You can divide your wine learning into thee parts:

1. In the bottle

2. On the bottle

3. Around the bottle

In The Bottle is the wine, the actual fermented grape juice.

Inside the bottle is wine. It sounds simple, but it quickly becomes incredibly complex.

The taste of the wine is largely influenced by decisions of people and mother nature. It's the dance between them that makes compelling, delicious wines.

The stuff you smell, taste and drink is in the bottle.

On The Bottle is the label, the shape and the marketing.

The label is like the back of a baseball trading card. It tells you the name, where it was made, the alcohol content, the vintage, etc.

The bottle shape can hint at the variety or style of wine inside. For example, Champagne bottles are different from Chardonnay bottles.

On the bottle is where you can think about the wine's facts and information.

Around The Bottle is the most important part.

Wine is about connecting with other people.

While those moments are important, so are things like opening a bottle of wine, proper storage, and ideal serving temperature. Those key learnings are stuck in the appendix or footnotes of most wine books or classes. Even food and wine pairing gets the short shrift.

That's absolutely bananas because those components alone contribute so much to taste and experience with wine.

What to do with the three elements of wine learning?

You can simplify the elements like this:

In the bottle = the stuff you taste​
​On the bottle = the stuff you read​
​Around the bottle = the stuff you feel

Picturing wine learning in this way will allow you to realize your blind spots, because we're all best in one element.