PennLive Highlights the Wine School’s New Affordable “Quick Pours” Classes

PennLive’s Nov. 4, 2025 article: “Wine School of Philadelphia introduces affordable ‘Quick Pours’ classes.”

The Wine School of Philadelphia has spent decades teaching everything from introductory wine classes to professional sommelier programs. In fall 2025, PennLive reported on the school’s attempt to do something decidedly smaller: teach useful wine skills in about an hour.

The new program was called Quick Pours, a series of short, affordable classes built around practical questions people encounter in everyday life.

Rather than spending an evening studying a particular region or grape variety, students could learn how to find a good bottle without overspending, navigate the shelves of a wine shop, order confidently at a business dinner or make smarter choices when buying wine.

The format was deliberately accessible. Classes included guided tastings but required no previous wine knowledge, making Quick Pours an entry point for people curious about wine but not necessarily ready for a traditional Wine School class or certification course.

There was a second purpose behind the program as well. Quick Pours gave the Wine School’s next generation of instructors an opportunity to teach in front of real students while progressing through the school’s instructor-training system.

That made the classes something of a teaching laboratory: affordable education for the public on one side of the table and practical experience for emerging wine educators on the other.

For the Wine School, Quick Pours represented a return to a principle that has shaped its programs since its founding: wine education can be serious without being intimidating.

The lessons were shorter. The subjects were practical. And the objective was straightforward — give people knowledge they could actually use the next time they opened a bottle.