profile

Wine Blueprint

The Unofficial Spectrum of Wine Learning 🍷📈

Published about 2 years ago • 1 min read

Hey, hey, it's Friday!

I don't know about you, but I love a good mental model.

And I've always struggled with a decent interpretation of what wine learning looks like. But, I think I'm finally on to something.

My first attempt at plotting wine learning was:

Version 1 of my mental model for wine learning.

And while writing the first draft of this book, I’ve revisited and replotted.

Version 2 of my mental model for wine knowledge. I flipped a few stages around because it begins with love, and geeks are an improvement over know-it-alls.

But just this week, I evolved my mental model into another dimension. Welcome to the Y-Axis (thanks to Think Again from Adam Grant)!

Current working version of wine learning model

Given this new model, I feel it's easier to understand the excitement and the dangers that accompany wine learning, especially at the early stages.

You can see the Wine Know-it-alls* are the loudest but among the least knowledgeable. They are the gate keepers and often the ones thwarting the Wine Novices* from learning more. Unfortunately, they drown out the Wine Geeks*, Experts* and World Champions* too.

*Please note these are all made up terms for what I think there are distinctive differences/zones in wine learning.

So what can we do to improve wine learning?

As a wine community, I think we should:

  1. Enable more people to talk about wine
  2. Minimize the know-it-all behavior.
  3. Show the multiple routes to success.

And in a more perfect world, the wine learning spectrum might look like this:

An example of what the future state of wine learning might look like.

As I was writing this email, I was thinking about specifically #3. And this model, doesn't show the multiple routes to success because everyone has an individual path when it comes to wine learning.

I realized that wine learning isn't climbing a specific mountain to claim your World Wine Championship. Rather, wine learning is trekking across a mountain range covering all aspects of the vast world of wine.

So, wine learning might look a little more like this:

A dramatic oversimplification of wine learning.

The path through the wine learning mountains is truly up to you.

There are many ways to ascend, but some routes may be easier than others. And if a particular mountain seems intimidating or uninteresting, you can choose to explore somewhere else.

So, grab your corkscrew and your climbing boots, and prepare for an adventure.

What mountains are you interested in climbing? Which are scary? Which are exciting?

Let me know with a reply to this email.

Wine Blueprint

by Brian McCann

You'll finally understand wine. Learn tips and strategies to become a lifelong wine learner from an award-winning wine industry veteran who has earned multiple certifications. You're viewing my weekly newsletter. Subscribe and share it via the links below.

Read more from Wine Blueprint

Happy Friday! Today, I want to prevent you buying wine that you don't enjoy. Being disappointed with a wine purchase is a pretty common feeling for beginners, but there's good news. Buying bad wine is completely avoidable. Here are 4 tips that will help you enjoy your next wine purchase. They almost guarantee that you'll start buying more wine you love. Cheers! -Brian #1 - Dedicate Yourself To A Particular Wine Region Don't drink the entire wine world, drink a tiny portion of it. The wine...

almost 2 years ago • 2 min read

Hey there, Here is the skinny of this week's edition: Life is short. Drink Champagne. This past weekend, I went out to a fabulous dinner and we over-spent on Champagne. Guess what? It didn't matter, because we had Champagne. It's one of life's greatest pleasures. So today, I'm bubbling over about all things Champagne. Speaking of bubbles, one of my favorite facts from the Wine Bible is that an open bottle of Champagne contains 100 million bubbles. This is according to bubble researcher Gérard...

almost 2 years ago • 3 min read

Find your wine drinking buddy 🥂 Wine—like most things in life—is better with somebody else. In order to grow your wine learning, you need to grow your wine tribe. The key ingredient: someone even more obsessed with wine learning than you. I was fortunate to have so many people who helped me along the way. Today, I call on another mountain metaphor: skiing and how learning something foreign is a perfect parallel for wine learning. ---> And quick note on the new format I wanted to add more...

about 2 years ago • 4 min read
Share this post