has anyone done the wine spectator courses?

I'm thinking of doing one with my gf and I'm wondering if they're any good. What sort of suggestions do they make for the wine tastings? Are they very specific or more general? I'd do an offline tasting course but the only one i can find is in french and my gf only speaks english so it's not really worth the $$ for her...

I'm looking at the survey course and it is ten 90 minute classes with 2 wines tasted per class... It looks at wines from the United States, France, Italy, Spain, South America, Australia and New Zealand.

thoughts? The point is to get a better understanding of wine and expand the number of wines i've tasted. Right now i tend to stick to what I know, which basically means I buy a lot of pouilly-fuissé b/c I drink a lot of white. After i develop a better understanding of my own tastes, I'd like to start filling a wine fridge with worthy wines.

If you're really interested (and i'd be willing to do this with anyone I "know" on the forum), we could probably cheat on the fees.

The Understanding Wine course is 195 bucks, but I could put it on my credit card and you could paypal me your half and we'd both be able to access it since it's on a website.

I could see myself taking a number of the courses because I'd really like to learn as much as possible before I start trying to buy wine for long-term aging. If you're thinking the same, it could save us both a fair amount of money that we could spend wine or shoes. :P

g33k.

Does it have a guided approach to tasting? From what I could tell with the WS course it will pit varietals on opposite sides of the acidity scale, for instance, so that you can learn the difference.