Everyday Guide to Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails

Everyday Guide to Wine ★★
Everyday Guide to Spirits and Cocktails ★★★★★ – both by Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan
These two courses are sold separately from the Teaching Company, but can be purchased as a single set. The two courses differ vastly in their style and character, leading to two divergent ratings, even though taught by the same person.
In the Everyday Guide to Wine Jennifer S-B introduces herself, and spends at least one lecture justifying her qualifications for teaching a wine course. She was superb at taking one through the necessary formalities of a wine tasting, and the basics for determining the quality of wines. She then marches from region to region, introducing and sampling the various wines. One is left with a reasonably good idea why certain wines from various regions tend to be more prized, and thus (often) more expensive. I disliked two things about the course. The first was Jennifer’s continual self-referential comments. I really didn’t care that JSB was classified as a master wine-taster, and could detect scents of olive or asphalt or burnt American Oak in her wine.  Secondly, I found it to be totally gross that she always spit out the wine. If wine appreciation means spitting out wine and not drinking it, then I’ll stick with beer. All in all, the course failed to enhance my appreciation for wine, and I instead gave most of my wine away, so that I could focus on gaining a better appreciation for beer.
The other course on spirits and cocktails was a much different course. JSB really didn’t talk much of herself, and she focused on the various spirits that are available, with good overviews of the nature and origin of the various spirits. She also had a number of expert bartenders demonstrate the preparation of various cocktails. All in all, this course was fun to watch, and enhanced the appreciation for the various distilled spirits that one might imbibe.