Picture this: It's a Thursday evening in San Diego, and I'm standing in front of a group of strangers holding glasses of an unfamiliar wine. Someone takes a sip, makes a face, and says, "I don't get it. This just tastes... weird."
Instead of launching into a lecture about tannins and terroir, I ask, "What kind of weird? Does it remind you of anything?"
What happens next is magic. The conversation opens up. People start sharing what they notice, what it reminds them of, how it compares to their expectations. Within minutes, that "weird" wine becomes a gateway to understanding something new about their own palate, about wine, and about being curious rather than intimidated.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I was designing learning experiences.
The Wine Education Foundation
I never planned to become an instructional designer. My path started in hospitality, specifically in wine education—a world where knowledge sharing happens over glasses of wine, in intimate settings, and through stories that connect people to places, history, and culture.
But looking back, I realize that what I was doing in those wine tastings wasn't just teaching people about wine. I was designing learning experiences that helped people discover something new about themselves and the world around them.
The Wine Education Approach
In wine education, you quickly learn that people don't want to be lectured at. They want to be guided through an experience. The best wine educators don't just tell you facts about grape varieties or regions—they create moments of discovery.
Here's what I learned about learning from those experiences:
- Start with curiosity, not expertise: People are naturally curious about wine, but they're often intimidated by the perceived expertise required. The key is to meet them where they are, not where you think they should be.
- Create safe spaces for exploration: Wine tasting is inherently subjective. There are no "wrong" answers, only different perspectives. This creates a safe environment where people feel comfortable exploring and making mistakes.
- Connect theory to personal experience: The best wine education happens when people can relate what they're learning to their own tastes and experiences. It's not about memorizing facts—it's about developing a personal relationship with wine.
Translating Hospitality to Learning Design
When I started studying instructional design, I realized that these principles from wine education were actually core principles of effective learning design:
1. Learner-Centered Design
Just as wine education starts with the learner's curiosity and experience level, effective learning design begins with understanding who the learner is, what they already know, and what they want to achieve.
2. Psychological Safety in Learning
In wine education, we create spaces where people feel comfortable exploring and making mistakes. In learning design, we need to create environments where learners feel safe to experiment, fail, and grow.
3. Experiential Learning Philosophy
Wine education is inherently experiential—you learn by doing, by tasting, by experiencing. The best learning design incorporates hands-on experiences that allow learners to apply what they're learning in real-time.
How This Shows Up in My Current Work
This philosophy of "opening doors to learning" now informs everything I design. Whether it's an eLearning module for high school students learning to recognize confusion, a job aid for corporate training, or a community-building project like Wine With Pete, I'm always thinking about:
- How can I create a sense of curiosity and wonder?
- What safe spaces can I design for exploration and experimentation?
- How can I connect abstract concepts to learners' personal experiences?
- What opportunities can I create for hands-on application?
Confusion as an Invitation to Grow
One of my core beliefs is that confusion is not a problem to be solved—it's an invitation to grow. In wine education, when someone tastes something unexpected or confusing, that's often the moment of greatest learning potential.
Instead of immediately providing answers, the best educators ask questions: "What do you notice? How does this compare to what you expected? What does this remind you of?" This approach helps learners develop their own understanding rather than simply memorizing someone else's.
In my learning design work, I try to create these moments of productive confusion—situations where learners are challenged to think, question, and explore rather than simply consume information. This approach shows up in everything from the interactive scenarios I design to the way I structure reflection activities.
Looking Forward: The Future of Human-Centered Learning
As I continue my studies in instructional design and learning technology, I'm excited to explore how these principles from hospitality and wine education can be applied to digital learning environments, corporate training, and educational technology.
I believe that the human-centered approach that makes wine education so effective can be translated to any learning context. The key is maintaining that focus on creating meaningful experiences rather than just delivering information.
After all, whether you're learning about wine, software, or leadership principles, the goal is the same: to open doors to new possibilities and help people discover what they're capable of.
Questions I'm Exploring
As I continue this journey, I'm asking myself:
- How can I design learning experiences that feel as engaging and personal as a great wine tasting?
- What can I learn from other experiential learning contexts to enhance my design approach?
- How can I use technology to create more, not less, human connection in learning?
- What does it mean to "open doors to learning" in different contexts and for different audiences?
This is just the beginning of my exploration into learning design, but I'm excited to see how these principles from wine education continue to evolve and adapt as I work in new contexts and with new technologies.
What's your experience with learning through discovery? I'd love to hear about moments when confusion or curiosity led to breakthrough understanding—whether in a wine tasting, a training session, or any other learning context.
Connect with me on LinkedIn to continue the conversation about experiential learning design, or check out my portfolio to see these principles in action. You can also explore my projects to see more examples of my work.