Photo @BIVB
The Tasting Tips, the web series that makes Bourgogne wines easy to understand – no jargon, no fuss – is back in November for a third and final season, and it is more playful than ever. The Bourgogne Wine Board is still firmly in the driver’s seat, with another starring contribution from Maxime Dubois, sommelier and Official Bourgogne Wines Educator. This year, he is taking viewers out into the field to discover what makes the Bourgogne winegrowing region so wonderfully distinctive.
And there is a big new twist: a format for every mood! Short videos on Instagram give you the essentials, while full episodes on YouTube let you dig a little deeper.
Five down-to-earth questions to get to know Bourgogne wines better
From terroir to vintage, from how wine is made to choosing the right bottle for a special occasion (or no occasion at all), this new season tackles five topics to help everyone feel more at home with Bourgogne wines:
What exactly is a ’terroir’? What does a specific vintage tell us? How is wine made in Bourgogne? Which Bourgogne wine suits which occasion? And what does Bourgogne actually look like?
A series that makes Bourgogne wines simple – without taking itself too seriously
Since season one, co-writer Maxime Dubois has also been the series’ one-man cast, taking each topic straight to camera in both French and English. His easy-going, fast-paced and slightly quirky delivery has become part of the show’s signature style.
His motto: make subjects that can sometimes seem complicated easy to grasp – no lecture required – with plenty of spontaneity and a generous dash of tongue-in-cheek humour.
The goal remains the same: give everyone a few simple keys to understanding Bourgogne wines and, above all, help them feel more confident choosing them, talking about them and, naturally, tasting them.
For the final season, The Tasting Tips hit the road
For this third and final season, it was time for a change of scenery. From 22 to 26 June, the crew set up camp in Pommard, turning a holiday cottage into full-blown filming HQ before heading out to brave the heatwave. To keep travel time sensible, many outdoor scenes were shot around Beaune and Corton, as well as at two iconic locations: the Château du Clos de Vougeot and the Cité des Climats et vins de Bourgogne.
Maxime – or should that be Professor Emmett Brown? – then headed underground to cool off and promptly got lost in the Caves Patriarche while searching for the meaning of ‘vintage’.
These life-size sets invite viewers to explore Bourgogne while bringing Maxime’s take on the region to life: its terroirs, landscapes, vines and heritage. And because the team wanted even funnier storylines and some genuinely never-seen-before scenes, Bourgogne Live, co-director of the series, added special effects to selected sequences using AI. Maxime performed against a green screen so that Aurélien Ibanez and François Desperriers could later whisk him into the cockpit of a twin-engine aircraft – or drop him into the sea that covered Bourgogne in the Jurassic period! There is even a nod to Back to the Future in the episode about vintage.
The final tally: 5 days of filming, 434 fits of laughter and 637 shots filmed in French and English – 4 hours 15 minutes of footage, distilled down to the very best 30 minutes in each language.
See you on 5 November!
Season 3 will be available from 5 November across the Bourgogne wines social channels: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and, of course, YouTube.
The Tasting Tips now come in two bite-sized formats: A short version (around 1 min 30 sec), shared on Instagram and Facebook, offers a tempting taste of the full episode (around 5 minutes) on YouTube.
While you wait for the new episodes, seasons 1 and 2 are ready to (re)watch on the Bourgogne wines YouTube channel – click here. So, terroir, vintage, winemaking… ready to become a Bourgogne wine buff?
- About Maxime Dubois: Sommelier and Official Bourgogne Wines Educator
After studying at Ferrandi in Paris and gaining experience managing a restaurant and wine bar in Dublin, he became a sommelier certified by the Court of Master Sommeliers.
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