Free Interactive Wine Tasting Course
Would you like to spend two weeks refining your wine tasting skills under the tutelage of a winery owner—for free? Beginning Monday, March 7th, the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters (www.eGullet.org), fondly referred to by its 13,000 members as eGullet, will be featuring a free course on wine evaluation for its internet readership.
(PRWEB) March 7, 2005 -- Would you like to spend two weeks refining your wine
tasting skills under the tutelage of a winery owner—for free?
Beginning
Monday, March 7th, the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters (www.eGullet.org),
fondly referred to by its 13,000 members as eGullet, will be featuring a free
course on wine evaluation for its internet readership.
Mary Baker, a wine
forum host on eGullet and managing partner of Dover Canyon Winery in Paso
Robles, will be instructing the class and guiding students through the process
of learning to evaluate wines. Baker, who has taught courses on wine evaluation
and food and wine pairing, will lead students through a series of short
activities and exercises. The course will be online for two weeks, during which
time students can ask questions and receive guidance directly from
Baker.
"The class will begin with ten basic steps to evaluating wine, "
says Baker, "and then we will study how to evaluate specific red and white wine
varietals. And we'll conclude by learning to spot winemaking techniques and how
they affect wine." Information on constructing an aroma component kit is
included, and a wine evaluation guide will also be provided for students to
download and print.
This free culinary website hosts two ‘Culinary
Institute’ sessions per year. Previous instructors have included James Villas,
author of Between Bites - Memoirs of a Hungry Hedonist, and Steven Shaw,
recently named one of the "35 most fearsome talents in food and wine," by Food
& Wine magazine.
The eGullet Society’s Culinary Institute has
featured dozens of courses on topics like kitchen science, cooking with
disabilities, braising techniques, and pasta. Although each course is given top
billing for two weeks, all courses are still open to internet readers, and
instructors are on hand to answer questions. In addition to wine tasting, the
current semester will feature classes on Indian vegetable dishes, roasting,
pasta, condiments, cooking on a budget, and presentation.
How do you
register? Just log in, check the list of recommended wines, buy a few bottles,
and get comfy with your computer, suggests Baker. "It would be a fun course to
share with friends," she points out. "If you invite five friends over for an
evening of internet wine evaluation and everyone brings a bottle of wine, you’ll
get to evaluate six wines for the price of one."
Baker co-hosts the
eGullet wine forum with Brad Ballinger of St. Paul, Minnesota. In addition to
the Culinary Institute wine course, Baker and Ballinger post educational Wine
101 threads in the wine forum. "The threads stay open continuously, and we have
a Wine 101 index, so new members can easily find and read the topics, or ask
questions," says Baker.
"The eGullet forums and site stay focused on
culinary content, so you won’t find superfluous chatter about babysitters and
car repairs when you’re looking for solid material," says Baker. "And we try to
provide a range of topics in the wine forum for novices to sophisticates, so
that everyone can interact and learn."
Baker and Ballinger also sponsor a
wine-of-the-week tasting tag, featuring readily accessible and affordable wines.
"We have lots of sophisticated wine reviews in the forum," says Baker, "but many
of those wines are not widely available or they’re sold out. This idea came out
of a lively debate on east coast vs. west coast preferences. We thought, ‘hey,
let’s all find the same wine and sit down and drink it together at our virtual
table.’ It’s more about studying personal preferences in wine than learning to
write reviews. We’re learning a lot about each other."
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb215361.htm