Comfort's Derek Salerno is Upping Richmond's Wine Game

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If you tried to visit Comfort for dinner on Sunday, you might have found that the restaurant was closed, but still filled with tables of guests. If you looked closer, you might have found that these guests weren’t eating. Inside, a small group of food-and-wine-industry professionals sniffed, swirled and sipped; they were practicing blind wine tasting in accordance with the Court of Master Sommeliers Blind Tasting Grid, in what is hoped to be the first of many industry wine lessons.

Comfort bar manager Derek Salerno — who passed his Level II Certified Sommelier Exam this past November and is planning to take Level III in 2016 — invited lucky attendees specifically for their interest in wine, and in possibly taking future Certified Sommelier Exams. He hosted the evening with special guest Shane Luginbill, Chateau Ste. Michelle Wine Estates’ business development manager.

“We were both talking about how bad we are at deductive tasting and how we wanted to get better at it,” Luginbill said.

Deductive tasting is often regarded as the most intimidating portion of the Master Sommelier Exam; a candidate is presented with six wines and has 25 minutes to identify the vintage, grape varieties, country, region and appellation — where a wine’s grapes were grown — using specific techniques.

As Salerno talked to other restaurant industry friends, he realized there was large-scale interest in improving wine knowledge, so he and Luginbill decided to hold the first in a series of events to delve into blind wine tasting. “Richmond is getting a lot of attention for our dining scene, but our service and wine scene isn’t getting the attention it deserves,” Salerno says.

He hopes that by holding this series, which will take place every few weeks and feature different wine distributors and wine producers, he can elevate wine knowledge and wine service across the city, inspiring that scene to explode the way our food scene has.

At Sunday’s event, guests arrived to find four unidentified glasses of wine and several packets of information leading us through the tasting grid, which starts with evaluating the look of the wine, then the smell and, finally, the taste. After a quick introduction, Salerno walked us through as he tasted a wine according to the grid. Then we were on our own to walk through and make guesses on the next three.

Being faced with a glass of red or white, knowing nothing about it, and having to try to figure out the variety, age and region is as difficult as it sounds. Even after one round of practice, though, it was a lot easier to talk about smells and tastes and what they mean. Here are a few of the tips I picked up at the event; even if you aren’t hosting a blind tasting, these can help you know more about the wine you’re drinking.

  • Many people think the staining or legs they see when they swirl a glass of wine is an indication of the quality. Actually, it’s an indication of the alcohol level. Wines that are heavier in alcohol tend to create more legs, and wines that are lower in alcohol create fewer.
  • When you taste a wine and get a lot of strong, immediate fruit flavor, it’s often an indicator of a new world wine. Old world wines tend to have mellower, blended flavors.
  • White wines tend to get darker with age and red wines get lighter with age. As red wines get older, the pigment and tannins turn into sediment.
  • Greener undertones in white wines indicate that they are younger. Orange, yellow and brown tones in red wines indicate that they are older.
  • If you smell a wine and get a lot of scents of vanilla or baking spices, it’s a good indicator that the wine has been aged in oak.

For the time being, Salerno plans to host his tasting events every few weeks, keeping them small and focused on blind tasting, but eventually to include and cover additional topics such as regions or types of wine. “I’d like to grow the wine community overall,” he says. “To get more people together who want to talk and learn about wine.”