BBC Maestro, the online courses division of the BBC, is offering visitors to JancisRobinson.com a substantial discount on my extensive, new online wine course until 31 March.
Lifetime access to the course, launched last month, is usually £80 (about $107 or €95) but you are offered a discount of 30%. So if you click here you will be taken straight to an offer of the course at £56 (about $75 or €67). Alternatively, you can add the discount code JANCIS30EDB when ordering it from the BBC Maestro site.
The course is composed of 25 separate ‘lessons’ (see below) and runs to nearly six hours so that you can watch at your own pace and as many times as you like – stopping and starting or repeating bits you didn’t understand. (‘Did she really say there was no direct relation between price and quality?’ ‘Can biodynamic wine producers really order cow horns via the internet?’ etc etc.)
I can’t give any objective judgment of my own contribution but I can say that the four interviewees – Jeremy Seysses of Domaine Dujac, Diana Snowden Seysses of Snowden Vineyards in Napa Valley and Domaine Dujac, Romain Taupenot of Domaine Taupenot-Merme and Stephen Browett of Farr Vintners – performed brilliantly and shared masses of useful information and opinion. Below is me stuffing my phone in my pocket while filming in La Riotte premier cru in Morey-St-Denis last September with some of the film crew in the background. (Had to keep in touch with what was going on for JancisRobinson.com!)
Above is the crew’s picnic lunch, and the cameraman’s van and gear, in the courtyard at Domaine Dujac, pictured by our sound recordist Paul Miller. Wine courtesy of Jeremy Seysses. (Glasses are remarkably empty.)
It’s also worth pointing out that, because this online course may be watched over and over again, the producers were determined that it would look really sumptuous. So we had two, sometimes three, cameras and, for the London shoot, there was even a hair and make-up artist. Great luxury!
Just as useful are the course notes, assembled by my talented fellow Master of Wine, Jane Skilton of New Zealand. She did such a great job, and I fiddled away like mad, so the background notes total more than 40,000 words, certainly as long as some novellas. The BBC Maestro team have done a great job at making these illustrated course notes look really useful and appetising.
Below is a list of the topics covered. They may look very general and basic but I tried to interpolate much more ‘advanced’ titbits throughout.
- How I fell in love with wine
- Wine’s vital statistics
- How to taste
- The perfect glass
- Top 10 wine myths
- How the world of wine has evolved
- Climate change and wine
- Grape varieties
- Decoding wine labels
- How to choose a bottle of wine
- Top 10 ways to choose the right bottle
- Growing grapes – in the vineyard
- How wine is made
- Wine and time and vintages
- Sparkling wines
- Packaging and serving wine
- Food and wine pairing
- Organic and biodynamic wines
- Natural and orange wines
- Sustainability and wine
- The language and price of wine
- Investing in wine and storing it
- Top 10 tips
- Learning more about wine
- Wine drinkers’ questions answered
You can read more about the course in As easy as BBC. I think it would make a great gift, and one that needs no wrapping or sending. In fact I think I may be giving it as a wedding present several times over. (A special gift-card option is offered when ordering.)
My online wine course is currently available throughout the British Isles and in the US, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa, India and Brazil.
See too the full range of BBC Maestro online courses.
