I was also thinking of going to the Wine School Of Philly. I looked into and wasn't sure I felt like fighting traffic on 95. If you did or do go will you let me know what you think?
Monica: I went to the Wine 101 course with my girlfriend this past Saturday evening. It was a intimate group of 10 couples which is good because you could ask questions freely throughout.
The class started with the instructor teaching us how to drink a glass of wine beginning with what to take from its appearance and then on to smelling it and then tasting. He went over acidity, tannins, and alcohol content and how they relate to the wine and each other. He also went over some wine-related terms eg. nose, bouquet, etc. We then went through 5 flights which included eight 1 oz wine tastings of various styles. With each wine, we went over the appearance, nose, and taste of each as a group, and discussed along the way.
I did have an issue with the class, though. When we'd smell and taste a wine, the instructor would ask what we smelled/tasted. I feel like I have a fairly discerning palette and taste is of course a very subjective thing, but, with only a few exceptions, I just taste "wine". The instructor said you should never taste "grape" when you taste a wine, but that threw me off because that's basically all I think I taste. My girlfriend said she felt the same way. There was a white wine that I tasted a grapefruit-y taste and a red wine that had an ash-y taste, but the instructor was saying, to him, this wine tastes "earthy", that wine has a licorice taste, this wine tastes like plums, etc. First off, I haven't had a plum in probably 10 years so I really couldn't say something tasted like a plum. Secondly, using words like "earthy" and "musty" can be pretty vague. Lastly, like I said, I personally for the most part can't say a wine tastes like such-and-such fruit; it just tastes like a red wine. I can tell you if it's dry, if it's full-bodied, and of course how much I enjoyed it, but I wasn't able to give descriptors like he was. This is something I had hoped to be able to do after the class. I feel like this may be the case with any such course, though, so I'm not sure what he could have done to have that be the result. Perhaps the issue is with my palette so you may want to take this with a grain of salt.
All in all, it was fun and interesting. We both enjoyed it and it was what I was hoping for for the most part. My main concern was whether the class was targeted for an audience which I was a part of, but it was right on for me/us. The instructor was good and kept things interesting and humorous for the entire 2 hours. The best advice I think he gave was to just drink wine and drink all sorts of wines. I've been drinking beer for about 10 times longer than I have been drinking wine. My palette for beer is much better than wine so perhaps it will be honed more with time.