The Beautiful Wines
Saturday, December 11 from 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
This is a special class, one which was created during the darkest moments of our community and country. We all remember March 2020, and the first days of the pandemic. Each of us coped in our own way. With the school closed, I started working on special projects. One of them was this class: I wanted to create a ninety-minute ode to beautiful flavors, an intricate layering of flavors that would bring joy to that terrible moment.
This class first was taught in October 2020, when the world started –for a brief moment– to reopen again. We taught it to a small class, and each person had a protective shield around them. Despite all the gear, everyone fell in love with the class. It had a poetic beauty.
Now that the world is fully open and vaccinated (the school is 100% vaccinated) we share this very special class with you: a meditation on beautiful flavors. It’s unlike anything else we do.
Attending this Wine Class as an Online Student?
This class is offered as an in-person class (Premium and Discount Tickets) or a virtual wine tasting (Online Tickets). We will send you a Zoom link with your ticket. Please keep that email! You can also come back to this page, and your zoom link will show here at the start of class.
Buying Wines for Online Students
We recommend picking up wines via wine.com or wine-searcher.com. The wine list is included on this page. You don’t need to have the exact wines on the list. It’s unlikely you will be able to find all the wines we use: we have a vast wine cellar, and many of the wines we taste in class are unavailable via retail channels. Instead, we recommend focusing on the varietals and regions we are using, not the vintage or producer. Please note that we cannot ship or sell wines. If you need assistance in purchasing wines, we offer a paid sommelier consulting service.
The following is the original copy I wrote for the class. Unedited and of that moment.
-Keith
On March 25th, back when everyone was afraid and unsure of what was coming next, I created this class and wrote this description. It will very likely sound dated by the time you read this. My greatest hope is it will sound exaggerated and a little foolish. If that is the case, I’ll be giving you a hug.
In any case, forgive me for being an idiot. To schedule wine classes, I have to create them a half year in advance. That is an impossible situation for me in the best of times: I drink for a living, after all. And today, when none of us can even figure out what is going to happen tomorrow, this is an impossible task.
I am literally throwing this class into the void, trying to anticipate what we –as a city of wine lovers, as a city of great people– will need seven months into an unknowable and perhaps broken future. I can only believe we will need one thing; I imagine there will be fear and crashes and terrible memories. And then we will be rising to meet the crisis head-on, in a uniquely Philly way. If my imagined future holds true, then Gritty will be defending the ramparts. Clearly, I am 100% not a psychic.
I only have a guess. I think that on October 1st, we all will want a reminder of peace and beautiful things. So, this is the class of beautiful smells and tastes, a class designed to evoke what is good and lovely in the world. It will be a class where any haters may just get carried out and drowned into the Schuylkill River. So maybe not all peace and love. This is Philly, after all.