Should wine podcasts educate, inform and entertain?

Again, I probably started to answer this question a bit in the in the previous question because I started talking about tone.

Yeah. I think wine again, it does often get overly complicated when it doesn’t necessarily need to. And I’ll share my own shortcomings here, I think. You know, I, I hold the WSET Level 2 qualification, which is not the most advanced of qualifications, yet the people who I feature on the podcast and the people that I want to have talking to my audience and invite to come talk to my audience, you know, they often much more highly qualified than that.

And yeah, whether the aim of my podcast is to educate, inform and entertain. I think, yeah, I try to do all three. I would say, you know, I do try to get all of those elements in there and they I think they do naturally come about and probably, you know, rather than me sitting down when I’m doing interviews and kind of thinking, you know, am I educating am I entertaining am I informing, I like to think that I do the work upfront.

I like to think that actually my biggest you know, my biggest two things that I focus on when I’m doing putting together the podcast are a the choice of guests. So I will research people quite thoroughly before I have them on and, you know, target them and reach out to them based on the value I think that they can provide to my audience.

And then, yeah, the second thing that, you know, where I focus on is not necessarily being in front of the mic. Yeah. Mainly linked to the fact that, you know, I’m usually not the most qualified person on there. I think that my background and experience are actually better in creating the the environment, kind of almost creating the canvas and setting the table for that expert to lay out their knowledge in a highly accessible way and in a way that will communicate well across the media.

Often people that come on in and be they whatever Masters of Wine, Master Sommeliers, experienced winemakers, they often haven’t been on many podcasts in their life. You know, I’ve produced more than 300 now, nearly 350. And so I have a very good idea around what will sound good and what will kind of draw and what will keep people listening. So I focus on that. I focus on choosing the guest. I focus on making them sound as good as they can when they come on. I don’t think that those two together have been the right things to focus on.

I see myself staying there in terms of my focus going forward. And I think that the feedback I’ve had is that I’ve managed to get the best out of people when I’ve had them on.