If you’ve ever looked at a restaurant wine list and immediately wondered whether you were supposed to know more than you do, Jon McDaniel would like you to forget about all of that.
Jon is The Chopping Block’s newest wine instructor, and one of the things that struck me most when I recently talked with him is how little he cares about telling people what they should drink. This is someone who was named one of Wine Enthusiast’s 40 Under 40 Tastemakers and Food & Wine Magazine’s Sommelier of the Year in 2018, yet his philosophy about wine is refreshingly simple: What matters is figuring out what you like.
“There is no wrong answer. There’s only your answer,” Jon told me.
That philosophy makes him a natural fit for The Chopping Block, where our goal has always been to give people the knowledge and confidence to make cooking, eating and drinking more enjoyable.
From Capitol Hill to the Wine Shop
Wine wasn’t Jon’s original career plan. In fact, he moved to Washington, D.C. for college with political ambitions, worked in the Senate and, after graduation, took a job with a lobbying firm. But it didn’t take long to realize politics wasn’t for him.
One of his clients also owned wine shops in the Washington area and began inviting Jon to wine events. Jon had already gotten a glimpse into the relationship between food, drink and culture while bartending at embassy parties during college, and the wine world intrigued him.
Then his client took him to lunch and pointed out the obvious: Jon hated his job. He offered him the chance to spend some time working at one of the wine shops while he figured out what came next. Jon quit his job the next day.
That was more than 22 years ago.
Since then, his career has taken him through restaurants, hospitality, wine consulting and education, with opportunities to taste and work with wine around the world. But what has distinguished Jon throughout that career isn’t simply how much he knows about wine. It’s how he communicates that knowledge.
Wine Doesn't Need to Be So Complicated
Jon came up in the wine industry around the time the Somm documentaries were introducing a much wider audience to the extraordinarily intense world of professional sommeliers.
While the films generated excitement about wine, Jon also noticed an unintended consequence: people were becoming intimidated by it.
Suddenly, enjoying wine seemed to require knowing grape varieties, vintages, regions, producers and obscure tasting descriptors. Jon saw guests respond by retreating to the safest thing they could recognize or pronounce.
His approach went in the opposite direction.
“Wine is made out of grapes that are grown by farmers,” he said. “It’s been around for thousands of years.”
Instead of worrying about what you're supposed to taste, Jon encourages people to begin with what they already know. Maybe a rosé you tried was too sweet. Maybe you love blueberries. Maybe you dislike bubbles. All of that is useful information.
He likes to use gooseberry as an example. It’s a classic descriptor for New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but as Jon pointed out, most Americans probably couldn’t identify a gooseberry in the first place. So, why should that be the vocabulary they have to use to describe what they're drinking?
Even after tasting hundreds of wines a week, Jon says he continues to encounter new things. Wine changes with the vintage, environment, land and decisions made by the winemaker. No one is ever going to know everything.
And you don't need to.
His goal is to give people enough knowledge to become, as he puts it, “a little dangerous about wine": a few useful pieces of information, more confidence ordering or buying a bottle and, most importantly, the curiosity to try something new.
Why Start with Chardonnay?
That brings us to Jon’s first class at The Chopping Block: One Grape, Endless Pairings: Discovering Chardonnay on Friday, September 25 at 6pm.
Chardonnay is an especially good grape for challenging some of our assumptions about wine because people tend to have very strong opinions about it.
Jon even admits that there are styles of Chardonnay he doesn’t particularly like.
But saying you don’t like Chardonnay based on one heavily oaked California bottle is a little like deciding you don’t like chicken because you disliked one chicken dish. Jon calls Chardonnay “the chicken breast of the wine world” because the winemaker has tremendous influence over what happens after the grapes arrive at the winery.
That means Chardonnay can take on dramatically different personalities depending on where it’s grown and how it’s made.
In class, we’ll taste five very different expressions, beginning with a sparkling Blanc de Blanc from New Mexico before traveling through Burgundy, Oregon and California. There will also be one secret wine Jon isn't revealing in advance.
You’ll experience Chardonnay with no oak or buttery characteristics as well as richer, oakier expressions, tasting them side by side to understand exactly where those differences come from.
If you currently consider yourself firmly in the “I hate Chardonnay” camp, Jon especially wants you there. He plans to change your mind about at least one of them.
Forget the "Perfect" Wine Pairing
The class isn't only about Chardonnay. Jon also wants to challenge another piece of conventional wine wisdom: the idea that every dish has one perfect wine pairing.
We can get so focused on matching a specific wine to a specific food that drinking wine starts to feel like another test we need to pass.
Jon wants to show you another way.
We’ll pair those five Chardonnays with Roasted Broccolini with Lemon-Pistachio Gremolata; Seared Scallops with Lemon Beurre Blanc and Shaved Celery Salad; Potato Gnocchi with Parmesan Cream and Toasted Hazelnuts; and Crème Brûlée.
Rather than simply deciding whether each pairing “works,” you'll explore how different Chardonnays change your perception of the same dish. A wine can act almost like another ingredient, emphasizing one flavor with one sip and something entirely different with the next.
The larger lesson is something you can actually use at home: You don't necessarily need a different bottle for every course. One thoughtfully chosen wine can carry you through an entire meal.
That sounds a lot more enjoyable than stressing over the perfect pairing!
What's Next for Jon at TCB
Jon's future classes will continue that same spirit of experimentation.
As we head toward the holidays, he's already thinking about unexpected pairings and wines people might normally pass over because they don't recognize a grape on the label or assume it won't work with a particular food.
Don't expect a lot of hard-and-fast rules.
Do expect stories from more than two decades in the wine world, practical knowledge you can actually use and plenty of encouragement to trust your own palate.
And you don't need any wine knowledge before taking one of his classes. According to Jon, the only prerequisite is being curious enough to learn. You don't even technically have to like wine.
I did ask Jon what a sommelier who tastes wine all day reaches for when he's finally off the clock. His answer?
“Coffee.”
And when he does want a drink, his tastes run toward the bitter spirits favored, in his words, by “a 90-year-old Italian grandfather.”
Something tells me we're going to have a lot of fun with Jon at The Chopping Block.
Ready to rethink Chardonnay? Join Jon for One Grape, Endless Pairings: Discovering Chardonnay and discover just how much one grape, five bottles and four dishes can teach you about trusting your own palate.
