Certificate in Wine and Beverage Studies

Drawing from the expertise of our Wine Development Manager and Le Cordon Bleu Lecturers, this Level 3 certificate combines practical teaching with wine and beverage tastings, field trips, guest lectures, interactive and theory classes as well as workshops and tutorials.

• Wine regions of the world: Discover the wine regions of Europe and the New World: North America, South America, Africa and Australasia. Each country will be discussed independently with an examination of the regional qualities of the wine, its terroir, climate and culture.
  This module will be including a variety of in-house practical tastings as well as a field trip to a winery.
• Wine appreciation and wine handling: Develop a methodical approach to sensory evaluation techniques using an appropriate vocabulary.
  Through tasting sessions, students will become competent in the art of wine tasting through the development of structured tasting notes that will enable them to describe wine in a precise and concise fashion. This unit will also show techniques applied for service of still and sparkling wines, the methods used for ageing and storing wines, the regional trends and give you the expertise to decoding labels.
• From vineyard to bottle: Explore viticulture, winemaking, maturation and bottling and gain an understanding of how these topics influence the final product. Topics covered include: the identification of the key processes required to produce a wine; consideration of the influences of climate, geography and topography on viticulture and winemaking; methods and process of winemaking; techniques and stages of wine production.
• Food and beverage pairing: Experience food and beverage pairing with dishes prepared by Le Cordon Bleu chefs enabling you to understand the interaction between food and beverage from a global perspective. Areas discussed will include: a classification of the various types of cuisine and identification of key flavours; the influence of taste in the pairing of food and wine; development of an appropriate vocabulary to describe food and different drinks.
• Beverages of the world: Develop a structured method to assess a variety of drinks with the same efficiency as wines. Topics discussed include: methods of production, origin and taste of fermented drinks, spirits and other beverages; relevance of proposing alternative drinks; evaluation of the qualities of each product, development of a vocabulary that describes the sensations in the assessment of alcoholic and non- alcoholic beverages. A variety of in-house tastings as well as field trips to a brewery or a distillery will be part of the experience.

The Certificate in Wine & Beverage Studies is aimed at people who are looking to develop their knowledge in this specific area to have the confidence and ability to express themselves fully on the subject of wine and beverage, who are passionate and eager to refine their expertise.

This certificate course has been accredited as a “Customised Qualification” by national awarding organisation NCFE, and the course measurable learning outcomes have been benchmarked at Level 3 using Ofqual’s Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) level descriptors.