From a Wall Street Journal online article by Lettie Teague:

Many self-styled “wine educators” online claim to be certified sommeliers, but that doesn’t mean they have worked in a restaurant. Others are winemakers, adjunct professors or simply oenophiles with a pedagogical bent. Whether via video or podcast, the education they offer tends to fall into two categories: basic (grape names, how to hold a glass) or wonky (the role of tannins, grapevine blights).

LEARNING about wine online seems easy enough—not to mention affordable. Yet after exploring all manner of internet wine education, I’m not ready to declare it the ideal forum—at least not yet.

The educational content actual wine professionals produce mostly falls into the latter camp, and podcasts appear to be the preferred format. The decidedly wonky “Guild of Sommeliers Podcast”(guildpodcast.com) features sommeliers such as Geoff Kruth and Kelli White interviewing top talent. In an episode last fall, Mr. Kruth and Virginia Wilcox, winemaker at Vasse Felix in Western Australia, discussed tannins in a surprisingly lively chat. “I think you can make or break a wine by getting the tannins wrong,” Ms. Wilcox said. She enumerated various categories of tannin, including “astringent,” “squeaky,” “toothy,” “tongue” and “green”—the ones that “push to the back of your throat.” I learned a lot and plan to invoke the term “squeaky tannins” very soon.

To read more click on the following link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-online-wine-courses-worth-your-time-11568321079