Wine Scholar Guild launches Italian foundation course

The Wine Scholar Guild has extended its educational offering to include a foundation course for those who want to study Italy’s wine industry.

Called the Italian Wine Scholar Prep programme, the course will launch of 2 November and provide an overview of the country’s viticultural history for consumers and aspiring professionals.

The course material covers 39 of Italy’s most well-known wines and regions like Chianti, Prosecco, Piedmont and so on. It is being positioned as a route to having sufficient knowledge and understanding to enrol in the Italian Wine scholar programme, which is usually pitched at people who have achieved a certain standard certificate from other institutions such as the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET).

A foundation course on Spanish wine is also set to launch early next year, while a similar program on the wines of France is due to open in later 2020.

“We saw that there was a need for a foundation level course focused on the wines of Italy and began the process of developing IWS Prep over a year ago,” WSG president, Julien Camus, said.

Due to the pandemic, the course, which has been organised by Wine Scholar Guild’s Italian Wine Program Director, and co-author of IWS Prep, Andrea Eby (pictured), will be taught online.

Classroom sessions will be held by a network of program providers from more than 90 schools in 30 countries.

“Never before has the need for online instruction been as important and we are fortunate to be primed to deliver our programming in this format,” Camus added.

“As our program providers re-open, they will be able to offer wine lovers an exciting new learning opportunity,” he said.

“The social, cultural aspects of this program will be exactly what the wine consumer will want when they can break bread and drink wine in good company, in public, once again.”