It's not your typical reality TV exchange.
"What's the term for adding sugar to wine during fermentation?" demands a stern-faced woman, peering librarian-like over her reading glasses.
"We just need an answer," insists the man seated next to her at a table in a dimly lit cellar.
The camera cuts to a college-age blonde standing nervously at attention in front of them.
"I'm drawing a blank," she offers.
Viewers, too, can be forgiven for drawing a blank, unless, of course, they happen to be Burgundy or Chinon aficionados.
The Wine Makers is a new television series based in California that promises to add suspense, humiliation and betrayal to wine education. Call it The Apprentice with grapes. Or, more specifically, The Apprentice with grapes and brains.
"It's a thinking man's reality show, for sure," says Kevin Whelan, founder of Doc City Productions, which has offices in New York and California. "If you tune in, you're going to learn about something. You're going to learn a lot about wine."
The six-part series, due to finish filming in April and scheduled to air in early summer on PBS in the United States and on a yet-to-be-named commercial network in Canada, borrows the standard reality TV conceit, pitting 12 contestants in a faceoff of skill and will. The challenge? To harvest, crush and blend the wine and develop a marketing strategy for their cuvée. Competitions range from the gladiatorial, such as orchestrating a complete harvest in 48 hours, to the cerebral, devising an eye-catching label and brand identity.
Prize for the last wine geek standing: a contract to make and market the winning brand across the United States. Also part of the package is a five-city tasting tour, during which the winner gets to pour samples for the public, and an editorial profile in a major food and wine magazine.
A U.S. steakhouse chain has already contracted to carry the victory vino by the glass at locations across the country. "There's already been orders on their wine, so it puts them in business," Mr. Whelan said. "We have totally short-cut what would have taken them years to do."
But is wine ready for prime time? Even Mr. Whelan, who worked on Eco-Challenge with reality TV pioneer Mark Burnett (Mr. Burnett developed The Apprentice and produced Survivor), concedes the series is destined for a narrow audience by Apprentice standards.
Perhaps most significantly, it lacks, for better or worse, the celebrity magnetism and captivating comb-over of skyscraper tycoon Donald Trump. Judges for The Wine Makers include such lesser knowns as Lettie Teague, author and wine editor of New York-based Food & Wine magazine, and Joshua Wesson, co-founder of the U.S. wine store chain Best Cellars.
But the fact any network, even highfalutin PBS, bought the series at all is, I think, an encouraging sign of the times. As a professional pursuit and pastime, wine finally is breaking out of the dinner-party-bore ghetto and earning mainstream interest.
"People think they would love to give up their day job up to become winemakers," Mr. Whelan said.
Doc City received between 3,500 and 4,000 applications in response to a casting call two years ago, he said. "It literally shut our server down. We were definitely not prepared."
Ultimately, 600 candidates were brought in for auditions. "They all had to be wine enthusiasts," he said. "These are the people among your friends that everybody goes to when they need to ask something about wine." To qualify, they also had to have business smarts but could not be working for a winery or enrolled in a viticulture or oenology program.
