Founder
Peggy Baudon, DipWSET, IWA
Since the mid 1990s I have been deeply captivated by education - either by working in the field or by studying. In 2005, I had the good fortune to receive funding to specialize in a neurodevelopmental approach to learning. This changed my life.
This training was the key to understanding how our brains work: how everything we do, read, write, and think is made possible by a series of brain functions all working in tandem with each other. It was like having access to the inner workings of all the processes that my students needed to be successful in school. And it was incredibly rewarding watching students excel once they understood how to maximize the brain functions needed to rock any given learning task.
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The captivation didn’t stop when I paused my career in education to have a family. I would find myself marvelling at the brain development of my little ones, and using the language of my educator self all the time: “Ooh look! You used your active working memory to hold the colour of that yellow frog in your mind while finding the matching frog!” or “Should we write out our shopping list sequentially or in picture form today?” etc.
On the day that my youngest entered kindergarten, I was surprised at how hard it was to watch that little backpack bouncing happily away. I soon realized that I needed to pull myself together and trick my mind into thinking about something else. So I answered the call of wine by signing up for a course.
I naturally adopted a neurodevelopmental approach to my wine studies. Studying from the perspective of brain functions allowed me to progress quickly through wine courses. Consequently, the more difficult the material got, the more clarity I had on how to successfully organize the study material and study it. As a result, I experienced more joy and satisfaction from studying as I dove deeper and deeper into it.
Despite having finished my last wine exam (the challenging Vinitaly Italian Wine Ambassador program) as the least experienced of the group, I was surprised to hear that my exam achieved the top result. I began to wonder if a neurodevelopmental approach to studying could be useful to others too.
Manifesto
Anyone can learn wine theory.
Anyone can learn to blind taste.
Anyone can be successful in the pursuit of wine studies
when they know how learning works
from a brain perspective.
Vision
To increase accessibility within wine education
To demystify studying and tasting processes
To empower people with studying skills, tools and strategies that are informed by a neurodevelopmental perspective
To empower people with the knowledge of how the brain best performs:
for optimizing focus and concentration
for increasing brain energy and performance
and consolidating masses of information into memory
The more we know about how the brain works, the more power we wield over our learning success
Values
Respect the different and unique ways each brain functions
Support those with aspirations and passions in wine
Crush barriers to success in wine education