Last Friday, I talked about A Fabulous Holiday Gift for Your Favorite Wine Enthusiast ~ Le Nez Du Vin by Jean Lenoir. The Le Nez du Vin wine aroma kits, although great for beginners to get a handle on wine aromas, is more suited to a bit more advanced wine enthusiasts… people who fancy themselves as wine connoisseurs, for instance.
But… what about the beginners?

I’ve just watched Brett Graham’s (Graham Productions) video production called, “Wine Basics.” This video was well worth my time, because it was a great review of how so much has now become second nature for me… a journey that began in earnest 20 years ago. Before the early 90s, I simply tried to enjoy wine, but never “got it” as an enjoyable experience. Moving to California and getting into the wine business escalated my experience. I was wanting the romance when I finally got into the biz, but I didn’t even realize – like Alice in Wonderland – what a wondrous would I was to find behind the little door. As Brett’s Website states, this video is fun, simple, and makes a perfect gift for someone who’s back where I started in the early 1990s… Curiously exploring. It runs for about 50 minutes, it’s engaging the entire time, and, after the video, I know it’s inspired the watchers to leave their computers and go find a bottle of wine for experimentation.
This Telly Award* winning video provides wine novices with images that are inviting, and the captivating commentary moves right along.
It’s broken down by topics, which include the following:
- How wine is made
- Terminology
- Tasting process
- Wine etiquette
- Ordering at a restaurant
- Purchasing from a grocery store (which will also work for a wine shop)
- Attending a tasting event
- How to open a bottle
- Pouring
- Glassware
- Storing wine
- Food pairing tips
The greatest part of this video, knowing that people learn in many ways (shortened methods below from Melanie Spiller), is that it’s really great for visual learners, and this video is the bomb for those people, most especially.
- Verbal people need to put everything into language.
- Visuals make pictures of things in their heads.
- Tactiles need to touch things.
- Kinesthetics need to manipulate things.
- Aurals remember everything they ever heard or read.
From Brett Graham:
As the executive producer of Wine Basics, I saw a need for a true beginner’s guide. My staff and I wanted to create a video that enabled beginners to enjoy wine and help them in real situations. With Wine Basics we provide viewers with a complete, practical, and user-friendly guide. It provides not only key characteristics of popular varieties of red wines and white wines (with helpful pronunciations), but also step-by-step demonstrations for selecting, ordering, and tasting wine. Wine etiquette becomes clear and simplified. Concrete guidelines for selecting wine glasses, storing wine, serving wine, and hosting a wine tasting party enable the viewer to delve into the fascinating and enjoyable world of wine. Learning is enhanced with ‘Quick Tips’ and ‘Terminology’ sections as well as with two ‘Reenactments’ that put all of the information into helpful context.
At the end of each section, I found their Quick Tips to be very focused and will be very helpful for any beginner. And, I’d recommend watching it a few times, because it’s jam packed, for that 50 or so minutes.
It’s very well done, in my humble opinion, and a great $14.95 investment for oneself or as a gift.
*Telly Awards are the premier award honoring the finest film and video productions, groundbreaking web commercials, videos and films, and outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs.
Related articles
- A Fabulous Holiday Gift for Your Favorite Wine Enthusiast ~ Le Nez Du Vin by Jean Lenoir (wine-blog.org)
- Video: How to Pronounce French Wine Terms (menuism.com)
- Video: How to Open & Decant Wine (menuism.com)
- Video: How to Choose Wine from a Wine List (menuism.com)
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