primacy is self-evident; it’s tough to argue against the greatness of Bordeaux, the same way you can’t refute the fact that Citizen Kane is a cinematic masterpiece or Crime and Punishment is a darn good book. But just as Orson Welles and Dostoyevsky leave me cold, Bordeaux has never been a personal favorite. I was sure I was…

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Diploma Dispatches: My first WSET Diploma Unit 3 Class

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By New York City Correspondent Sasha Smith And so it begins. I had my first Diploma Unit 3 wine class last week, and I’m already feeling overwhelmed. The Good News: I’m not the only person who isn’t in the wine business. I was a little worried that the class would be wall-to-wall sommeliers and importers, but there’s a small contingent of civilians like me. From a purely selfish perspective that’s good news as it makes me feel less self-conscious, but I think it will be goodfor the class, too. In my experience from previous courses, WSET students tend to overlook…

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Diploma Dispatches: Sasha’s Going for the WSET Diploma

By New York City Correspondent Sasha Smith I am about to start the most demanding — and exciting — phase of attaining the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) diploma, a hardcore wine qualification that’s held by about 100 people in the U.S. and is the stepping stone to the hardest-core wine qualification of them all, the Master of Wine. On January, 15 I start Unit 3, Light Wines of the World. (There are 6 units in all, with the others covering the wine business, viticulture, vinification, sparkling and fortified wine, and spirits.) As the extremely vague title would indicate,…

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Introducing Sasha Smith, LENNDEVOURS’ New York City Correspondent

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As many of you know, I have a full-time job half-way out on Long Island, which makes attending wine events in NYC nearly impossible during the week. It’s been a source of frustration on my part for some time now, but there isn’t much I can do without quitting my job, failing to pay my mortgage, forcing my family to live on the street, etc. Then LENNDEVOURS’ newest correspondent came along. Her name is Sasha Smith and she’ll be covering NYC goings on and events when I can’t. Sasha has written about food and wine for numerous publications, including Time…

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