An Introduction to Wine Tasting with Beverly Crandon

Most wine tasting starts backwards: you're handed a glass, a list of tasting notes, and the quiet pressure to validate them. This class flips that order. You'll train your nose first, on real, familiar ingredients, then carry those sensory experiences to different kinds of wine to discover what you notice on your own.

Wine aroma breaks down into a handful of core families that show up again and again: fruit, floral, earth, spice and oak. In this hands-on (er, nose-on?) workshop, Toronto sommelier Beverly Crandon will guide you through five aroma sets, and the ingredients behind those families. You'll smell and identify each before your nose ever meets a glass.

Beverly believes wine has a bigger map than most of us have been shown. This class is a warm, welcoming space for total beginners and the wine curious alike. Whether you're picking up your first glass or you've felt out of your depth at a tasting before, The Nose Knows meets you where you are. It is a pure sensory deep dive that gives you tools you can use every time you taste a wine.

Once your nose knows what it's looking for, you'll move into a guided flight of five wines — a sparkling wine, an aromatic white, two contrasting reds, and one skin-contact (aka orange/amber) wine — each chosen to showcase the aromas you just discovered. No memorized tasting notes, no wrong answers, just your own senses confirming what they already picked up on. (Specific wines will depend on availability)

There will be some cheese boards to nibble on, and every guest walks away with lifetime access to the full Nose Knows course online, so you can revisit the aroma breakdowns, retrain your nose anytime, and keep building your palate long after the last pour.

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Beverly Crandon is a Toronto-based sommelier (Court of Master Sommeliers-certified), and founder of Fall Into Spice, which hosts wine-paired dinners built around non-traditional food themes. She is also the creator of Black Grapes, an annual evening celebrating Black voices in wine. She has shared her love of the grapes, regions, and winemakers that rarely make the list on Global News Morning Toronto, The Good Stuff with Mary Berg, and CTV's The Social. @beverlycrandon | beverlycrandon.com

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The Depanneur is where Interesting Food Things happen. For more than a decade The Dep has been showcasing Toronto's remarkable culinary diversity by hosting unique food events. @thedepanneur