Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/56967
END POST If you teach a man to pull a cork… E very semester at Rutgers Uni- versity, there is a class that has 200 students jockeying to get one of the 55 seats. Although the class is in the entomology department, the students are not out to bag big butterflies; rather, they're into catching a different kind of bug. The wine bug. For 20 years, professor Lena Brattsten has offered her "Wine Insights" course to students 21 and older at the State University of New Jersey (widely referred to simply as Rutgers). The one-credit course involves a multifaceted approach to wine that includes history, biol- ogy, geography and, of course, to really get the students queuing up, tasting. (Brattsten has said that the only reason the course is under entomology is because she is a full professor in the department, and the course is an "orphan," with- out its own home.) Demand for the class outstrips supply; the pool of students that failed to get in is about three times the size of the 2,000 students Brattsten has had over the years. Across the Atlantic, sixth form- ers (age 16 and up) at Latymer Upper School in London have the chance to go on school-organized trips. A popular option has been "Grape Escape," where a group of 15 students travels to Bordeaux, staying in the medieval village of St. Emilion, visiting various cha- teaux, sampling local gastronomy and taking a class at the Ecole du Vin to learn about winemaking and taste several wines. Maggie Bell, the faculty mem- ber who led the trip in 2010, wrote me that its goal is to "encourage students to appreciate and enjoy wine in a sociable and responsible 106 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT MAR - APR 2012 way, rather than abusing it." She continued, "The binge-drinking cul- ture amongst young people is a real problem, so our trip is an attempt to make them see alcohol in a dif- ferent context." We need more wine education, especially for the younger drinkers (21 and up, in our case). Clearly, we have been doing all right with the amount that we have now, since the United States has become the largest wine-consuming country in the world. And it's not hard to work out which end of the bottle to open, so education is not essential. But our relationship with wine is rela- tively new, having only really taken off in the last four decades. The per capita wine consumption rate still is quite low, as our peers in such statistical tables are Ireland and Equatorial Guinea, neither exactly known for wine consumption. So some education can burnish more sides of the multifaceted beverage. As the two above examples show, wine education serves two goals: confidence and possibly moderation. There's little doubt that wine education serves to boost the curiosity of those who enroll. The point for many who take a class is to learn more about wine, feel more comfortable with wine and with ordering it in restaurants. At least that's what people tell me on Day One of the wine non- credit class that I teach at New York University. Those who have taken the class will try more, varied wines. Richard Sagala, a somme- lier in Montreal, studied the effect of education on consumers for a paper he wrote in 2011. He found that three months after taking a multiweek class, the participants felt more confident about their TYLER COLMAN Tyler Colman, author of the wine blog Dr. Vino, teaches wine classes at New York Uni- versity and the University of Chicago, and wrote the book "Wine Politics: How Gov- ernments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink." wine selections and more than half had increased their wine expendi- ture by 15%. There's also the Jeffersonian ideal that wine is a drink of modera- tion. Faced with the "ardent spir- its" of his day, Jefferson viewed wine as "the only antidote" to the "bane of whiskey," believing its powers of moderation were such that "no nation is drunken where wine is cheap." This philosophy drives the wine education approach to combat binge drinking from an early age, as several schools in England are doing. Starting wine education early is bound to reap rewards. In our coun- try, needless to say, this is meant for people 21-30 because of the minimum legal drinking age (but general historical and geographical education could start earlier, as it does in France and Italy). Yet these youngest drinkers are very into wine and curious about it. They are also the key to driving future wine consumption, as they are part of the Millennial generation, one on par with the Baby Boomers in size. And unlike Boomers, they are very experimental and willing to try any wine at least once, with whatever type of closure or packaging. So let's honor professor Brat- tsten. And the best tribute to her would be to see more colleges and universities offering wine classes for students to catch the wine bug. (Opinions expressed in this col- umn do not necessarily reflect those of Vineyard & Winery Man- agement.) Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwm-online.com. WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM