The Unofficial Spectrum of Wine Learning

Hey, hey, it’s Friday!

I don’t know about you, but I love a good mental model.

And I’ve always struggled with a decent interpretation of what wine learning looks like. But, I think I’m finally on to something.

My first attempt at plotting wine learning was:

Version 1 of my mental model for wine learning.

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And while writing the first draft of this book, I’ve revisited and replotted.

Version 2 of my mental model for wine knowledge. I flipped a few stages around because it begins with love, and geeks are an improvement over know-it-alls.

But just this week, I evolved my mental model into another dimension. Welcome to the Y-Axis (thanks to Think Again from Adam Grant)!

Current working version of wine learning model

Given this new model, I feel it’s easier to understand the excitement and the dangers that accompany wine learning, especially at the early stages.

You can see the Wine Know-it-alls* are the loudest but among the least knowledgeable. They are the gate keepers and often the ones thwarting the Wine Novices* from learning more. Unfortunately, they drown out the Wine Geeks*, Experts* and World Champions* too.

*Please note these are all made up terms for what I think there are distinctive differences/zones in wine learning.

So what can we do to improve wine learning?

As a wine community, I think we should:

1. Enable more people to talk about wine
2. Minimize the know-it-all behavior.
3. Show the multiple routes to success.

And in a more perfect world, the wine learning spectrum might look like this:

An example of what the future state of wine learning might look like.

As I was writing this email, I was thinking about specifically #3. And this model, doesn’t show the multiple routes to success because everyone has an individual path when it comes to wine learning.

I realized that wine learning isn’t climbing a specific mountain to claim your World Wine Championship. Rather, wine learning is trekking across a mountain range covering all aspects of the vast world of wine.

So, wine learning might look a little more like this:

A dramatic oversimplification of wine learning.

The path through the wine learning mountains is truly up to you.

There are many ways to ascend, but some routes may be easier than others. And if a particular mountain seems intimidating or uninteresting, you can choose to explore somewhere else.

So, grab your corkscrew and your climbing boots, and prepare for an adventure.

What mountains are you interested in climbing? Which are scary? Which are exciting?