SV is hosting a Guest Post where John (Lightfoot) presents us the ‘Wine Mastery’ Video Project he started with his friend John (Murphy) to educate wine lovers around the world.
Perfectly in line with the “Passion, Giving and Sharing” that is the purpose of Social Vignerons, their channel aims at offering fun and informative videos. My pleasure and honour to be sharing here their passion and story:
““Learning about wine and having fun doing it!” is our website and YouTube video channel strap line.
The videos are targeted at those individuals who know a little about wine, but the effort of learning more seems too great or too expensive.
Have you ever had the thought, like me, that if only there was a way for someone beginning their journey of discovering wine that was simpler and more systematic, so many more people would be led into the delights of wine?
Many people start to experiment with wine when they are young and budgets are tight, only to be disappointed with the ratio of wines they try that they enjoyed to those they tried and disliked.
Paying hard earned cash for something you do not enjoy soon stops you experimenting, or alternatively you find one particular wine you enjoy and stop there, for fear of wasting what little disposable cash you may have on something you might be disappointed with.
Add to this the perception by many that the world of wine is full of wine snobbery and soon the barriers for entry into the wonderful world of wine become sufficiently strong to stop some of us from drinking wine or experimenting further.
I had the great fortune to have a job that took me to areas of Europe where the passion for their local wine was justifiably immense. The enthusiasm and experience of tasting wine with these very passionate and wonderful people drove me on to learn more about wine.
It has always struck me however that there never seemed to be a easy way, in the form of a method, or tutorial, to help you not only find a wine you like, but not also to lead you to the many wines you could like. I have often pondered on how much time and money I could have saved if only there had been someone or something to guide me more effectively.
I was also aware that I was still making mistakes in my choices and needed someone better qualified to guide me. It also occurred to me that if I needed this help, so would other people, so why not teach others while teaching myself and thus the concept of Wine Mastery was born.
I first had to find a master ( John ) to teach this dummy ( me ) the science, or art, depending on your view point, of wine tasting. John, who manages a fantastic specialist cheese and wine shop in a small Yorkshire town called Brighouse, situated at the foot of the Pennines ( in England we call them a mountain range in other parts of Europe / the world they would be referred to as hills! ), was immediately drawn to the idea. As John explained for the local newspaper, he gets no better pleasure than directing clients to a wine they love and the Wine Mastery platform gives him the opportunity to help a far greater number of people than he ever could from his bricks and mortar store.
Our game plan therefore was to start with the basics, white or red, (the trunk of the tree) then branch out from the more obvious choices to those that are a little more honed to the exact taste of the viewer. This means, of course that some viewers will only see a small proportion of the videos we produce. If for example their first discovery is that they do not like red wine then they will obviously not need to watch any of the red wine videos. If they like red wines, but discover they do not like full robust reds they can ignore the episodes that we expand on these full robust reds.
We recognise that to keep people’s attention the videos not only have to be informative, but also entertaining. There is of course no point trying to appeal to everybody as in the process we would probably end up appealing to no one. So we are quite reconciled to the fact that the series will not be to everyone’s tastes. Indeed some of the readers of this blog may find the content a little too rudimentary to interest them, but hopefully you will want to engage with us to help us provide a more relevant platform for those people just beginning their journey into the world of wine.
The video channel, which is still very much in its infancy, takes the form of a episode, which we aim to release three times a month and is normally split into three parts to allow the audience to more easily consume the content in manageable bites. In each episode we identify the wine we are tasting which allows the viewer to purchase either the particular wine we are using to taste along with us or alternatively speak to their local wine merchant retailer in order to get a, as near as possible alternative. As the series develops we will begin to build a signposted pathway for the viewer to follow which will, hopefully lead them to the wines that they can enjoy the most so they will be “Learning about wine and having fun doing it!””
Watch the first and introductory episode of Wine Mastery below:
For more info and episodes, visit winemastery.co.uk or check them out on Youtube and Twitter.
Please let me know your thoughts