New Series on Hunter Valley Hide-aways

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Steve Shipley

I am constantly asked for opinions concerning the Hunter Valley. I feel comfortable offering advice as we have a place up there, frequent it a lot, and will retire there; 60 percent of the wine I drink is from the Hunter Valley. I get asked often to recommend off-beaten wineries from local friends and any advice on how to spend a few enjoyable days for those visiting the area. These requests are occurring more frequently, so I thought I would take the time to record and share the information with, regardless if you ask or not!

This will be a four-part series as follows:

Hunter Valley wineries
Places to stay in Hunter Valley
Places to eat in Hunter Valley
Hunter Valley events and activities

Recognize that these recommendations represent my opinion and may not be suitable for everyone. Also know that I do not have any commercial relationship with these places nor have I asked their input or permission prior to writing these posts. This series represents the opinions I have been sharing privately with friends, and I am now making them public. I am certain there are great wineries, restaurants and places to stay that I will not be mentioning. But in the end, I can only write what I know.

Overview of Hunter Valley wine region:

The Hunter Valley is two hours north of Sydney, Australia by car. It was one of the first areas in which vines were planted in Australia. James Busby, acclaimed father of the Australian wines industry, brought vine stock from France and Spain and planted them in the 1820s in the Hunter Valley. The Hunter Valley produces only about 2% of Australian wines, but is internationally known for their excellent Shiraz and Semillon wines. Few regions around the world grow these grapes better than they do in the Hunter Valley. The Hunter also produce many excellent Chardonnay wines. The Hunter Valley houses three (McWilliams, Tyrrell’s, and DeBertoli) of the twelve First Families of Wine, which are multi-generational privately held wineries. This is testament to how seriously the Hunter Valley takes its wine and ensuring they continue to focus on quality.

You can find out more and keep up to date with upcoming events by following the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Association.

Since a trip to the Hunter Valley features wine above all, the next post will be on some of my favorite Hunter Valley wineries. Stay tuned!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013. Steve Shipley
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Twitter: Steve Shipley @shipleyaust; InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

Making red wine ice cream

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Steve Shipley

Vintec, the wine storage company, displayed this recipe on Facebook and I thought I would share it since I took the time to translate the recipe from Spanish to English (OK, Google Translator helped a little bit!). I was going to write another post on why you need to build a cellar, but that will wait another day now. I have two Vintec wine storage lockers and they are great. But again that will be the focus of another post. For now, I am going to explore making red wine ice cream. I have not tried this yet, but will give it a go next weekend when we are in the Hunter Valley for a long weekend and let you know the results. If any of you try it before I do, please write to tell me how it turned out.

The recipe calls for:

A bottle of red wine
150g sugar
4 egg yolks
250ml cream
300ml whole milk
cinnamon stick

This is not actually a recipe so much as just an ingredient list! I am sure you could substitute a half-teaspoon cinnamon powder for the stick. And if you want to make it a bit creamier and smoother texture, use six egg yolks instead of only four. Then just whip it up in a blender and put into a container to freeze. I am guessing a more elegant, finer red wine works better than heavier, coarser red wine. I would use a Pinot Noir or a Zinfandel. And a full bottle seems to be quite a bit, so you may want to use half a bottle first, then taste, and determine if you need to add more.

Based on the quality of the wine, this could be a pretty expensive dessert. But it does look delicious and we will give it a try! Once I know more and can recommend more, I will write an update about our experience making it and how it tasted. Please let me know if you try it first!

Enjoying another fine Hunter Valley Shiraz!

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Steve Shipley

I write a lot of reviews about Hunter Valley Shiraz (and Semillons) for two reasons: (1) I drink a lot of them, and (2) they are bloody good, and therefore worth reviewing! I had pulled out a few bottles to decide between for tonight’s drinking and was going to choose between a 2007 De Iuliis Reserve Shiraz and a 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea (both excellent wines!) before spotting a single bottle of the 2001 Blueberry Hill Shiraz. Blueberry Hill is lesser known than some of the more iconic Hunter Valley wineries, but a pleasant spot with some good undulating vineyards. They make one of the better Pinot Noirs in the Hunter Valley and a nice Merlot. They also have one of the most beautiful wine labels around!

So I decided to open the 2001 Blueberry Hill Shiraz and it did not disappoint! (If you have ever had a 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea or a 2007 De Iuliis Reserve Shiraz, you will know how much of a compliment this is!) This is a very nice wine. It is slightly sweeter than other Shiraz, and with lively fruit. The spices are more savory than peppery, with a mixture of saffron and cinnamon. BTW, do not take literally the allegory to saffron and cinnamon, but I am limited in my ability to define multiple savory and sweet spices, so you are stuck with that description! The wine is very smooth, almost velvety with an elegant mouthfeel, like a fine Old World style blend, but lacks the complexities that a blend would provide. It is light and refined, with a nice alcohol level of 12.5% I find that level easier and more pleasant to drink than the Shiraz in the 14% – 15% range. This wine is twelve years old and the fruit is alive, almost tangy on my lips and has a long finish. The 2001 will not last another decade, but should be good for at least another three to five years. We will have this wine tonight with a quinoa and vegetable salad and it should work very well. A heavier Shiraz would not.

I get a lot of requests from friends who are going through the Hunter Valley as to what wineries to visit and they are always looking for a new winery or a boutique winery instead of the big players. Blueberry Hill certainly fits that bill. Check them out next time you are through the Hunter Valley.

The give-away wine you have been waiting for!

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Steve Shipley

Last week I put up the rules to win one of two $100 bottles of wine. Today, we will take the covers off and tell you what wine it is! This wine cannot be sourced anywhere anymore as it is of premium stock and they are sold out at the cellar door. There may be one or two bottles floating around in private collections, but I believe that I hold the remaining stock of several dozen bottles. That alone makes this wine unique and somewhat special, but only if it is good wine and good wine it is! Coming from the 2005 vintage and being a Hunter Valley Shiraz, you know this wine has to potential to be excellent. Langtons’ rated this vintage an 8 out of 10 for Hunter Valley Shiraz. While not the very best year, certainly an excellent year.

The wine for the give-away is the 2005 Kelman Chairman’s Reserve Shiraz. Kelman is a cooperative vineyard in Pokolbin, at the corner of Marrowbone Road and Oakey Creek Road, just across from Saddler’s Creek in the Lower Hunter Valley. They grow their own grapes and the Shiraz vines are about 15 years old now. They have only made two vintages of the Chairman’s Reserve Shiraz, first in 2003 and then again in 2005. These two vintages reserved (hence the name!) the very best Shiraz grapes for these Reserve wines. Halliday rated the 2003 Kelman Chairman’s Reserve Shiraz as excellent and scored it 93/100. He did not rate the 2005, but I can attest that it is the better wine. I know because I have drank both the 2003 and 2005 Kelman Chairman’s Reserve Shiraz side-by-side a few years back and had a bottle of the 2005 Kelman Chairman’s Reserve Shiraz just a few days ago. This is a big wine with live, juicy fruit and plum and blackberry flavors. It is an earthy wine, with smells and texture of leather, yet beautifully balanced with moderate tannins which are well integrated. It also has a touch of oak and a very long finish. While you can tell it is a Hunter Valley Shiraz, its style is similar to a big Barossa Valley Shiraz.

After having this wine a few days ago, I wondered why I was giving such a great bottle away! But I wanted to make the give-away special and not just any good bottle you could pick up in a bottle shop or buy at auction. This is a wonderful wine, suitable for drinking today, but it will continue to improve and last into the early 2020s. If you win one of the two bottles, your most difficult choice will be to drink it right away or set it down for a while!

Remember to ‘Like’ SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook, or to ‘SUBSCRIBE TO BLOG VIA EMAIL’ for this blog to have a chance to win. We will ship a bottle for each winner anywhere in the world and that includes our cost of shipping! So easy and such a great bottle of wine which is available for you to win. If you need further explanation or want to review the rules for entering (such as being of legal age to drink wine!), you can review my previous post on the matter. Enter now and win!

Rules for winning $100 bottle of wine give-away!

Posted on September 7, 2013 by Steve Shipley

First off, there will be two individual prizes of a $100 bottle of wine. That’s right, two separate bottles for give-away and you will have the right to win either one – just by following the SAZ in the Cellar website and blog or by following the Facebook SAZ in the Cellar Fan page. Not one, but two bottles of wine will be given away! In my next blog post, I will be describing this great and impossible to source wine. But for now, I wanted to tell you how to enter and the rules for being eligible to win. They are very simple to follow:

SAZ in the Cellar website:

To win the bottle of wine give-away for following the SAZ in the Cellar website, all you need to do is enter your email address in the field to the right of the website page you are currently looking at.

Your email address, of course, will be kept confidential and not shared with anyone outside of the SAZ in the Cellar administrators. By doing this, you will be entered into the draw for one of the $100 bottles of wine. (If you are already following, there is no need to follow again – you are already eligible and entered!) The obligation of doing this is that you will receive an email alerting you to my wine blog posts as they occur, usually about twice weekly. And hopefully, you will be glad to receive them if you have an interest in wine.

For the $100 bottle of wine to be given away, we need to reach 100 followers. Once we do that, I will officially open the draw and keep it open for 30 days. You will be alerted of when that time starts and finishes. Anyone who has already followed, follows to help us reach 100 Followers, or follows during the 30 days following reaching our goal of 100 Followers is entered and eligible to win! Sound easy? It is! Make sure to follow now if you have not already. And share this around as the sooner we achieve 100 Followers, the sooner we will be able to give the bottle of wine away!

SAZ in the Cellar Facebook Fan page:

To be eligible for winning the second give-away, all you need to do is to ‘Like’ the SAZ in the Cellar Facebook Fan page. By doing so, you will be automatically entered and eligible to win. Similarly to following the SAZ in the Cellar website, but once we get to 200 SAZ in the Cellar Facebook Fan page likes, we will then officially open the draw for a period of 30 days. Anyone who has already ‘Liked’ the SAZ in the Cellar Facebook Fan page, or does so on the way to achieving 200 ‘Likes,’ or ‘Likes’ SAZ in the Cellar Facebook Fan page during the 30 days following that is eligible to win. Again, “easy!” And all it obligates you to is the occasional posting of SAZ in the Cellar status updates to your wall. (If if you really don’t want to see them, you can hide them! But why would you want to do that if you are interested in the wine anyway?)

There are just a few other rules you need to follow:

You must be of legal drinking age in the country where you reside to be eligible and win. If there is any doubt, I may require you to provide proof that you are of legal drinking age.
You may reside anywhere in the world and I will mail the wine to you. However, I will not mail wine to a country that forbids the import of alcohol. But, if you win and are otherwise eligible, and you provide me an alternate address for shipping that does allow the import of alcohol, the wine will be shipped there.
Each drawing will be done by assigning a number to each entry and then using a random number generator to select each winner.
You may (and are encouraged) to follow SAZ in the Cellar both through the website and Facebook and may enter both drawings for a chance to win. However, if you are extremely lucky and are the selected winner in both draws, you will only be allowed one bottle of wine. The remaining emails in SAZ in the Cellar website will be randomly drawn again to determine the second winner.
If for some reason, you do are a follower of SAZ in the Cellar website and Facebook Fan page, and have won, but do not wish to receive the bottle of wine, you may decline and we will then draw again to select an alternate winner.
Once the winner is selected in each drawing, we will make every effort to notify you via email or Facebook and you have 72 hours to accept the prize. If you do not respond within 72 hours, you will forfeit the bottle of wine and another drawing will be held to select an alternate winner.
Once accepted, you will need to provide a mailing address for us to mail the bottle of wine to.

Why am I doing this and being so generous giving away two $100 bottles of wine? It is simply because I love drinking wine, writing and talking about wine, and I want you to also enjoy similar experiences. I also want to help build a brand and a following to make people be aware of the my upcoming book publication Wine Sense. Hopefully, if you like wine and have enjoyed my blog writing over the last two years, you will be interested in buying the book once it is published.

And by following, you will also be aware of other giveaways in the near future. I hope you enjoy SAZ in the Cellar and follow us at our website and blog and also on Facebook! And share this around so we can quickly get the drawings open and officially underway. I wish you the best of luck and hope YOU are the winner.

Win a $100 bottle of wine give-away!

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Steve Shipley

I have been growing a social media presence, but one without significant influence or success to date. I am the first to admit I am a neophyte and I do not work as hard to increase my presence as I can. I also get a bit cranky when I realize my writing and copy-writing efforts are suppose to focus on ‘gaming’ Google by targeting my content and copy-writing for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I love writing for an audience, not Google! But people tell me that is naive, so I continue to learn and continue to work at it. I now have a social media strategy, or at least a ‘to-do’ list of things to try.

I have seen a lot of other writer’s conduct virtual blog tours and provide a give-away to help drive up traffic (and ultimately to sell more books). I am providing a guest blog tour for a writer friend in a few weeks. But by just providing a beauty package give-away, my wife, Deanna’s World, drove significant new traffic to her YouTube channel. During that time, her subscription based doubled, increasing significantly, and she had a lot of people sign up for the give-away. And fortunately, her AdSense revenue also doubled because a lot more people were viewing her videos and clicking through to related ads.

I must say that I have been impressed and have learned a lesson in how to effectively attract social media. That is why I have decided to copy her idea! I will now be doing a give-away for following my wine Facebook page (SAZ in the Cellar), and for subscribing and following my wine blog and website (also called SAZ in the Cellar). Since my upcoming book Wine Sense is still several months from being published, I will be offering a special bottle of a 2005 Reserve Hunter Valley Shiraz which is no longer available to give-away to the general public. The wine is very approachable and can be drunk immediately, or it will last into the early-mid 2020s (if you have the discipline to keep it that long!).

It is a great wine, and unique in that it is not available from any other source (unless you find someone who has a bottle or two from a while back still in their cellar). I was fortunate to buy the last several dozen of this wine a few years back. The wine is worth $100 per bottle and has been cherished when received by select business colleagues and visiting Chinese diplomats among others.

I will be giving two bottles away, wherever you may be located anywhere in the world! One will be awarded if you are the lucky draw from those of who ‘Like’ my Facebook page, SAZ in the Cellar. The other will be awarded similarly if you are the lucky draw from the group who Subscribes to follow my blog and website, SAZ in the Cellar. Feel free to join both and be in for two chances to win! I will be introducing the wine and drawing up the simple rules and conditions over the next few days, but by Liking Facebook or Subscribing to my blog now, you will be notified when the rules come out and how long we have to go before announcing the winners!

And be sure to help me out as I don’t like losing to my wife, Deanna’s World, and right now I am getting crushed!

Is a blend better than a straight varietal?

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Steve Shipley

Yes, in general and in my opinion! Let’s find out why I believe that.

I dislike the idea of fusion concepts, especially when it comes to food. Call me a traditionalist, but I find food that has stood the test of centuries, yet alone millenniums, to be among the very best food one can eat. I love Italian food and I love Indian food, but I do not favor blending the two into a single meal. Curry pastas just don’t work for me. I love Japanese and I love Tex-Mex, but I could not bring myself to even try this fusion concept in one of the hotel restaurants in Sacramento, CA when visiting a while back. The raw tuna quesadillas just did not work for me. Globalization has done a lot to change the world, but when it comes to fusion food, it has only made it worse!

But when it comes to wine blends, I am really starting to favor blends over 100% varietals. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE my 100% varietals when it comes to my favorite grapes such as Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Riesling. But year-in, year-out, it is impossible to get consistent sugar and alcohol levels, with each vintage being affected by that year’s heat index and rainfall causing some vintages to be different in taste than others vintages. That is when a good winemaker can use some of the characteristics of other grapes to provide a better overall taste, by adding a touch of sweetness, or subduing too much sweetness by adding a grape with more acidity or sourness. Good winemakers know how to blend a little bit of another grape or several grapes together to make good to great wines. Even Penfolds Grange over the years has had various amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon blended in to achieve its maximum potential for a particular vintage. Based on what country the wine is from and the local laws, you may still label a bottle of wine by its main varietal as long as the amount of the other grape added is still small, usually less than 15%.

But other wines, especially old world wines have been crafted to be great wines by using various blending combinations. Wines from Châteauneuf-du-Pape are predominantly Grenache, but also are allowed to blend in wine from twelve other varietals. Bordeaux blends are primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, but contain a variety of other grapes such as Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and possibly small amounts of Petit Verdot or Malbec. A classic high-quality Bordeaux blend is 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, and 15% Cabernet Franc. Australia is well-known and respected for its Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon blends such as you would find in a Penfolds Bin 389 or a Lindemans Limestone Ridge. And more and more, I am loving a wine blend called GSM of Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre. And for white wine, I find the blend of Gewürztraminer and Riesling to be a very nice drink.

More and more, I am enjoying my blends and the craftmanship of the winemaker to get the blends to get the most of of the grapes. The nuances that can develop and the integration of various characteristics provide for a most enjoyable drinking experience. Maybe I am just become more old-world myself, but I find blends age better, are more complex and more balanced, and generally are a bit softer with a smoother mouth feel.

If you have not tried many blends, then I think it is about time you do! And I would appreciate your views and feedback on if you are a single-grape purist or prefer the multidimensional characteristics of a blend.

Review of 2002 Finca El Puig from Spain

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Steve Shipley

I have had this bottle of Finca El Puig lying around for a while now. I am not sure who I got it from, when or why. I was not sure of the quality of this wine, even though my first impressions is that it is quite nice. For being a decade old, the fruit is extremely lively, tasting of blackberry, boysenberry, other berries and plum. It is well structured with heavy tannins which cause a pucker with the first mouthful. The tannins are truly integrated, but strong. What really surprised me was how long it took to decant. I have never spent more time decanting any wine in my life and I have decanted several thousand bottles! Yet, there is no obvious ‘excess’ sediment. There was some sediment towards the end of the bottle while decanting, but this wine was slow to decant from the very beginning. I am guessing this wine was never filtered. It is thick and heavy – the alcohol content is 14.5%.

This 2002 Finca El Puig is very drinkable now, but I am wondering if I opened it too early. It certainly has a lot of life yet. It is a blend of Grenache, Carignan and Cabernet Sauvignon and the vines are from the Priorat region of Spain. I was a bit worried that it may not line up well with the food we are having tonight which is leftover ravioli. When we made the ravioli fresh over the weekend, we had a Chianti that suited ravioli perfectly. I was a bit worried that the Grenache would be a bit gritty and overpowering for the food. I think it will work and I will be certain of that within the hour. But this is a big, big wine and would have gone really well with a Shepherds Pie, or a dense cut of beef.

I have never heard of the Carignan grape before. In researching it (Wikipedia!), it appears to be a popular grape used in wines from the Rioja region and grown across the Mediterranean. It is valued for its high yields (this has commercial benefits, but not sure it speaks well for quality).

Overall, it is a beautiful wine; heavy, but big and fruity. I love the mouth feel sensation of a wine with heavy tannins, but this may be too much for some people. I have not been able to find many tasting notes for this wine. I did for the 2000 and the 2001 and for later vintages, but not the 2002. Yet, the 2002 vintage seems to really stand out in terms of structure and longevity. Very little seems to be known about this wine, at least this particular vintage. Other vintages have sold for between $30 – $40, but the 2002 drinks better than that. I am really enjoying this wine, even if I will need to sandblast my mouth out later this evening from the heavy tannins! Just wish I knew who gave it to me so I can thank them! Drinking this wine appears to be a single event not to be repeated.

Mixing wine and antibiotics – ok or not?

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Steve Shipley

Recently having minor surgery, the doctor gave me a 6-day course of antibiotics as a preventive measure against infection. We have all been told not to mix antibiotics and alcohol, but is there truth to this or not? Common guidance to avoid alcohol when taking antibiotics started in the 1950s when antibiotics were being used to treat sexually transmitted diseases (STD). The guidance was used as an attempt to curb continued sexual activity which was prone to happen more when under the influence of alcohol. Medical professionals wanted the STDs cured before engaging in more sexual activity and further spreading disease.

I (as I expect many of us) was told to restrain from alcohol while taking antibiotics because the alcohol would invalidate the effect of the antibiotics, but this is just not true. Most antibiotics will work fine while consuming moderate amounts of alcohol. “There are only three antibiotics that realistically carry a risk of the nasty ‘fainting and vomiting’ reaction (the so-called ‘disulfiram reaction’) when combined with alcohol. They go by the catchy names of metronidazole, tinidizole and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. But they are marketed under many different brand names – the most familiar being Flagyl, Fasigyn and Bactrim respectively” (sourced from ABC Health and Wellbeing Online Forum, 3 December, 2009). There are numerous other sources that all agree (just Google ‘wine and antibiotics’ or ‘alcohol and antibiotics’ for numerous validations). As little as half a beer or a glass of wine may cause the disulfiram reaction when combine with the ‘bad three.’ But these antibiotics are used to target limited types of infections and only represent a very small portion of prescribed antibiotics.

I checked my prescribed antibiotic and verified it was not among the ‘bad three.’ Therefore, and with the doctors blessing, I will be sharing a bottle of wine this evening with friends over dinner. Even more importantly, a business colleague brought over a bottle of 1986 Chateau Lafite, which if given the opportunity, I would not pass on even if it did induce ‘fainting and vomiting!’

Make sure to validate that your antibiotics are not among the ‘bad three’ if you want to consider drinking while taking them. For most of us, it should not be a problem, but it is always important to verify it won’t be. Safe and happy drinking!

How cooking improves your wine tasting abilities

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Steve Shipley

Through tasting more and learning more about tasting wine, I have continued to improve my wine tasting abilities and experiences. Yet, I was always surprised how many of my chef friends seemed to have a better palate than mine. I assumed it was because they were super tasters (people with significantly more taste buds and lower sensitivity to certain tastes) than me. I attributed their skills to their in-born capabilities. My wife was taking cooking lessons several years ago and I was highly supportive because I was benefiting from eating better at home. We ate better, more healthily and far less expensively now at home than when eating out (except for a few known restaurants that are among our favorites).

I decided to follow my wife’s lead and took about 10 cooking lessons myself, including a 6-part beginners course for ‘blokes,’ a knife skills lesson, a pasta making lesson, and a Christmas dinner banquet lesson (including ham and turkey). But it was really practicing making meals from beginning to end at home that opened my nose and palate to being able to smell and taste many more flavors and with greater sensitivity. What became apparent to me was importance of sauces, spices, and all the ingredients necessary to alter or enhance the flavors of the primary ingredients be they meat, fish or vegetables. Noticing what a teaspoon of paprika (or smoked paprika), saffron, chili flakes (or freshly cut chilies) or nutmeg could do to enhance flavors became noticeable. Understanding why chopped basil worked better than mint or parsley (or Spanish onions better than spring onions) in certain circumstances also became apparent.

By learning to understand and appreciate various flavors, I was able to more immediately determine when to drink a softer, more versatile wine such as a Verdelho over a Pinot Gris (or vice versus) with the meal, or a sharper, edgier wine such as a Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc worked better. What I really noticed though was that instead of being able to match up broad categories of wines with food, I was now able to much more easily ‘micro-match’ a wine style with a particular meal. I was able to determine which sub-category (young or aged Semillon, for example) and sub-style (Hunter Valley versus Barossa Valley Shiraz) and determine which wine more uniquely was a better match with food, even to the level of individual wine makers (a young Andrew Thomas Semillon versus a Tyrrell’s Johnno Semillon) and vintages.

Most people believe they are limited in their ability to taste and appreciate good wine (and often as a result, buy wine based on price, thinking a higher price is better quality), but this is simply not true. There are rare exceptions of people who were born or through a severe illness, have lost the ability to smell. However, for the most part and within usable tolerances, almost every one of us is able to with a high degree of accuracy be able to smell and taste wine. Through practice and learning, any one of us can influence our abilities to taste and enjoy wine more so than through our natural abilities. And by learning some basics of cooking and what ingredients are used to make meals, you can learn much more quickly.

“Learning to cook has improved my ability to taste wine more than any other activity over the last several years!”

My book Wine Sense helps you understand how to train and use all of your senses to improve your wine tasting experiences. But on its own, learning to cook (even a little as in my case) has greatly improved my ability to smell and taste. I am able to much more quickly identify flavors and nuances and determine why I like one wine over another with a particular meal, whereas before I would have thought they tasted pretty much the same. Do not limit your ability to enjoy wine far more than you currently do, and make learning to cook an important part of that training.