Courses

Beginner13 minNot started

What Wine Does in Your Mouth

Put a precise word on what you feel in your mouth: recognise acidity that makes you salivate, tannin that dries, body that gives weight, and alcohol that warms — using benchmark grape varieties.

Beginner13 minNot started

Putting Words to a Smell

Move from "it smells nice" to "that is black fruit". By the end you will have a handful of families to file what you smell in, and you will know where an aroma comes from — the grape, the cellar or time. No training is asked of you: this course assumes you already know these smells.

Beginner11 minNot started

Looking at a Wine: What Colour Tells You

Know what to look at in a glass, and how to read what you see. By the end you will know where a wine's colour comes from, how it shifts over time in a red and in a white, what it says about a rosé — and, above all, what it does not say.

Beginner7 minNot started

Why Wines Differ

Understand why wines taste different by learning to separate what comes from the grape, the climate, the site and the cellar. By the end you will know which question to ask when tasting to explain how a wine got its flavour.

Beginner13 minNot started

How a Wine Is Made: Red, White, Rosé

Follow the grape all the way to the wine: what decides its colour (when the grapes are pressed, what the skins give), then the two fermentations and the ageing. By the end you will be able to put the cellar sequence of a red, a white and a rosé in the right order.

Beginner18 minNot started

A Tour of French Wine Regions

Find your way around France's great wine regions without learning them as a list: group them by climate and along the big axes, rivers and latitude, then remember each one's flagship grape. By the end you will be able to place an appellation in its region and guess what is in the glass.

Beginner10 minNot started

Reading a French Wine Label

Read a French wine label: what the appellation tells you, what French and EU law require on every bottle, and which statements are regulated or free.

Beginner14 minNot started

Serving Wine: Temperature, Decanting, Glasses, Opening

Learn to serve a wine without letting it down. By the end you will know what temperature suits a white, a red, a sparkling wine or a sweet wine, when to decant, which glass to pick and how far to fill it, how to open a still or sparkling bottle safely, and how to keep an opened bottle.

Beginner14 minNot started

Reading a Wine List

Stop dreading the wine list. By the end you will be able to find your way around its layout, decode a line (appellation, cru designation, vintage), spot a likely match for your dish, tell the sommelier what they need to know, and know what you are checking when they pour you a taste.

Unit review

Opens once you have started a course in this unit.

Enthusiast7 minNot started

Recognising the Great White Grapes

Learn to identify the world's six essential white grape varieties blind (Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Viognier, Gewurztraminer) by cross-referencing their landmark aromas with their acidity.

Enthusiast11 minNot started

Recognising the Great Red Grapes

Learn to recognise six great red grape varieties (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Grenache Noir, Gamay) by sorting first on tannin and acidity, then looking for their landmark aroma and the regions they are known for.

Enthusiast14 minNot started

Bordeaux: Two Banks, Three Classifications

Read a map of Bordeaux by following the Garonne, the Dordogne and the Gironde, place an appellation on its bank and work out which grape probably leads its reds, tell regional, sub-regional and communal appellations apart, and stop confusing the fixed 1855 classification with the Saint-Émilion and Graves lists.

Enthusiast16 minNot started

Sparkling Wine: From the Traditional Method to Champagne

Understand where the bubbles come from and tell apart three ways of getting them: the traditional method, the tank method and the ancestral method. By the end you will be able to put the stages of a Champagne in order, stop mixing up its two minimum periods, and read a sparkling wine's sweetness off its label, from brut nature to doux.

Enthusiast14 minNot started

Fault or Style?

Recognise the four main wine faults, cork taint, reduction, unwanted oxidation and volatile acidity, and tell them apart from a deliberate style. By the end you will be able to judge a smell of walnut, bruised apple or sulphur by the wine it turns up in, and know what to do when in doubt: give it air, or compare it with a second bottle.

Enthusiast14 minNot started

The Principles of Food and Wine Pairing

Understand what a dish does to a wine, and what a wine does to a dish: intensity, acidity, tannin, sugar and chilli. By the end you will be able to explain why a pairing works or jars, and choose a style of wine by reasoning rather than by recipe.

Enthusiast14 minNot started

Blind Tasting: The Method

See blind tasting for what it is: a method, not a gift. Look, smell, then taste, in that order; describe before you interpret; and rule out the guesses the glass contradicts. By the end you will know what each step tells you and what it does not, how to keep several hypotheses open, and how to settle on the most likely one.

Unit review

Opens once you have started a course in this unit.

Advanced8 minNot started

Reading an Appellation Hierarchy: Burgundy

Decode Burgundy's four-tier appellation pyramid, see through the compound village-name trap, and place the 33 grands crus between the Côte de Nuits, the Côte de Beaune and Chablis.

Advanced15 minNot started

Sweet Wines: Sun, Fungus or Spirit

Understand how a wine holds on to its sugar, and recognise the three main ways of getting there: raisining, noble rot and mutage, plus the principle behind ice wine. By the end you will be able to match a process to its route, read what a sweet-wine classification or label term really tells you, and judge the balance of a sweet wine, where acidity carries the sugar.

Advanced15 minNot started

Wine and Time

Understand what the years do to a wine, and what they don't. By the end you will know where tertiary aromas come from, how to read a colour as it evolves, why neither age nor time in barrel proves quality, and what helps a wine to age, without mistaking any of it for a guarantee.

Unit review

Opens once you have started a course in this unit.

Professional9 minNot started

When Names Deceive: Homonyms and Treacherous Designations

Recognise one grape under its different names, spot homonyms that point to different grapes, and understand why some place names are reserved.

Professional16 minNot started

Grape Families: Parents and Offspring

Read a grape's family tree: its parents, its full and half siblings, and what is still unknown. By the end you will be able to work out how two grapes are related from their parents, spot a pedigree with one half missing, and stop genetics from being made to say more than it does.

Unit review

Opens once you have started a course in this unit.