Wine Foundation Program (Fall Semester)
The only chemistry class you’ll fall in love with.
The tasting course · Eight weeks
The Foundation program is truly a unique and enjoyable learning experience… it is the only chemistry class you will fall in love with. — Bob Pigeon, executive editor, Da Capo Press
Most wine drinkers stay tourists. They drink what they like, they read about it, and they never quite get past the surface of the glass — because nobody ever taught them how.
Tasting is not something you absorb by drinking a lot of wine. It’s a skill with a method, and the method can be taught. That’s the whole of this course: eight weeks, two hours a Sunday, learning to taste.
What you’re actually learning
Week one is the machinery. What you call taste is three systems working at once: the olfactory bulb, the tongue, and the trigeminal nerve. You’ll learn the difference between smelling a wine and tasting it.
Weeks two and three are the components. Acidity and the noble white grapes; tannin and the noble reds. These are the classes that inspired Bob Pigeon to say what he said.
What you’re building is a fingerprint for each grape — the markers that most reliably separate one variety from everything else in a blind lineup.
Week four is style — Old World against New World. Not a debate about which is better, but a working framework for the differences you can actually taste, and why.
Week five is the Varietal Lab. A distinction runs through this whole course: you can detect an aroma without knowing what it is, recognize it without being able to name it, and only identify it when you can connect it to a specific reference and say the word. Blind tasting lives entirely in that third category. The lab is where you get there.
Week six is winemaking — At this point, you understand the foundations of the grape; now it’s time to add the layer of winemaking.
Week seven you taste blind. Not guessing. Matching what’s in the glass against patterns you’ve spent six weeks installing.
Week eight you’re examined on it.
Schedule
| Week | Class |
|---|---|
| One | Intro to Sensory Wine Tasting |
| Two | White Varietal Components |
| Three | Red Varietal Components |
| Four | Old World vs. New World |
| Five | Varietal Fingerprint Lab |
| Six | Winemaking 101 |
| Seven | Blind Tasting |
| Eight | Tasting Exam |
Eight Sundays, two hours each. No prerequisites.
What you’ll be able to do
- Identify major grape varieties blind — no label, no hints, no one naming the grape first.
- Read a wine’s structure: place its acidity and tannin, and know what that tells you before you get to the fruit.
- Recognize the varietal fingerprints of the noble grapes and name them in language another professional will understand.
- Tell Old World from New World, and say why.
- Know how your own palate is calibrated, and correct for it.
- Describe what you’re tasting precisely enough that someone else knows exactly what you mean.
Blind identification of the major varietals is something a good many working professionals never learn to do reliably. Eight weeks is enough.
Who takes it
Hospitality and retail staff who need the skill for work. Winery and distribution people who want their palate formalized. And a large number of people with no professional stake at all, who simply got tired of drinking well without understanding why.
You do not need to work in wine to belong here. No prerequisites, no assumed background.
What it’s like
Two hours, Sunday afternoons, in a classroom built for it. Lecture, guided tasting, discussion, and an instructor telling you when what you just said about the glass was wrong.
Most students find in the first two weeks that they knew less than they thought. That’s the design. Come with a notebook, and expect to practice between classes — sensory memory gets built through repetition, and it doesn’t get built in the room alone.
Miss a class and you haven’t missed the material. Every session is recorded in full 4K and made available to students who can’t be there. Eight consecutive Sundays is a real commitment, and life doesn’t always cooperate. Perfect attendance isn’t required to finish the course or earn the credential.
Assessment and credential
Week eight is a written exam and a blind tasting assessment. You need to pass both.
Pass, and you earn Level II certification from the National Wine School — a professional credential in its own right, and the step before Level III.
Tuition
Member tuition: $699
Standard tuition: $999
Enroll at member tuition — $699
Anyone can enroll at member tuition. Membership is $19 a month and is added at checkout; it saves you 30% on this course and keeps working after the semester ends.
Enroll at standard tuition — $999
Foundation, or the full Core course?
Foundation is the tasting half of our Core Sommelier Course. Intermediate — the regional half, covering grape varieties and the major wine regions — is the other. Each is a complete course with its own credential, and either can be taken on its own.
Take Foundation if tasting is the skill you’re after, or if two hours a Sunday is the commitment that fits right now.
Take Core if you want both halves in one semester. It runs the same eight Sundays with two sections back to back, costs less than the two courses taken separately, and ends in Level III certification from the National Wine School.
See the Core Sommelier Course →
Who teaches it
Keith Wallace founded the Wine School in 2001 and has spent 25 years teaching people to taste. A winemaker who worked in Napa before opening the school, he has contributed to Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, wrote Corked & Forked, and has taught at Drexel University.
The Wine School is a great place to build knowledge and pursue your passion. — Jonathan Newman, former chairman of the PLCB and Wine Enthusiast’s Man of the Year
About the school
The Wine School of Philadelphia is in its 25th year. It is independent — not a licensee, franchise, or branch of a larger certifying body — which means the curriculum is written here and answers to no producer, importer or distributor.
Classes are held at 109 S. 22nd St. in Rittenhouse, in a room built for the purpose: student desks made from a salvaged Lancaster farmhouse, vintage chalkboards, a private cellar.
The Wine School of Philadelphia, ranked as one of the best sommelier training programs in America by students and professionals. — WineMaker Magazine, August–September 2024
Philadelphia Inquirer readers named the school a top Philadelphia trade school in 2026.