Wine the Experience: CPCS class at MSU explores wine culture
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Many people who drink wine enjoy a glass almost as much as they enjoy learning about how it was made.
Now, the College of Professional and Continuing Studies at Mississippi State is helping enthusiasts learn more.
The goal is to help working people expand their educational palette.
Melanie Hankins Booth has a passion for wine and is sharing it with others.
Her passion led her to get certifications to teach wine appreciation classes. It’s called “Wine the Experience.”
Melanie believes enjoying wine is a total sensory experience where you don’t just drink the wine, you experience it.
To do that, she said, you have to understand wine culture.
“If you understand what it takes to get this bottle of wine to you on a random Wednesday for you to enjoy for let’s say, $20, if you really enjoy all that went into that- the family that it took, the agriculture that was involved, the grape growers, the winemaker, when you look at the whole picture, then you appreciate that glass of wine and total different way,” Hankins Booth said.
The class looks at how to create the wine, the chemistry, and the fundamentals to understand what you are tasting.
Then it goes into the tasting process, to evaluate and bring your own sensory experiences to the table.
“That’s a good starting point where you can begin to understand and appreciate the wine more,” Hankins Booth said.
From Wine the Experience, Melanie said students are gaining professional development skills for the hospitality industry, personal enjoyment, and foundational knowledge for their careers and personal lives.
Melanie said these classes help promote tourism in Starkville and all over the state.
“We’re hoping that through the wine experience class, a hands-on experiential online class, people will become familiar with the type of offerings from CPCS that are not only for personal enrichment but that also are for workforce development,” Hankins Booth said.
“We’ve really worked hard at taking down any barriers that working adults may have or people who are in the technical fields might have,” said Dean of the college, Dr. Susan Seal.
Dean of the college, Dr. Susan Seal, said education and the world are changing, and they are trying to help meet the needs of working adults.
Seal is seeing a lot of growth in these types of programs.
“The college professional continuing studies is made up of an academic arm that has bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, we do research, we write grants,” Seal said. “We have the Center for Continuing Education that houses all of our noncredit programs. We had the Center for Distance Education in which we support the university’s online degree programs. And then we have a new center that will be having the Center for Innovation in Teaching Excellence. Dr. Keenum always talks about Mississippi State’s world-class faculty, which they are, and this center supports the teaching efforts of those faculty, providing them with resources, technologies, and the training that they need. Again, whether it’s the wine class, whether it’s leadership classes, it may be some other one of our continuing education courses that can help support really whatever’s needed for that industry.”
Wine the Experience is a non-credit, self-paced course offered online.
In-person classes will be introduced across the state for alumni.
