This room could make you snow-blind. Arranged along the white walls are tables with white tablecloths. Sitting at the tables, seven white men in white lab coats. At each of their stations, a little white plate with a roll of roast beef and some crackers, and three glasses of red wine. Each man has a big white plastic cup with a white plastic funnel that will serve as his spittoon.
Among the experts today are Joe Spellman, Todd Hess, and Robert Bansberg, sommeliers (wine stewards) at the Pump Room, Printer’s Row, and Ambria restaurants. We also have wine retailers Rick Cooper and Glenn Reid, and wholesaler and distributor Dennis Styck. Also on the panel is a legend in the wine business, 72-year-old John Parducci, who grows the grapes from which he makes his Parducci wine in northern California. Goldwyn says, “He’s known to be a curmudgeon. He likes simple wine that is easy to drink and is inexpensive.” That’s the kind of wine he makes.
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Goldwyn then explains that today each “flight” will consist of seven glasses of wine. The judges will have 25 minutes to taste each once, arrange them in order of preference, give each a score, and then taste them again to see if they want to rearrange anything. Then they’ll have a discussion.
The back room reeks of wine. Holly Corbett and Geoff Ryan are preparing for the next flight. On the metal shelves that surround them are hundreds of bottles of wine, including a Parducci that will be tried today. They use a $90 state-of-the-art corkscrew to open the bottles with which they will fill 49 identical wineglasses set up on a gurney.
Goldwyn is full of analogies. “Think of yourself as a television. Everything you know about the universe you collect through your antennae. You collect five stations: hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing, and touch. Most of us are well educated in sound. Visually, we’re very well educated. We take music and art-appreciation classes. But nobody teaches you how to smell and taste, which means most of us are going through life using two of our five senses. You’re left to fend for yourself. It’s like going through life watching only ESPN and MTV.”
Goldwyn moved BTI to Chicago last October when his wife took a job here. In August it will hold its first world wine competition–sort of the Olympics of wine.
