About the course:

More than any other beverage in civilization, wine moves us intellectually, sensorially, and emotionally—it compels us to want to know more about it. In this course, through interactive tastings and discussion, we’ll examine the ways in which wine is powerfully connected to culture, history, language, and nature. We’ll consider the question of what makes great wine great. We will see and taste how a wine expresses the culture and time in which it was made. When we turn to the senses, we will delve into wine’s capacity to move us emotionally. We will examine the concept of terroir and understand why some places (France) see it as the foundation of viticulture while others (Australia) do not. By comparing the works of wine writers, we’ll explore whether or not wine can be judged objectively, consider our own subjective assessments, and grasp why language so often fails us when we try to describe wine. By the end of this course, we will have tasted wines from around the word and come to see wine in a new, holistic way. We’ll understand why a binary “I like it/I don’t like it” approach misses the richness wine has to offer. And by expanding our knowledge of wine through the lenses of many different disciplines, we’ll increase the pleasure we get from every wine we drink.

Instructor:

Karen MacNeil, Wine Consultant and Writer; Creator and Chairman Emeritus, Rudd Center for Professional Wine Studies, Culinary Institute of America

Karen MacNeil is the author of The Wine Bible and editor of the newsletter WineSpeed. Her eponymous company provides live virtual tastings and other events for audiences across the globe. She was host of the Emmy-winning PBS series Wine, Food & Friends. The former wine correspondent for Today on NBC, MacNeil has received a James Beard award for Outstanding Wine & Spirits Professional of the Year, a Louis Roederer Consumer Title Writer of the Year award, and an International Wine & Spirits Communicator of the Year award.