A Sense of Wine
Blending Education With Fun
Welcome to A Sense of Wine
A Sense of Wine is a wine training and education company that provides fun, interactive and educational wine services and seminars to businesses and private parties.
Whether your group is new to wine and wants to learn the basics of tasting or long-time enthusiasts anxious to explore wine from around the world, the level of "wine speak" can be adjusted to create a memorable and entertaining experience.
Services
A Sense of Wine’s services are available to:
• Wineries
• Corporations
• Private parties
• Social Events
• The food and beverage industry
Whether you’re planning an event or training staff, we provide fast-paced, entertaining, and informative wine experiences to suit your needs. Our energetic and approachable style will help your participants gain a greater appreciation and knowledge of wine while having fun at the same time.
Seminars
These are just a few of our seminars. They are great for entertaining clients and corporate guests, wine club events or any other social gathering. Each seminar runs roughly one hour but can be lengthened or shortened, depending on time allowances or the number of participants. Seminars can be stand alone or combined. We also offer customization of our programs to ensure that your event is a success.
The Wine Tasting Tool (Image) Our wine tasting tool helps participants evaluate wine with confidence!
Some of our exciting seminars include:
Color Blind With Wine – Determine A Wine’s Color Without Seeing It!
A fun and unique wine activity that lets you try to determine a wine’s color without seeing it- what can your nose and mouth reveal to you that your eyes don’t...if you can’t see the color, can you even tell if it’s red or white? The answer might surprise you! Using only your sense of smell and taste, figure out what’s in your black glass. Five points for you if you guess the color, 20 points more if you guess the varietal. Our most popular seminar!
Love at First Sip – Wine Tasting Made Simple
Taste wine like a pro in one minute or less with Sight, Smell, Sip and Summary. These easy steps are the core of all wine tastings and will help you discover what you do and don’t like and find the words to say it. Great for beginners but also fun for those who want to improve or challenge their wine skills.
Is That Apple I Smell? – Aroma Identification
Wine geeks might endlessly debate whether an aroma is dark chocolate or cocoa. While you may not have to distinguish a particular type of chocolate, you can sharpen your identification skills and have fun learning to pick out common wine aromas through this challenging game. A VERY popular seminar-this can be done as a team competition and is also great for large groups
Global Wine Welcome – Reception or formal tasting
Certain wine regions produce particular styles and varietals of wine. Experience wines from around the world, or different appellations, and figure out what’s in your glass. We provide the clues. This is an interactive activity that gives you a chance to mingle and learn about interesting wine regions. This can also be adapted to a specific wineries wines, as well as specific regions or appellations.
Is This Wine Corked? – Identifying Wine Faults
Have you ever tasted a wine that just didn’t seem right to you? Maybe it smelled musty like a wet newspaper, or worse yet, like your neighbor’s compost pile. Chances are you had a bad wine. Learning to identify common flaws, which is the objective of this interactive seminar, is the secret to never having to drink an “off” wine again. This is definitely for the savvy wine drinker.
Revealing Tastes Through Tea – Acid / Sweet / Tannin Sensations
Unravel the secrets of balance and body. In wine, tastes refer to the amount of acid, sweetness, and tannin. Using tea, learn to individually identify these elements and their importance to the body and balance of wine. Great for all wine levels, fun for team building. Even if some of the participants don’t drink wine, they will still and have fun and learn because part of this seminar is conducted using tea!
Sparkle, Sparkle – All About Champagne
Champagne is the drink of celebrations around the world -and with good reason. Discover champagne’s variety, its food-friendly nature, and of course, the bubbles! Want theatric? We can saber Champagne at your event!
Consulting
Wineries and Trade
A Sense of Wine can fulfill all of your training consulting and event education needs through:
• Turnkey training programs, and
• Customized performance consulting
Accomplished via:
• Employee development
• Enhanced consumer experiences
Benefits:
• Maximize consumer visits and events
• Delivery of a consistent brand message
• Increase sales
Programs include:
• Formal wine training for all levels
Wine basics, how to taste, wine faults, acid sweet tannin sensations, varietal identification and more
• Tour design, development and training
Do you charge for tours and tasting? You may want to consider it! We can design a customized tour and tasting program that will increase your sales, showcase your history, vineyards, and of course, your wine!
• Custom VIP and trade experiences and programs design
A VIP and trade experience allows you to showcase your brand and your wines to the gatekeepers of the industry
• Tasting Room staff training
How to ask for the sales, increase wine knowledge, interactive wine tastings at the bar, empower staff to learn
and teach!
• Teambuilding activities
Great for meetings, break out sessions and incentives
• Wine club/new release events
Make sure your event is a sell out! Guests will have fun participating in your interactive and educational wine stations.
Based upon defined deliverables, expected results may be:
• Retain loyal customers
• Attract new customers
• Highlight your brand to stand out in the marketplace
• Educate the consumer
• Increase awareness of your appellation/region as a premier destination
• Elevate and create new events that are fresh, interactive and informative
About Us
A Sense of Wine was created by owner Sandi Lucchesi to make learning about wine interesting, straight-forward and fun. Sandi brings a wealth of experience in the areas of performance development and wine education. She holds certifications with:
• Court of Master Sommeliers
• University of California at Davis Wine Studies
• Culinary Institute of America at Greystone
• Society of Wine Educators.
Clients
Here is what a few of our clients have said:
“Sandi was hired to conduct a Train the Trainer seminar for a very advanced group of Winery professionals in my region. The content as well as the delivery was excellent and she left the group wanting more. Her knowledge of the material as well as the creativity in the delivery makes every class she conducts interesting and fun. I can recommend Sandi to anyone who is looking to broaden their understanding of wine and have fun at the same time.”
Frank Marcus, General Sales Manager, E & J Gallo Winery, March, 2007
“Sandi created a fun event for our organization that got people from all different teams talking about wine, smells, and flavors – even if they previously knew nothing about wine. Her lively presentation style conveyed her extensive knowledge of wines in an easy, totally engaging and highly-accessible way. Thanks!”
Roger Williams, PMO Director, Yahoo! PSI & Global IT, September 2008
“Sandi is a top flight wine professional and training expert. I hired her to increase the wine knowledge of my sales team, and give them some concrete skills for engaging the consumer and closing the sale. I highly recommend Sandi’s work.”
Chris O’Gorman, Director of Communications, Merryvale Winery, October, 2007
“Sandi is a skilled professional who takes pride in her work, is always enthusiastic, delivers a terrific product, and always has a smile. Sandi’s knowledge of wine and her ability to convey that knowledge is impressive.”
David Ostheimer, winemaker, E & J Gallo Winery, August, 2007
“The wine seminar we had with Sandi was fantastic! Her upbeat personality and extensive wine knowledge made the experience fun, interesting, and easy! Our staff ranged from those that had been in the industry for years, to those that had little or no wine knowledge at all. Every single person walked away with new information and a better understanding of how to communicate with others about our wines. I would highly recommend her program to anyone, whether educating a tasting room staff, or a group that just wants to learn more about wine. I know we will continue to use the information she gave us to train others, and invite her back for more seminars in the future!”
Sausal Winery, February, 2008
“On Behalf of the entire ISES board, thank you for sponsoring our educational program for our June event. Everyone raved about your wine education activities in the cave. You did a great job of adapting and also challenging the palates of the teams! Many thanks for making the event a great success.”
Dana Macualey, ISES Director, June 2008
Contact Us
A Sense Of Wine
1083 Vine St. #123
Healdsburg, Ca 95448
707.758.9149
sandi@asenseofwine.com
(Sonoma County, Napa, San Francisco Bay Area
© 2008 A Sense Of Wine, Healdsburg, CA. All rights reserved.