Wine education in the wine country

France negative aspects of the wine education framework

Regarding sommeliers programmes and compared to others countries, the principal negative aspect of these curricula is that they don't give room for foreign vineyards, which could give more credibility to the programme on a world scale. That tends to restrain the access to world wine knowledge. The main argument given by French sommeliers and sommeliers educators in favour of these curricula is that students have first to know in details the French vineyard

before learning wine from others producing countries and programmes are not extendable. In Australia, a big vineyard, wine courses mainly focus on foreign vineyards as students consider that their Australian knowledge are good enough. According to Gérard Basset (best world sommelier. Interview Michelin.com), French sommeliers have poor foreign wine knowledge as they don't sell them in their restaurants.

At the moment no public curriculum exists for students willing to undergo foreign wine training and they have no choice but to take private programmes such as WSET programme (if they speak English).

Another drawback is that these vocational curricula (sommelier) are highly interdependent and people wanting to take a sommelier course have first to pass a hospitality course.

Despite the emphasis apparently placed on wine education, the French system has probably shown its limits (mainly for the hospitality programmes). It is important to underline that only few restaurant employ sommelier. As a result the mediators in most of restaurants are the waiters, therefore emphasise must be done on wine education trough hospitality programmes.

Even and if apparently the country pays more attention than others to wine education, the time (except for the sommelier syllabus) devoted to wine courses is not proportional to the revenue generated by wine sales in restaurants and is not also proportional to the wine culture level that France often claims. All vocational programmes in France tend to keep a high level of academic disciplines but forget that it is essential to keep close to the hospitality industry's needs and therefore should reinforce the vocational courses. Consequently learning outcomes are not significant enough to consider that the number of hours is sufficient and also that the learning process suits to the students' needs. Moreover, students sometimes stay thirty five hours at school (while hospitality students in Australia spend 20 hours per week at school), struggling with more than ten different courses. Therefore they obviously have difficulties in picking up all information.

«One way to ensure that educational programmes are reflective of the needs of employers and the practical environment is through curriculum development...» (Bryant, 2005).

Even regarding practical courses it is quite surprising to see that some old restaurant techniques are still learned in hospitality programmes, even if they are totally inadequate with new restaurant practices. As an example, students still learn to carve a chicken in front of the guest or prepare flamed peaches. These techniques are no longer used in restaurants and students lose time and sometimes struggle to learn something which won't be useful in the workplace when they need competencies to sell wine.

In France most of the hospitality programmes date back to the nineties and rely on the past and perhaps are no longer in adequate for market needs. It is still difficult for France to fix its school system (Gumbel, 2010) and arguably it could be inspired by others countries where programs are more flexible. France has always focused on a content based learning system (often opposed to the Outcome-based learning system) which sometimes tends to make the syllabus rigid and the students passive (Bowman 2007).

After the exam, students have not necessarily developed sufficient wine skills and still need to improve their basic knowledge. After a three year programme, which focuses on the vineyard, appellations, oenology..., a lot of students still don't know how to suggest a basic wine and food pairing to the customer.

That raises questions about the pertinence of the learning process which can be sometimes qualified as an old fashioned way to learn. We tend in France to overwhelm learners with too

much information, sophisticated vocabulary and semantics, which doesn't help them to express their own opinion on wine.

Since 2000 the number of students wanting to enrol in a specific programme for restaurant service has decreased (in Journal de l'Hôtellerie 24/01/2011). Young students see the job as servile and it is probably easier to integrate a cooking culture than a wine culture. It is crucial now to promote all waiting jobs and demonstrate that to serve a customer not only relies on the ability to give a plate to the guest. Being wine knowledgeable is a way to enhance the job and can make the difference for the guest. Wine is still seen as a cultural product in France and playing the mediator between the wine industry and the guest can be a way to give value to the job and make it more attractive.