Intermediate Wine Course (Fall Semester)
You can taste it now. This is where you learn where it comes from.
The regions course · Eight weeks · Level III certification · Foundation required
Foundation taught you to read the glass — the components, the fingerprints, the method that gets you to a grape without a label.
This is the other half. Not a map to memorize, but the reasons behind it. Why Nebbiolo in Piedmont and not somewhere else. Why the same grape in two places gives you two different wines. Why the list in front of you is organized the way it is.
Facts without causes are trivia — you can recite them, but you can’t reason from them. This course teaches the causes, and it’s where a trained palate turns into working knowledge.
I got my start at the Wine School of Philadelphia. Their support helped launch my winemaking career. — Jenny Schultz, co-owner, Jolie-Laide Wines, Sonoma
What you’re actually learning
Eight weeks, one region at a time, working through what each place grows, why it grows there, and what that produces in the bottle.
Week one sets the frame — how wine regions came to be where they are, and what actually determines what a place can make: climate, site, soil, law, history, and the economics that shape all of them.
Then France. The reference point the rest of the wine world is still measured against, and the place where the relationship between site and wine was worked out most explicitly.
North America. The same grapes as France, mostly, in radically different conditions — which is the cleanest way to see how much of a wine comes from the grape and how much from everything else.
Australia. Warm-climate winemaking at scale, and what happens to a variety like Syrah when you move it somewhere it ripens easily.
Italy. Several hundred indigenous varieties, a fractured landscape, and a wine culture that developed on entirely different logic from France’s.
Spain and Portugal. Old vines, high altitude, heat, and two countries whose best wines are still undervalued relative to what’s in the bottle.
South America. Altitude as a substitute for latitude, and how the Andes make cool-climate wine possible at a warm-climate latitude.
Week eight is the examination.
Every region is tasted, not just studied — and because you arrive with the tasting method already built, you can use these sessions to calibrate rather than to catch up. By the end you should be able to work backward: from what’s in the glass to a plausible region, and from a region to a set of expectations about what it makes.
Schedule
| Week | Class |
|---|---|
| One | Introduction to Wine Regions |
| Two | France |
| Three | North America |
| Four | Australia |
| Five | Italy |
| Six | Spain and Portugal |
| Seven | South America |
| Eight | Regional Exam |
Eight Sundays, two hours each.
Prerequisite
Foundation is required before taking Intermediate. The regional work assumes you can already taste structure and recognize varietal character — without that, the sessions become a wine tour rather than an education, and the exam is out of reach.
The one exception is our Core Sommelier Course, which runs both halves side by side in a single semester. Taken separately, Foundation and Intermediate are two semesters in sequence. Core is one.
What you’ll be able to do
- Read a wine list and understand how it’s organized — and what the gaps in it say about whoever built it.
- Explain why Left Bank Bordeaux and Napa Valley take the same grape to different places.
- Place an unfamiliar wine by region, not just by variety, and say what led you there.
- Talk about terroir concretely — climate, site, elevation, ripening — rather than as an atmosphere.
- Recommend with reasons instead of impressions.
- Know which regions are genuinely undervalued right now, and why.
Who takes it
Foundation graduates finishing what they started. Restaurant and retail staff who need to speak about a list with authority. Distribution and import people who work with these regions commercially. And a great many people with no professional stake who simply want to understand what they’ve been drinking.
You do not need to work in wine to belong here. The only requirement is Foundation.
What it’s like
Two hours, Sunday afternoons, in a classroom built for it. Lecture, guided tasting, discussion, and an instructor who will push back on a lazy answer.
This is not a wine-of-the-month tour. Each region comes with an argument about why it makes what it makes, and you’ll be expected to engage with it rather than just taste along.
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 examination on the regions. You need to pass it.
Pass, and you earn Level III certification from the National Wine School — the same credential Core graduates receive, and the prerequisite for Advanced study.
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
Haven’t taken Foundation yet?
You have two routes.
Foundation first, Intermediate after. Two semesters, one course at a time, two hours a Sunday. Start with the tasting method, earn Level II, and come back for the regions and Level III.
Or take both at once. The Core Sommelier Course runs Foundation and Intermediate side by side across the same eight Sundays — the full sequence in half the calendar time, for less than the two courses cost separately, ending in Level III certification from the National Wine School.
See the Core Sommelier Course →
Who teaches it
Alana Zerbe is the school’s director of wine education and wrote the National Wine School’s Level One and Level Three curricula. She holds a J.D. and an LL.M. and practiced law in Washington before leaving it for this.
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.