Vasily Raskov's
wine school

I have a friend who is a Natha yogi. Once we sat in my kitchen drinking white wine, swirling our glasses and digging out new aromas. At the end we came to completely mind-boggling things and started laughing like crazy. "You're a yogi and still you drink wine". "True, and we've just had a perfect yoga practice".

"Wine Yoga" is a set of practical trainings aimed at purification and mind expansion in olfactic and communicational outline. Ha-ha.

Champagne is certainly one of the hottest erogenous wine regions of the world for centuries. Our ancestors had celebrated the most important events with a glass of Champagne. Now we do the same. But we are incomparably luckier. The revolution of growers brought an incredible diversity of styles, terroir driven wines, revival of forgotten grape varieties, reckless experiments. Historical Houses of Champagne are constantly pursuing perfection using all the tools of oenological science. We are drinking the best Champaign ever made. This course is aimed to present this New Champagne Reality, which much more deep, complex and fascinating than we used to think.

Training programme "Switch on your Bacchus" is designed to install basic "software" of a wine taster and teaches to make use of it, systematizing the further tasting experience. We are going to pay special attention to the wine language which will significantly facilitate your work with the tasting memory, speed up the process of wine knowledge accumulation and simplify communication. We are going to form reference points of a wine taster and install the drivers of main varieties: Riesling and Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, Muscat and Merlot, Sangiovese and Tempranillo. We will create a matrix of all wine regions to facilitate your further knowledge and experience classification. 64 cherry-picked wine samples are going to help you switch on your taste, aromatic and communication charisma.

"Blind Tasting Challenge" course is a first case of a systematic analytical blind tasting training in Russia. 10 trainings is not enough to acquire a "library" of flavors and tasted, it takes years to accumulate it, but it is quite possible to install the very shelves and create a user-friendly catalogue. We are going to work through certain structural parameters of taste and aroma separately and together, using not only wine, but a wide array of other materials. After we have calibrated the receptors, we are going to tackle the main detective patterns.

In early 2010s there were 10 wine producers bottling their wines here. Now their number amounts to 150. The prices of vineyards have grown five-fold in recent five years. In terms of style Etna wines are often compared to Barolo wines and are sometimes called "Burgundy of the Mediterranean" referring to both wine subtlety and an amazing diversity of terroirs. The difference lies only in the fact that the Burgundy terroir goes back millions of years and the Etna terroir is still forming and reforming with new eruptions. Terraces, a hundred-year-old vines, wine makers and reckless madman who have come from all over the world to make great wine — that is something to be watched right now. The programme includes such acknowledged Etna names as Passopisciaro, Tenuta delle Terre Nere, Benanti, Tenuta di Fessina, Tenuta Aglae, Piatradolce, Girolamo Russo, Graci, ICustodi, I Vigneri as well as garage wine makers Eduardo Torres, Vino di Anna, Vigneti Vecchio, Vini Scirto, Wiegner and many others.