Ditch Learning 200+ Wine Tasting Terms! Do This Instead

Feeling overwhelmed the moment someone starts talking about “lemons, limes, or wet rocks” in your wine glass? You’re not alone. Wine tasting can seem like learning a foreign language—especially if you struggle to put words to what you taste or smell. In this episode of Everyday Sommelier, Kristi Mayfield is joined by neurodiversity educator, Russell Van Broecklen, to reveal revolutionary, science-backed techniques to help you learn how to taste wine, decode aromas, and master wine vocabulary—faster than you ever thought possible.

Learn how the same strategies used to help students with dyslexia can empower any adult wine lover to bypass overwhelm and confidently identify and remember key wine flavors. Discover Kristi’s signature Flavor Decoder (the wine wheel) and how you can personalize wine learning to make it stick—whether you’re learning 12 core flavors or want to master more than 200 wine aroma terms. 

From AI hacks for memory retention to practical, approachable steps that work even if you have limited time, this episode breaks down wine tasting for beginners and enthusiasts alike.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• How to use neuro-based memory techniques (like word analysis + personalized stories) to permanently remember wine aromas and flavors.
• Ways to leverage Kristi’s Flavor Decoder (wine wheel) to simplify complex wine vocabulary—so you can confidently talk about any bottle.
• Simple AI-powered steps to quickly learn and retain 12 essential wine tasting terms (and grow your vocabulary from there).
• The mindset shift and practical process for enjoying wine learning at your own pace—without fear, snobbery, or overwhelm.

TOP TIMESTAMPS:

00:04:16 | From Intimidation to Confidence: The Science-Backed Shortcut to Learning Wine Tasting
Russell recounts feeling lost in a wine conversation and introduces his neuroscience-based method for rapid flavor memory.

00:09:19 | Lemon, But Make It Personal: Building Lifetime Wine Memories With Storytelling
Learn why connecting personal experiences (like your mom’s lemon bars) to wine aromas creates instant flavor recall.

00:12:27 | Mastering the Wine Wheel: Simplifying 200+ Wine Aromas to 12 Core Flavors
How to use the wine wheel and AI prompts to break wine learning into manageable, memorable chunks.

00:17:18 | Unlock Fast Results: Start With Your Favorite Wines and Grow Your Wine Vocabulary Effortlessly
Russell and Kristi reveal how focusing on your own preference—just a handful of flavors—can make wine tasting confidence a reality.

00:20:47 | Why Perfect Wine Talk Isn’t About Memorization—It’s About Authenticity and Enjoyment
Discover why adding your own story makes wine discussions effortless at restaurants, tastings, and with friends.

00:27:19 | Your 3-Step Path to Real Wine Confidence: Personalization, Repetition, and Real-Life Stories
Russell’s

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Transcript

Kristi Mayfield (00:00)
Let's be real. Learning how to taste wine can feel like learning a new foreign language. You swirl, you sniff, and then you blank. Is it lemons? Is it limes? Or something odd like wet rocks? Well, today's episode is for anyone who's ever felt overwhelmed or embarrassed trying to describe what they're tasting, what they're smelling.

in their class.

I'm joined today by Russell Vanbrocklen, an esteemed educator with more than 10 years of experience educating dyslexic students. And he has adapted some of those same learning techniques for us today to help adults just like you become better wine tasters,

so stay tuned.

Kristi Mayfield (01:07)
Today, Russell and I are going to show you how you can narrow your focus on the immense world of wine flavors and aromas down to just a few core elements and build your own flavor language in order to unlock confidence in every sip and every glass in every bottle. And trust me, if this approach works for kids with learning challenges, it's definitely going to work for you.

In my courses, I often utilize my flavor decoder or wine wheel for tasting tips to help simplify the identification of flavors and aromas through visual cues. Now, when Russell first saw this three ring design of the flavor decoder and its structure that moves from general things like citrus to more specific flavors, think lemon curd, something clicked.

And as someone who helps students with dyslexia organize and retain complex information, he recognized how this kind of visual structure could train your brain to actually remember wine aromas and build tasting fluency in a whole different way and potentially way faster than other traditional methods. So Russell and I decided to team up.

Kristi Mayfield (02:27)
Well, today we are veering into a slightly different direction with wine education. And with me today is Russell Vanbrocklen who is an innovative educator teaching dyslexic children how to break the code in their learning patterns. And so we today are going to be translating that into how you can take some of Russell's tips to better

Russell (02:40)
Okay.

Kristi Mayfield (02:53)
learn wine. Russell, thank you for being a guest today.

let's just dive right in, Russell. When it comes to wine, it can be very complex. It can be almost fearsome in a way that there's so

much. A lot of people simply don't feel like they can ever, ever learn it. Now from your perspective and being on the educational side and working with some learning challenges, do you believe that wine is one of those learning subjects that is difficult that people may or may not ever feel that they can actually break the code and learn wine?

Russell (03:30)
Yeah, so just so everybody knows my background and when they say, oh, this can't be done. My original research project, I

I took a bunch of highly motivated dyslexic high school juniors and seniors with middle school writing skills. These are highly intelligent, highly motivated college bound kids with exceptional family support. They're writing at middle school level. The senior professors in Buffalo said these kids should not be allowed in college. Then I gave them a writing test for entering graduate school called the graduate records exam. They scored average or above average on that test. after going through a one year class,

like an extra English class, And they're scoring average or above average of entering graduate students. So if I can teach a dyslexic high school kid to jump eight grade levels in one year, I can show you how to better learn how to remember wine this is where my interest in this started coming in.

I helped a student in the Upper East Side of New York City. and they were very happy with the final result. So he took me out to a steakhouse where the steak was 150 bucks just for the steak. But then he started ordering wine and the wine ⁓ person came over and they were discussing it in such a way, to me it was a foreign language. And I felt as an adult,

It was so embarrassing So I'm wondering what is the difference between a thousand dollar bottle of wine and a $50 bottle of wine? I had no clue and I felt rather embarrassed about it. So as I progressed in my research,

What I was looking for is, is there a way that we can show adults? Because let's face it, if you wanted to put in the effort of a university class, you can learn this in a semester. But adults don't have time So we had to come up with, I need to come up with something far more efficient, yet based in the new neuroscience. And that's what I'm looking to discuss with you today.

Kristi Mayfield (05:22)
Great. So really thinking not just about the content, but how the brain translates the content either into memory patterns or learning patterns. for you, our listener, because you very likely don't have dyslexia.

So this is a really unique way. And Russell, where you and I connected on it is actually through my tool or in my class called the flavor decoder or the wine wheel, a framework for aromas and flavors to wine.

But it can look rather complicated because it's very structured. But if you're not familiar with how to use it, number one, that's where the Flavor Decoder e-book and class comes in. But also from a learning structure, how do you take this? How did you look at this Wine Wheel Russell and translate this huge?

200 plus aromas and flavors on this wheel alone into taking that into making it something really personal that a wine lover like our listener could actually use to break down and learn wine.

Russell (06:35)
Well, when I looked at that, it came back to what I typically do. like when I'm working with dyslexic students, they have to remember literally, hundreds of evolved words for them to start to be able to read.

All right. So what I want everybody to understand is when somebody says they're going to base things on neuroscience, a book. It's called Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz from Yale. This is the number one book in my field. And just so know, all the major innovations typically in education comes from dyslexia.

And then it goes into working with gen ed students or people who don't have dyslexia.

Kristi Mayfield (07:10)
So with dyslexia or most learning challenges, the brain triggers in different ways in different parts. And that means your learning styles have to modify around where your brain is actually triggering learning and thought. Is that correct?

Russell (07:24)
I found it's far more effective to be word analysis followed by articulation. And that's what I'm going to show you today to how to start remembering really important, you know, the 200 parts that you're talking about. But before I go into that, what I just want people to understand is I found

trying to learn this information with other courses, other people that do what you do. I found the material was horrible. It was difficult to learn. Yours has a very logical structure, step by step, and it just takes practice to learn. It doesn't take a semester's worth of undergraduate effort, but it takes some time and effort to put in, and then you can do this. So the main part that we're looking for is

Trying to take these 200 plus words and how do we remember that far more effectively? What I'm going to want to think of is what are the main ones? So actually I'm very big in using artificial intelligence to help do the grunt work to figure these things out. what I found is really there's about 12 major ones that just keep coming back again and again.

Kristi Mayfield (08:27)
12

major.

Russell (08:29)
12 words that just kept coming up again and again. Yes. The ones that, that if you master those, makes trying to understand the different bottles of wine at a restaurant far easier to start off with. All right. So I was like, how do we remember these flavors and aromas?

Kristi Mayfield (08:31)
So flavors and aromas. Okay.

Russell (08:49)
First thing that I'm going to recommend is pick your AI model and pick your flavor or aroma and put it in and ask, what is a personal definition of this? How to come up with a definition And you want to keep it to no more than eight words. But then you look at that definition and it's not going to stick in your memory. So then what you need to do is you need to personalize the story. So let's kind of walk through this.

What is the flavor or aroma you find your students typically have the hardest time to remember?

Kristi Mayfield (09:19)
There are a lot of them, but I'm going to just make it simple and talk about lemon.

Russell (09:25)
Okay. Lemon. All right. So you put in the artificial intelligence, give me a customized definition of lemon in eight words or less. So in your own personal story, is there anything in your past, maybe your grandmother made a lemon meringue pie. Maybe there was some special time in your life where lemon was important. Some event.

Kristi Mayfield (09:46)
My mother's

infamous lemon bars.

Russell (09:49)
Your mother's infamous lemon bars. So what I want you to think about is try to say in about a sentence or two about a time you remember that's most vivid in your memory, working with your mother to make the lemon bars or eating the lemon bars or some social interaction with your mother and the lemon bars.

Kristi Mayfield (10:08)
The lemon bars are on the kitchen counter every time my daughter and I visit my mother's home because she knows they are my daughter's favorite and I too love how tart yet sweet they are and they are just kind of the epitome of deliciousness.

Russell (10:26)
Okay, so you're to say that into the artificial intelligence under context. And then you ask the artificial intelligence, please customize an eight maximum eight word definition. you gave it the context and what you're going to find is it's going to give you a custom definition for lemon.

I would go through and do the same thing with the 12 that ⁓ come up most of the time. And then once a night, just go through it. Just read it. It'll take five, 10 minutes tops. All right. Do it a second night in a row and then a third, then give it about three days.

See if you can remember them all. If you can't do another three days in a row, give it a week. Do you remember them all? If yes, move on to the next group. If no, do it three days in a row. And before you know it, you will have memorized lemon and the customized area that you took from that, from your own story. Now, as you advance and you want to say,

What does lemon mean for me in regards to wine? Add that to the context, add that to the story, and you're going to have to have the AI probably give you 10 examples that you can pick from.

So that's the main idea is as you're going through this, ask for a definition for what you want to learn.

Take that smell, take that taste, and then relate it to how that affected you at some point in your life. And write a couple of sentences about that. And then as you're advancing and you've got that down, when you're thinking about the wine, how does it make you feel?

What food does it go well with? Try different things and then have the definition constantly evolve as you're learning. And you want to keep it to a maximum of eight words because for most of us, that's the limit of what we can do.

And you do this for your 200 plus words and then you have it down.

Kristi Mayfield (12:27)
So Russell, I want to look at that framework because we obviously are talking about the flavor decoder. But in formal wine education, whether you're talking Wine and Spirit Education Trust or WSET or Court of Master Sommelier Society of Wine Educators, everyone has a structure upon which they teach wine tasting, whether it's a grid, it's terms where you're identifying acidity, alcohol, sweetness.

Russell (12:34)
Yes.

Kristi Mayfield (12:54)
fruit flavors, aromas, all of those. And while it seems very structured, it can be extraordinarily overwhelming. tasting a lot of wines and following that template. It sounds as though in a way we're looking at it from a different perspective, taking those flavors and aromas that either are common to the 12 that you

in your research found, or even taking this wheel, for example, and the flavor decoder wheel has the categories, general categories, such as fruits that are in white wines or fruits that are in red wines. And then the next level is taking that into, say, citrus or tree fruits or tropical fruits. ⁓

understanding correctly, you are suggesting starting there and building that vocabulary out to where you understand it from a one very personal perspective and the definition of lemon according to I'll say Kristi or Russell or someone else who's listening anyone in our audience and then you start to build that personal definition

which translates into you being able to identify that in wines and also translate that into a conversation with someone, a sommelier, a wine steward, when you want to purchase a glass, a bottle of wine that fits your ideal flavor palette. Is that what I'm understanding?

Russell (14:24)
Yeah,

that's exactly it. The main part that I found is let's be very plain and direct here.

when I first started doing this, I was extremely intimidated because I literally didn't know much. So as you go through and you learn this way and you start breaking down when you drink a bottle of wine and you're doing a tasting,

Let me ask you, how many different flavors and aromas typically do you come up with?

Kristi Mayfield (14:54)
It depends on the wine. If it's a simple wine, two or three. If it's a complex wine, 20 to 30. There's no magical answer. It depends on what's in that bottle.

Russell (14:58)
Okay.

Okay, right. it

gives you a range. It's can I discuss two or three of these or can I discuss 20 or 30? And the idea of trying to become educated enough to speak about 20 or 30 different flavors, people are like, I can't do that. But if you learn the terms the way that I showed you and they become part of you, an analogy I like to give when I'm working with dyslectics is,

So remember when you learned how to tie your shoe and you had to focus like crazy every bit of your energy on how to do it? But then now, if you were to tie your shoe right now, we could be talking about the most complicated thing in the world and you could keep up with the conversation because it's unconscious competence. It's muscle memory. You remember the terms this way and the stories that go around with it. A lot of times when

I'm in situations where wine is important. We're discussing it. People like to explain how the different aromas and flavors affected them. Now this is part of you. You know this. So you can start discussing, you know, if it's 20 flavors and aromas,

Kristi Mayfield (16:14)
Right. So for our listener, I mean, this is the everyday sommelier podcast and most of the listeners in our community love wine, but they also want to feel more confident. They want to understand what they like, why they like it and translate that into more amazing wine experiences. So from that angle, Russell,

And the techniques you've been talking about, what is the fastest way to build that personal flavor memory? You've talked about using chat GPT. You've talked about identifying or taking the 12 major flavors and aromas as your starting point. You could also say, what are

Your favorite styles of wine and if you are a fan of fresh and crisp white wines, the way I teach it you're looking more in those citrusy apparely or tree fruit flavors so you could use that as a starting point is that. Is that what i'm understanding as your guide post as far as starting this type of process.

Russell (17:18)
Yes. So let's be perfectly clear. You could, we could hand you a $10,000 bottle of wine and you could talk intelligently about the 20 or 30 different tastes and aromas. For people starting out, that gulf is more than the Grand Canyon. How do we shrink that gulf to a mud puddle so we can leap over it? I would say focus on what you like the best. Like literally

If it's red wine, if it's white, whatever it is. And take your material because it's extraordinarily well organized. And find the 10 or 12 terms that you need to remember. And then apply what I just told you. Know them, have your story with them. And then what you'll be able to do is when you go out to the restaurant, maybe you can talk intelligently about one.

I can tell you when I could do that for the first time, I didn't feel so embarrassed.

And as I expanded this and was able to discuss two or three, I found that if you can discuss three things, normally you're going to find, unless if you're going into the upper reaches of your profession, at most casual discussion, that's enough. right.

Kristi Mayfield (18:28)
well,

I'd like to pull that thread. In many of my classes now, If I'm doing a subject where

we're not 100 % focused on the six S's and using the flavor decoder. Instead, I asked the students to talk about what does this remind you of? Is it a summer day picnicking with your best friends with a view of the ocean? Or is it bundled up by a fire in the mountains at night, ⁓ sipping on a red wine that does have some of those

you know, baking spices of nutmeg and cinnamon on the back end with a little toasty oaky on it. And talking about those experiences breaks down that barrier. But I think where the two come together is you've personalized if you use Russell's training or learning patterns and suggestions, you've personalized those flavors and aromas to what's meaningful to you.

So you can then translate. It's almost like building and putting those two storylines together. The specifics about what the flavor or aroma is, but melding that with your personal experiences and stories to translate that into not just sounding smart, but also being able to have that great conversation at your wine shop, at the dinner table, at a restaurant, so that you can have that conversation over wine or order that wine that's going to meet.

your desires as far as the style you like. Is that fair?

Russell (20:00)
Yeah,

you nailed it. And when people say, well, that's 200 or 250 terms I have to remember, what I want to let you know is I consistently, typically take in dyslexic students who are 10, who are lucky if they're reading at the first or second grade level, and I teach them more than 250 to 300 words.

using a much more complicated technique. And within six months, they know hundreds of evolved terms at a much deeper level, And they're beginning to read when they're 10.

Kristi Mayfield (20:33)
Yes.

Russell (20:33)
You're an

adult and I'm assuming a lot of people here have some form of higher education. If I can teach a 10 year old to learn 250 terms, you can learn 250 terms here. And we're not asking you to memorize it next week. This is something that's supposed to be enjoyable. Enjoy it. And over time in the next six to 12 months, more and more of these terms will become part of you.

until you know them all, but not everybody's going to want to learn all 200 terms. If you just want to go out and understand the basics, you can do that with probably 12, 20, maybe 30 terms. And as you get more into wine, you can go deeper at your own pace. The key thing to remember is our brain doesn't like to learn more than eight words for a definition. And you have to constantly update that with

your favorite memory and then how does, what does it make you feel like? Or when you're speaking to it, is there some aspiration that this reminds you of? And you can constantly adjust and tweak your definition and following that method, it's not that hard to learn. And then it's part of you.

and the conversation will flow effortlessly once you know it.

Kristi Mayfield (21:44)
with what you just said, and that conversation will flow effortlessly. Russell, for our listener, if they follow and just start with one or two words, or flavors or aromas when I say words, what does success look like when you apply this? how would someone listening to this episode understand that

They followed what you said, OK, I take these words, I put it into whatever AI platform that I enjoy. I give it the scenario. what does it remind me of? Kind of giving it some personality. I'll go back to the word lemon. So I give lemon personality by giving personal experiences with it. I put it in the context then of wine

how lemon might be expressed in the context of wine. And then I keep fine tuning that, but I keep it in front of me. I remember the elementary school spelling program called Wordly Wise with my daughter. And we figured out her learning pattern was in threes. So we would go through each of those exams, each of those list of words and the definitions minimum three times.

every night before her test so that it was locked into stone. granted everybody's learning patterns are slightly different, but is that what you would call success versus maybe trying to score the highest level on a WCET 1 exam?

Russell (23:16)
The number three keeps coming up and learning. The second number is five and the last number is seven. So I try to reduce it to about three.

What you need to understand is when it comes to learning the words is you want to really, really simplify it. So when I'm talking about word analysis followed by articulation, that's exactly what I want you to focus on. There are a million different ways out there for people to learn language better.

I am just showing you the most advanced science, again, and what I found by flipping the word analysis followed by articulation.

I just want you to keep it very simple. It's word analysis.

followed by articulation. All right? So we're going to analyze that definition and then to articulate, we are going to start to personalize it the way that I showed you. Try three nights, then put it away for three days or eventually a week until you have it down. And try the next one. Because remember, this is supposed to be fun. And a lot of, honestly, a lot of people that

I've showed similar things in different areas over the time. They do it right before they go to bed.

Kristi Mayfield (24:26)
Yep. Is that good or bad?

Russell (24:27)
And that,

oh, well, that's when they have time. Adults are so busy nowadays, especially when you're parents.

And it allows you to enjoy this hobby and to be able to talk about it at a sophisticated personal level. And for most people, that's what you're looking for.

for most of us out there to learn this material over the next six, 12 months, slowly at our own pace and to have more more sophisticated discussions. It allows you to build up slowly and to be personalized and to have that conversation. I can tell you, Oh, in that conversation. Exactly. I can tell you, I met.

Kristi Mayfield (25:01)
and that confidence.

Russell (25:05)
so many wine connoisseurs that had an encyclopedic knowledge of wine, even at the chemical, like, I mean, these are people with like undergraduate degrees of chemical engineering. But when you ask, how did it, what does this mean to you? I mean, they just can't say anything. Their knowledge is phenomenal, but their ability to communicate it in this shared community is next to nothing.

So that's why focus on a minimum amount to get started and expand it over time. Remember, learning these words aren't like my typical dyslexic students where if they don't learn it, they can't read and they can't move on to the next grade. Okay? For adults, it's supposed to be a lot more fun. And that's I wanted to make this so simple by showing you the most advanced neuroscience so you can learn this as a

Kristi Mayfield (25:49)
Yes.

Russell (25:57)
effectively is possible. People say, well, I'm not dyslectic. I said, no, but what you're going to find in education is most of the innovative ideas start with dyslectics and they move into the Gen Ed classroom where Gen Ed students pick it up a lot faster. Dyslectics tend to go a lot deeper.

Kristi Mayfield (26:14)
So ability to transform your wine journey through foundational focus around core elements of wine, flavor and aroma, is really confidence level just from implementing this process can really, it's not just about sounding smart. It's about the confidence and feeling like you've been able to identify something

that you're going to build upon.

So I'd love to just kind of wrap this up because I think this is really core and essential tool set skills that you can build on. Again, taking a tool like the flavor decoder or a wine wheel and starting there and making it your own. But for the listener today, if they were to only take away three key tips,

what would be the most important things that they should take away if they want to leverage these alternative learning methods in order to conquer wine tasting, wine conversations, and most importantly, wine confidence. What would those be for you, Russell?

Russell (27:19)
First thing is what I'm gonna reiterate again, but to focus on, you don't wanna sound like this is a bunch of BS. You want it authentic, you want it original to you. The last thing you wanna do is go and memorize some wine tasting book and say, with this flavor, I'm supposed to say this. Because again, you're dealing with an incredibly sophisticated crowd.

and they want originality. And if you're going to do that, believe me, they've already read those books.

Take the time to over time, learn the 200 plus words that you have. And then you will be able to speak very

personally about how the wine affects you at any place. And as you go to grow to a couple of dozen terms to eventually 50 to a hundred, you will be simply amazed at the conversations that you can engage in. And the key thing is they will be authentic to you and the people you'll be talking to will know it's authentic to you.

Kristi Mayfield (28:22)
what I've heard you say is one, pick the flavors that matter the most to you, that time and time again you want to find in your wine. Personalize those by leveraging either your own stories or what your expectations are from food references, experience references. And third, make it authentic.

So that when you go into a conversation, whether it's with your best friends or at a networking event, you're bringing your true self and you have something to contribute, but you can do so now with a different level of confidence. And Russell, think the way you've approached the flavor decoder, this topic around a very complex subject like wine is a really innovative way of looking at something and breaking it down really to the simplest elements.

even starting with a singular flavor. So I truly appreciate the way you've approached this. And I hope that you are listener have learned some tidbits from the way Russell is teaching children that really do have a major hurdle to overcome in their education. And now we can apply these principles to something as fun, enjoyable, meaningful in our own personal lives as our own personal line journey. So Russell, this is very much

been enlightening and I thank you so much for taking time to be on Everyday Sommelier podcast today.

Russell (29:44)
Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Kristi Mayfield (29:45)
Everyday Sommelier, my mission is to transform your wine journey and help you learn wine in a whole different way And if you truly do enjoy learning and participating as a listener to Everyday Sommelier, please do me the honor.

of sharing this podcast with those friends of yours you love drinking wine with every single day. And in order to stay in the know, there's a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline. Make sure you're signed up for the insider list at WINE-WIZE.com That's W-I-N-E-W-I-Z-E.com. I promise I'm not going to flood your inbox with irrelevant information, but it will keep you in

the wine no. Now next week we are going to take a different twist on fine wine with a guest who has been selling fine wine in California for quite a while, but his intention is to bring wine back to everyone and to expand wine as the beverage of choice for generations to come. So stay tuned and cheers to learning wine.

your way.