Do you 'nose' your wine?

Friday, 6 March, 2015
Judy Brower
At wine.co.za we feel passionately about empowering and informing people. The vast majority of people in South Africa are not necessarily exposed to a wine culture. Being in the wine industry ourselves we take it for granted that everyone knows that wine is made from grape juice and that harvest takes place in the summer.

With this in mind, we have spent a considerable amount of time in the last year preparing a set of videos called NOSE YOUR WINE, aimed at giving the up-and-coming wine service professional an entry into the wine world, thus helping them to be more confident in what they do, and of course, ultimately sell more wine!
See our brand new Learning environment on wine.co.za - giving you easy access on your phone, laptop or tablet!

For this first 12-part video series, we start at the very beginning. I think many people are too intimidated to ask - What is wine? How is wine made? We hope to answer these basic questions about wine and service.

The videos are available freely to anyone interested in learning more.  They are short, to the point, simple and easy and they can be watched over and over again, without the viewer feeling that they are asking stupid questions.  For anyone in the hospitality industry - from Food & Beverage management to wine waitering staff - what could be simpler than spending 2 or 3 minutes before service watching a video on your phone - thus honing your skills and knowledge.

The structure of this first series of NOSE YOUR WINE videos is as follows:

BASICS OF WINE

  1. What is Wine?
  2. Varieties & Cultivars
  3. How is wine made?
  4. Types of Wine
  5. How to taste wine
  6. Matching wine with food (coming soon)

SERVICE TIPS

  1. Tools of the Trade
  2. Know your Wine list
  3. Serving a bottle of Still Wine
  4. Serving a bottle of Bubbly
  5. Serving wine at the table
  6. How to store wine 

Many thanks to:

  • Xolani Mancotywa, with whom I have been working over the last year to create the content and videos. He is a passionate Sommelier, having won the Best Young Sommelier in 2013 and recently registered to do his Cape Wine Master at the Cape Wine Academy. He is a busy lad, but we managed to eke in a few hours here and there to get this project off the ground. Xolani is currently the Resort Sommelier in the Maldives at the Sun Siyam Resort on Iru Fushi Island (I mean who would not want this job?).
  • Our presenters & extras:
    • Shante Hutton - our delightful and inimitable editor Shante Hutton for her easy style;
    • Jeremy Karsen - wine marketer, winemaker and educator - for his animated and passionate performance,
    • Leila Kidson - my lovely willing daughter!
  • Simonsig for hosting us twice at such short notice and being so very hospitable.
  • Lourensford for assisting with the harvesting and cellar photos.
  • Our great team at wine.co.za
     

Our over-arching drive at wine.co.za has always been to 'cause more wine to be sold' and we hope that these videos will help more than just a little bit in this quest...

Do let us know what you think and what else you would like to see in the next series.

Tweet us or follow us on @winecoza, using #noseyourwine or email learn@wine.co.za