On 16th March we hosted a Sake and Sherry night in Richmond at The Old Ship. Much fun was had by all. In total we tasted 6 sake and 5 sherries, making for a very merry evening. Sarah Wedgbury talked us through the delights of the Japanese rice wines, while our very own David Swaddle's session swigged through sherry.

We've also been running a few tastings for Sainsbury's and we're continuing these with an Italian tasting to be confirmed soon. It's nice to do run these consumer tastings as they attract a really wide range of novices, enthusiasts and even quite experienced wine tasters.

The wine course is coming along slowly. After a pause while we waited for the WSET to set us up as a centre, we finally got all the paperwork through just before Christmas. Unfortunately we had loads of work booked in for early 2010, so completion had to be pushed back. We're back on track now, but won't get it finished before Easter unfortunately.

We've got a new website coming soon too, so you'll be saying goodbye to this clunky old thing. We'll include a load of wine makers tasting their own wines and a better listing of all of our events. If you're on the mailing list, then we'll update you when it arrives.

Finally, we've just opened bookings for our Brilliant Bordeaux wine tasting in Richmond on 13th April. If you're interested in tasting your way around the most famous wine region in the world, then it would be great if you could join us.

Enough for now.

Cheers,

David and the Tasting Sessions Team

We've just gone live with bookings for our face-to-face wine tasting events in association with Sainsbury's. We're very excited about these, as they represent a really good value way for people to learn about wine and try some different wines. Great news if you live around Exeter or Didcot, where our first events are happening.

Well, I've managed to pass my WSET Educator course, so it's full-steam ahead to finish the course. Our Approved Programme Provider (APP) application is almost finished processing, so we are set to enrol the first students in January, but we should be selling tickets for the course before Christmas!

Hurrah,

David

We're all packed up and off to The Wine Show for a few days.

We've got a brilliant competition running on our stand where you can win over £1,000 of wine course, Penfolds wine, Vinopolis tours and books, plus you can snag a discount for the launch of the course.

Hopefully see you there,

David & The Team

Did you win our competition? The list of winners is on our site now.

If you didn't win, then don't worry, as the Wine Show's organisers have been kind enough to send us a 50% discount offer for our friends and family. Seeing as we're only starting out, we thought that we'd offer it to everybody who's discovered us so far. Check it out on the Wine Show Tickets page.

Come and see us on STAND B110 to find out how you can purchase our wine course very, very soon!

We are well under way developing the course, still aiming for a late 2009 launch. Lots of AWE members have been helping out with the content, so it's looking pretty good.

Want to get a preview? Come along to The Wine Show and see us on Stand B110. Enter the competiton on our stand to win yourself and a friend free copies of the course plus loads of other goodies worth over £1,000. Plus, everybody who enters the on-stand competition will receive a discount code as soon as the course is ready.

Hope we can meet you there,

David and the team

The script and instructional design is finally finished for New Zealand, plus we've got bits in from our AWE friends for Australia and Riesling. It's all coming together, even if there is still loads to do.

Progress is rapid. We'll have a good chunk of the course to show people soon and we're still on for an end of November launch.

David

We've been developing our wine eLearning course since late last year. Progress has really been full-steam for the last few months and we're finally pulling everything in to shape.

Seeing as we're in to doing things properly, we've been doing loads of user testing. First, we showed it to people at The Bar Show, gauging general interest. After a few tweaks and adjustments we then ran the course past half-a-dozen users for some informal user testing. Finally, we ran a formal heuristic evaluation session to pick out any sub-optimal problems with learning.

It's a long and arduous road, developing an eLearning course as big as this, but it's also really good fun.

Do you fancy doing a bit of testing for us? If you're able to get to Richmond, in West London, and you're keen to see what we're up to, then send us a message and we'll see if we can use your feedback.