Editor’s Note: Today, The Selective Echo begins a series of articles leading up to the holiday season that focus on local entrepreneurs and businesses of exceptional quality. Among the features will be Epic Brewery, Caffe d’bolla, the latest happenings at Caputo’s, War Regime Clothing, and others. However, I’ve decided to reprise a piece I ran before Thanksgiving in 2009 about Francis Fecteau, the self-described ‘wine pimp to the stars.’ Sharp, witty, and genuine in all respects, he is an exceptional resource about fine wines and spirits. I highly recommend subscribing to his Facebook page as well as his Twitter feed @LibationSLC.

“‘Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship’ —if ever there was a lyric for shameless big-titted wines like these, it’s this song that sings of a shameless high alcohol delirium. Orin Swift ‘Papillon’ 2005 / 2006 … is a bare-knuckled butterfly, a Bordelaise blend (that is to say, Cabernet, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot in its mélange) that shows a surprise a minute; soft rich summer jam at one turn, an 8-cylinder roar the next. This is serious deep heart-of-darkness stuff.”

– Francis Fecteau, owner of Libation Inc., a Salt Lake City wine brokerage, June 2009 e-Libation newsletter

Read the label. Don’t be afraid of things you can’t pronounce. Take your time – get out of the comfort zone. Be fearless. Support the little guy. Educate yourself.

These terse, concise, clear prescriptions – which anchor the basic principles of Francis Fecteau’s wine tasting and wine consumer classes – could conceivably constitute the beginnings of “The Elements of Wine Tasting,” a book similar in form to the hugely popular “The Elements of Style” E.B. White wrote more than 50 years ago to reinvigorate the succinct grammar rules of his college English professor (William Strunk).

However, Fecteau wisely rounds out the experience – much as White did discussing in a book chapter about how an individual writer achieves style – urging his students, in a sincerely reassuring way, to reconnect with their personal memory banks of some 8,000 to 10,000 aromas as they taste wine.

For example, White encouraged budding writers to develop an “ear” for language: “Only a writer whose ear is reliable is in a position to use bad grammar deliberately; only he knows for sure when a colloquialism is better than formal phrasing; only he is able to sustain his work at the level of good taste.”

Likewise, Fecteau encourages his students to develop a “nose” for wine. “A lot of people forget how to use their senses,” he explains, “and they would rather rely on a wait staff person telling them what they should be tasting.”

“Better yet to sit back, take a sip, roll it around, invite yourself to enjoy the textures, and let your own aroma memories take over,” he adds.

Whether it’s the average consumer at a wine-and-cheese tasting class at Tony Caputo’s Market and Deli, the ladder-climbing business executive, or the wait staff at a local restaurant, Fecteau’s goal is to make wine consumers less intimidated as he eloquently deconstructs the misrepresentative and mysterious artifice that has been cultivated about wine tasting as a secret club where one’s admission is predicated on specific qualifications.

Think Frasier and Niles Crane from the popular television sitcom whose Philistine class-conscious sensibilities are played up especially when one of the brothers has the opportunity to be “master of the cork” of a highly selective wine-tasting club. Or, as in one of Fecteau’s classes conducted for banking and investment executives, participants who were embarrassed to discover in a blind taste test they preferred an extremely cheap bottle of champagne to an expensive, exclusive vintage. “You could see the blood drain from their faces, ashamed into believing their palates had been tricked,” he recalls.

Tasting is the most fundamental act in the life of every wine – from the vineyard grower to the oenologist and to the wine broker and the wine merchant retailer and, ultimately, the consumer. “The taste of wine is, in fact, a perceptive representation as it relies on an interaction with the real, the conscious,” Frédéric Brochet, a French oenologist, explains in a recent journal article.

One of the tools Fecteau incorporates into his class is an aroma wheel diagram, created by oenologist Ann Noble at the University of California at Davis 25 years ago. The wheel is an instructive diagram for helping wine enthusiasts identify wines by the aromas they experience. These aromas can be characterized, for example, as chemical, pungent, oxidized, microbiological, floral, spicy, fruity, vegetative, nutty, caramelized, woody, and earthy.

He also occasionally pulls out the highly regarded aroma kit (le nez du vin) developed by Jean Lenoir, representing more than 30 years of research that includes aroma notes representing virtually every class of wine to those representing wines that have been corked and contaminated as a result of oxidation or among other things.

Indeed, Fecteau helps to correct a broader tendency not only found in the experience of wine tasting but also in so many other realms, including art, food and music, where the viewer, diner, or the listener is hesitant or suspicious of experiencing the sensory effects of art, music, food and wine on his or her own terms. Unwilling to trust what we see, hear, taste, or smell, consumers almost instinctively look for the third-party literal explanation to fill that gap.

And, it is the public’s lack of wine literacy that opens the doors for advertisers, wine industry publications, and wine retailers to manipulate, knowing that consumers will be drawn to those ubiquitous rating notes found in every aisle of the wine store.

Tasting notes, anticipated by wine marketers and consumers with equal fervor, comprise a system that begs the question as Fecteau so plainly puts it: “Are these things worth a crap?” On one hand, tasting notes composed by a panel, such as the Wine Spectator publication, tend to be broad and general in language detail – to the extent that the description could apply to any number of wines, regardless of price or origin of vintage. “For any wine, you likely will see a variation of the same fifty words for the description,” he adds.

Some represent hyped-up rating numbers that might conceivably have been assigned by, as Fecteau describes it, “by a sportswriter filling in for a food and wine writer at the local paper.”

And then there are esteemed guides such as the Hachette Guide to the Wines of France, where tastings are conducted collegially and samples are handled anonymously. A typical decade’s worth of the guide will contain more than 100,000 tasting notes. Another is Robert Parker’s “The Wine Advocate” which has published an estimated 1,000 tasting notes every two months since 1978.

For consumers, even if they don’t necessarily understand every word on these ratings and tasting note labels, Fecteau says it’s better to pay attention to the language detail, not the number. “In other words, does this sound like it will taste good?” he adds. “Over time, even if you don’t come to the same conclusions as Parker or [Stephen] Tanzer [International Wine Cellar], their notes will give you a benchmark from which you can make more informed decisions.”

Education constitutes an essential core to what Fecteau does. For example, he knows that educating a restaurant’s staff about wines will, in turn, help patrons approach the wine list with less trepidation and more confidence about trusting their first instincts. And, hopefully, the restaurant can rectify the all-too-common mistake of offering a dreadful wine list.

An added benefit to Fecteau’s educational mission is the opportunity to emphasize Utah’s surprisingly progressive small winery exemption, which means the state’s consumers and restaurants can purchase at favorable prices the wines of small family-owned producers who follow environmentally responsible and sustaining farming practices. As he tells his students, “In Utah, domestic producers are actually marked up less and many sell at a third less in Utah than anywhere else in the United States.”

For more information about classes or to subscribe to a periodic newsletter, contact Fecteau at francis.fecteau@gmail.com