South African Jess Green and Kenyan Eva Mingala share wine tasting tips and skills on a pan African Google+ Hangout.

By Lucy Wanjiru

Wine experts Jess Green, founder of Wine South Africa and Eva Mingala, a Kenyan wine industry expert, joined guests at a Google event hosted at 88mph in Nairobi, to share wine tasting tips, details about the wine industry in Kenya and South Africa, as well as the do's and don'ts when partaking or serving wine. They also shared tips on the rule of pairing wines with different foods to match individual tastes.

“The Hangout was set up to ensure guests used all their senses to enjoy a truly cross-border experience on Google+,” explains Dorothy Ooko, Communications Manager for East and Francophone Africa, “we wanted to show how Google+ Hangouts can enable users to share experiences that involve taste and touch. We hope we are going to see restaurants and hotels connect to their clients and share some great food experiences through Hangouts.”

Guests followed along through the Google Hangout, with Nederburg Lyric and Nederburg Baronne wine at hand, to enjoy the diverse experiences when they indulged in the nosing and swirling of the white and red wine available. The truly pan African experience that saw a wine made by a Zimbabwean experienced together across Kenya and South Africa. Are screw-caps better grades than corkscrews? How should red wine be served? Will white wine really compliment my red meat? These were questions answered during the lively session hosted by Jess and Eva.

Jess, an avid wine taster and collector from Cape Town, walked guests through using their eyes, noses and taste buds to bring out the complete flavor of wines, and explained the maturing process in detail. He compared the thickness of the finger-thick 1980 John Platter Wine Guide with the chunkier 2009 John Platter for a quick indication about the growth of the wine industry in South Africa. Eva rounded off the Hangout well with her insights about the local wine industry, with details about imports from Chile, Italy, France, and other countries serving a diverse range of tastes.

Guided along a systematic wine tasting experience, the audience was able to share their individual impressions.

Google+ helps connect people with similar interests, such as wine tasting, in communities where they can share information, questions, pictures, and videos across Google’s platforms. By sharing information you care about, with the people you care about, information on specific interests is easier to find through Google+. Experts are also able to directly connect with people searching for content about their fields of interest.

Hangouts support unique engagement and allow for interactions that are more intimate. Linking all their web content under the umbrella of a Google+ profile helps enthusiasts from different fields ensure that they are directing fans to content that’s authentic.

By hosting the wine tasting experience on Google+ Hangout on Air, Wine South Africa was able to live stream the meeting through Google+ page and YouTube, and record the hangout on their YouTube channel, opening up the live experience to their online fans.