Sommelier Association, this Livermore winery does a five-day advanced certified sommelier course. Lohr Vineyards: This San Jose facility offers Wine 101 and Wine 102 classes on varietals and wine regions. International Culinary Center: In addition to offering master sommelier certification courses, the Campbell campus holds classes for “serious amateurs,” taught by master sommeliers and winemakers. I used to get postcards from students with their arms around vintners in Burgundy.” “A lot of the students who took the class would start buying books, they’d start to travel, they would go to the wine country,” Bullard says. The upshot was energized participants with greater confidence about wine. “My model was not to speak to the lowest common denominator but to raise the bar a little bit,” he says. Bullard, who heads a wine distribution firm, has seen students repeat his sessions on major wine regions multiple times.
Lohr has seen the same trend in his program as Paul Bullard did in the wine classes he taught for UC Berkeley’s extension program: Repeats are rampant, and that’s a good thing. He also teaches an enlightening blending seminar, but he never forgets his goal: “Reaching out to people to create a safe haven, so they don’t feel intimidated by wine.”
Lohr’s sessions, dubbed Wine 101 and Wine 102, dig into specific varietals. “Otherwise, you’re just listening to some guy talk to you for an hour and a half.” “It’s important to get some wine into people’s mouths within the first 15 or 20 minutes of the class,” he says. However, O’Brien has internalized a key lesson of wine education that is echoed by others, including Lawrence Lohr, who runs the wine education program at J. Silver Mountain winemaker Jerold O’Brien laughs when he says, “None of these classes makes money.” He routinely pulls out old French Burgundies and California rarities for his pinot noir sessions. The inexpensive Sunday afternoon sessions are taught by winemakers, who are generous with both information and wine. This collective of 13 boutique wineries offers classes that dive into topics such as varietals, blending or wine-and-food pairing. In Santa Cruz, Surf City Wine University takes a more casual approach. The Google wine club, for example, has more than 1,000 members.
His staff also has begun helping groups of wine lovers launch their own wine clubs. “It’s an investment in something you’re going to enjoy the rest of your life,” he says.įor those who are just dipping a toe in the waters, so to speak, the school also hosts single-night events, such as wine-pairing seminars that include a presentation by a winemaker and a master sommelier, followed by a wine-pairing dinner.
TUESDAY NIGHT DINNER AT VEZER SERIES
Now, the school offers what McCann calls “serious amateur” classes, taught by master sommeliers and guest winemakers as a series of seven sessions. “That led us to start thinking: A lot of people don’t have 10 weeks.” They were there simply because they wanted to understand wine better,” McCann says. “What we were finding is that half the people in that program had no interest in a career in wine. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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