About us
Little and often, and let the course do the planning.
- Answer a few questions every day. Ten minutes is plenty.
- Read the explanation after every answer, even when you were right. That is where the teaching is.
- Answer the questions the Coach brings back. It shows you each one again just as you start to forget it.
- New to wine? Read the chapter first, then answer its questions. The button at the top of every question opens it on your phone or the website, or read the printed book at your leisure.
- Know some wine already? Go straight to the questions. If they feel hard, tap the button, read the chapter, then carry on.
- Print the revision sheets, in case you want to read a shorter version to support your learning.
- Use what you learn. Try TasterPro with a glass at home, and look up your dish in the Pairing Library when you eat out or cook at home.
Vinealto is a small British wine company. We make a guide to restaurants with good wine lists, a library of food and wine pairings, two free apps, a book and a wine course that runs from beginner to expert.
Michael Cross, a former professor, is our founder. He has a background in education, managing organisations, running companies and information technology. He has loved wine for more than 40 years and tastes over 1,500 wines a year.
Wine can feel like a subject built to keep people out, with its foreign names, fuss and confident opinions. Too many people order wine without confidence, or pay for a bottle that does nothing for their food. We started Vinealto to change that.
More than anything, we want to open up the wine world, which has given Michael so much pleasure. We want to put real wine knowledge within reach of anyone, so that people feel confident and get the most from wine wherever and whenever they come across it. Everything we make helps you get that right.
Because we have made gaining real expertise in wine simple and convenient, with little effort and little cost. That opens this learning to people who would not normally have the chance, and we hope it helps end the myth that wine is only for the few.
- It goes deep, with 47 chapters and nearly 3,000 questions, from your first glass to expert level.
- It is built so you remember what you learn, not just pass a test and forget it.
- You learn in short sessions on your phone or on the website, around your day.
- It costs a tiny fraction of what wine courses usually cost.
- We are independent. No producer or shop pays us to recommend its wine.
You have one account and it works everywhere. Sign in with the same email on the website and in both apps, and your progress follows you.
- Vinealto Learning is the course app, with the questions, your progress and your certificates.
- Vinealto Dining is for eating out, with the restaurant guide, the pairings and help choosing from a wine list.
- The website does all of it, and is where you buy.
Not directly. Apple and Google only let you install apps from their own stores. The buttons on our website take you straight to the right page in the App Store or Google Play, and both apps are free.
Courses
We have no classrooms, no venues and no teachers to pay by the hour. The course runs on your phone, so each extra learner costs us very little. We would rather teach thousands of people at a fair price than a few at a high one.
More than anything, this is our passion. We want others to share the enjoyment we have had from the world of wine. Writing these courses, sharing what we know and opening the door to that world is a pleasure for us, not work.
We have all been on courses that leave us alone to cram, drilling facts into short term memory in big bursts. They put the burden on the learner. We think all you should have to do is turn up, and we make that easy and enjoyable. If the course is designed well, the knowledge and expertise follow. That is why we built it the way we have.
The Coach keeps track of every answer you give and decides what you see next, bringing old questions back as they start to slip. It also fits what you already know. A beginner reads the chapter first, and someone with some knowledge goes straight to the questions and opens the chapter only when they need it.
The course also has you use what you learn again and again. It starts by asking you to recall facts within one chapter and builds to recalling them across the whole course, which by the end is extremely thorough.
We can't promise you will enjoy our course, but we have tried very hard to make sure you do. If learning is not enjoyable, it takes more effort and less of it is retained. So we have built the course to be a pleasure to use.
- You start with a question, not a lecture, and the explanation tells you why.
- Each session is short, and fits a train ride or a coffee.
- Our syllabus does not look like a textbook. It is meant to be a joy to read, rather than a condensed list of facts to learn, and the learning engine does the hard work. Aroma plates show what each wine smells and tastes of. We draw an illustration wherever words alone would make an idea hard to follow. Our maps leave out the clutter and keep the facts you need.
- Blind tasting doesn't need a classroom. Alongside the Coach questions, our blind tasting app TasterPro lets you practise the tasting grid and get feedback. Once you have mastered the grid, you can test yourself by naming the wine in front of you from as few clues as possible.
In 1885 a scientist called Hermann Ebbinghaus showed that we forget most of what we learn within days unless we come back to it. Since then, a great many studies have found the same two things. We remember far more when we test ourselves than when we reread, and when we space our practice out over time instead of cramming.
The Coach is built on both, in three steps.
- Each question comes back just as you start to forget it, a little further apart each time, until it moves into your long term memory.
- Then you are asked to draw on what you know, chapter by chapter.
- Later, questions draw on several chapters at once. Using what you know like this fixes it in place.
Our aim is that you keep about 90 per cent of what we teach.
Yes. We add new content all the time, and we keep reading the research on how people learn best, adding methods once they are proven. You will notice a Feedback button on almost every page. The more you tell us what you would like improved, the better we can shape the course to the needs of our learners.
The questions are about real meals and real wines, so you are practising from the first day. Use TasterPro to taste blind at home, the Pairing Library to choose a wine for tonight's dinner, and the Dining app to pick from a restaurant's wine list.
We can't stop anyone failing an exam, but we know many courses have a high failure rate. We think that is because the learning is inconvenient and asks for a big commitment, and for many people, as social media shows, it ends in a lot of cramming just before the exam.
Our course is designed step by step, on the evidence of how people learn, to bring you to the exam confident. You arrive with knowledge you have kept and can recall, and a good idea of the result you are likely to get. By the time you reach the exam you should know whether you are ready to sit it. Then all you have to deal with on the day is nerves, and they are backed by knowing you have met the standard again and again in the practice tests that are part of the course.
The exam practice questions are marked. In the Coach you can also ask our AI coach to mark your answers.
For extra confidence there are the revision sheets, with the whole course on 84 sheets, 168 pages. We sat sample papers from existing Level 3 wine qualifications. With the book we scored nearly 100 per cent, and the revision sheets alone were enough for a very good pass on the theory.
Yes. If you are preparing for a Level 3 wine exam with another provider, you can buy our marked exam practice on its own and get the same feedback our own learners get. Every answer is marked, and you can take as many papers as you like.
See exam practice