K Series: How do I learn about wine?

Cook.

I appreciate the academic approach. The study. If you want to go down the WSET route, more power to you. The deductive approach as a discipline is impressive. But, it's largely based on winning the game of 'what's in the glass'; I'm not sure that it leads to loving wine more.  

Spending time with wine, slowly, thoughtfully, is how you learn more about it. I often see so many parallels in wine to the world of music and art. If you want to learn about a musical genre search the genre in google and ask for some artists that are a great example. Pick a few. Listen to their albums. Do not just cruise thru their soundbites. Start with the album and listen to it start to finish (even the sections that you don't really like).  Listen thoughtfully through each track. Appreciate the body of work, and the greater vision and message it is trying to say. Listen to the next artist's album in the same way. Once you get thru a few albums this way, you will know that genre. Maybe you don't like it. That's OK. At least you know what the genre is about.

Applying this. Perhaps, you want to know more about, say, Spanish wine. Where to start? Food. Make a paella from scratch. Type in "top wines of Spain" in google and it pumps out a number of links. Pick one. I did and picked a link from Food and Wine. The region of Rioja pops up. Type in "best producers from Rioja" in the search. A Jancis Robinson quote comes up listing La Rioja Alta, CVNE, López de Heredia, Muga, Marqués de Murrieta and Marqués de Riscal. 

Go to your local wine shop. Ask to see their Riojas. Select 2-3 wines in your pricepoint; if you can afford it try and buy a second or third bottle from the same producer. Make your paella. Invite 2-3 friends over. Slowly, thoughtfully, drink the wines. How do you feel abut the wines? Do they change over time? Do they change with food? Which producer do you like better? If you don't like a wine, taste it to understand what you don't like? If you can't define that, note it emotionally.

After you do this, you will come away from that meal educated about Rioja. You will know Rioja from a personal point of view. If you found you liked your Rioja tasting, then go deeper into the producers and regions. Use food to do so. There's no winning. There's just experiencing and the prize is your own understanding of how you feel about the wines, the producers, the region.

Where to next, K asks?

That depends. What do you want to eat? Maybe you're on a Spanish kick and wish you were in Barcelona having Catalonian tapas. What are the wine regions around Barcelona? What is drunk with Catalonian tapas? Make a dinner. Buy 2-3 wines.

Repeat. Repeat.

The way to sustain wine education is not demanding, intense study with rigorous timelines. It is thru making it fun. Cook. Explore. Eat. Reflect. Repeat.