Ep. 2533 Becoming an Italian Grape Geek: Course Breakdown | Italian Grape Geek

Introducing the Italian Grape Geek program, a new and original approach to Italian wines. IGG, as it's fondly known, is a book, a podcast, an online theory course, and an in person tasting course. Our pocket sized book briefly introduces 80 grapes with benchmark producers, helping you find and taste these great wines on your own. Space to make your own notes makes the book a personal record of your Italian wine journey. No time to read? We've read the whole book out loud with added insights from Italian wine ambassadors. Listen for free on Italian wine podcast. Obsessed with Italian wine? Take the super accessible online theory course. Get certified as an Italian grape geek. Want more? Our international IGG educators have got your in person tasting course to cap off your full IGG immersion. Go to mamajumboshrimp.com and sign up today. You know, because at the end of the day, this is what we care about, making Italian wine learning feel welcoming and joyful and human. Exactly. You know, having people that are part of the family, a community of great geeks who love sharing stories, exploring regions, and discovering something new every time they open a bottle. And there's so many bottles in Italian wine to open. So that's really what it's about, isn't it? Community, connection, and curiosity all poured into that glass. Hello, Italian wine people. This is a bonus episode from Italian wine podcast. Stay tuned to discover more. Hello. This is Cynthia Chaplin and Jill Gordon Smith. And today, we are here to launch the Italian grape ghee. We're very excited about this. It was a project that came into fruition because we wanted to bring Italian wine to everyone, not people with lots of training, not people with lots of experience, but anyone and everyone who wants to know more about Italian wine starting with the basics. So thanks to Stevie Kim and Mama Jumbo Shrimp, this idea began with a book. It certainly did, and it's been quite the journey, Cynthia. It started as a book, really, you know, just a way to help people dip their toes into Italian wine without feeling, you know, completely lost. So something simple and personal. And then went to a podcast with our amazing Venetian International Academy ambassadors, sharing stories and their insights, about grapes and regions. And next came the online course. Exactly. The book was great fun when we were putting it together. As you remember, I'm sure, we had a great graphics team in house to make the graphics fun and interesting. We left a lot of space in the book so students could write their own notes and really make it personal. It's a pocket sized book, so it could go anywhere, on a train, in a backpack, in a jacket pocket, wherever anybody wanted to taste wine. And we put some benchmark producers in there so that people could find good examples of each wine and taste it on their own without having to be in a classroom and spend a lot of time and money. So, yes, you're right. We moved on to the podcast, which was also fun using our Via community ambassadors and their experience all around the world talking about the grapes and the wines from really personal point of view, adding a lot more information than what was in the book. And now we are onto the online course, which you and I spent quite a lot of time on. We spent a lot of time on it, and I think what's really exciting is this is really I see Italian Grape Geek as being the inside story. Lots of courses come from outside of Italy, but this one was birthed within Italy. And even though we're using ambassadors and I'm not Italian, but I spend a lot of time here and I know you live here, it really is the inside story of Italian wine. And let's be honest, it can be very confusing with so many grapes and origins and labels, so it can feel really impossible to keep track. And this is a really fantastic course that we worked very hard on with lots of great input from people. So we wanted to make it easy. We wanted to welcome people in instead of scaring them off because, you know, we wanted to decode the labels, tell the stories, and share the history, the legends, and a little bit of what the magic that makes Italian wine so special. Exactly. I think Italian wine is one of those things that can be really scary. We name a lot of the wines after the place that they are from rather than the grape that they are from. We have many unpronounceable wines and unpronounceable grapes. So it was really a fun adventure to put that course together from our point of view as we're both educators, and we love our students. We both love Italy very, very much. So trying to bring, as you said, from an insider's point of view, the joy of it, the real love for Italian wine that we share, and the backstory, the stories of the people, the producers, the history, the grapes, and give people something that they could sink their teeth into without a lot of huge effort. We wanted to make it accessible with some good language. We changed up the tasting grid so that it wasn't using terms that people are unfamiliar with or put off by. We really invited people to come and fall in love with it like we have. And I think that that's a really important point because at the heart of it all are in Italy's incredible native grapes. And we know there's well over 500 of them, and each has their own story and their character. So this course is about being curious, connecting, and discovering, about tasting, listening, being able to explore at your own pace in your own way, and for anyone that's fallen a little bit in love with Italian wine or or wants to. So I think it is a course that is for anyone that wants to go a bit deeper, but it doesn't have the ego. And as you said, it doesn't have the jargon. We try to make it not simpler, but easier to understand. And finally, I think it's really friendly and it's inclusive. So it's not just for people who are great geeks now, but for people who want to know more. And I think Exactly. People who want to connect. Exactly. And it's very reasonably priced, the online course, which was another key element to what Stevie wanted to do and that we agreed with so strongly because it is accessible. If you're young or you haven't gotten into the business yet or you're doing other things in your life and you don't have a lot of disposable income to put towards wine education, this is a very affordable course, only 10 sessions. You can go at your own pace, do it all in one day, or do one session a week, whatever you want, and really have fun with it. We wanted it to look fun and be fun and to draw people in in a meaningful way. Give them the information, but in a way that was really enjoyable rather than sort of an old school academic test situation. And I think that's a really good point with the lessons. People can go back and forth. So if you want to, you know, rego, you know, redo a session, you can redo a session. You can use it on your mobile phone. So it's inclusive and accessible. You can come and go as you please, so dip your toe in and out which I think is really, really important and that's part of its unique perspective is that it is for everybody. Absolutely. It's not for professionals, it's for the consumer And of course, you know, by the end you're gonna know your key Italian grapes, you're gonna know where they come from, you're gonna understand how place, people and culture shape what's in your glass. I think you'll feel a lot more confident and you'll be able to talk about Italian wine in a way that is important and correct. You'll have the right information without sounding, you know, stuffy, and, that's really important. And I think that curiosity, and we designed the course for the curious, for people that want to, you know, keep exploring, tasting, and sharing what they find. And I think the course is also open ended where we've we've left the door open. If if people really become even more curious, we've left the door open to a level two co