The Third Way for Wine Education

Why professional wine training should build skills, not an exclusive club

You can check out the conversation for yourself at Wine For Normal People.

It is all I’ve wanted to do for 25 years. I wanted to prove that there was a third way. Because I knew, and I know, there’s a way to do this.

I have no time for people who try to put other people down or use people as stepping stones. All I wanna do is lift people up. I want everyone to be lifted up, everyone to be able to communicate, everyone to succeed.

We’re intentionally not highbrow. That’s the goal at the Wine School of Philadelphia.

I recently had a conversation about all this with Elizabeth Schneider, host of Wine for Normal People. We’ve had conversation after conversation about the state of wine education, and this time we put those arguments on the record. She asked the question I think every student should be asking: What are these programs actually preparing people to do?

When a credential becomes a club

Elizabeth didn’t mince words about the industry’s most celebrated titles.

“That is not a professional certification. That is a club,” she said. “Because if it were a professional certification … even medical boards, or the hardest thing that you can possibly take, the pass rate’s still about 45%.”

And then: “Either everyone that’s taking it is so stupid, they are all just the dumbest of the dumb, or there is something very, very wrong with the system.”

That’s Elizabeth’s argument, and it’s deliberately provocative. Mine begins with a question about the student: What have I done wrong? What did I get wrong? How was this graded? What are the metrics behind this?

You shouldn’t have that level of cost unless you absolutely know what your outcomes are. You have to know that. These things matter a great deal to me, and if I’m taking a class, if I’m taking a program, it doesn’t matter what level you are at, you wanna know so you can actually get better.

But you also have to actually have instructors that can actually get you there. There is no student who fails, that it’s that student’s fault. If they’re in there, if they’re doing the work, that’s not their fault. I mean, if they’re not doing the work, that’s one thing, but it’s the school and your teacher’s responsibility to get you there.

The established programs have real strengths. WSET is highly respected in the industry, and the Court of Master Sommeliers has a handle on service and hospitality training. WSET awards four levels of wine qualifications, including a Level 4 Diploma with a wine-business examination. The Court has four examination levels and assesses theory, tasting and practical service. And the Institute of Masters of Wine accepts WSET Diploma or an equivalent qualification for entry. Those distinctions matter.

But what I want to know, what we need is people coming out of programs that have been tested on things that actually reflect how the industry is organized, that they understand clearly what we do here and what we don’t do.

Elizabeth put it another way:

“What are the before and afters? Are they qualified for a different job? Are they able to do something in the wine industry that they weren’t previously able to do? Is it necessary to succeed in wine?”

That’s where I’d start. Not with the pin. With the person wearing it.

Knowledge that matters outside the examination room

This is something that I realized about 20-plus years ago, especially when I was working as a winemaker. I was realizing that their knowledge level was not what I was taught. And what they knew was a lot of information about things that I didn’t think really mattered.

To sell wine, to buy wine, to be in the industry, it just was a lot of weird stuff. Like, they would be asking me about trellising systems. And I’m like, “Dude, that doesn’t matter here. It doesn’t matter if we’re using Scott Henry, because the lyre method works really well here, but that’s just ’cause we don’t have enough money to change it out. So, like, that’s it. We’re fine.”

I don’t mean that viticulture doesn’t matter. If you’re making wine, of course it does. But the right knowledge depends on the job you’re actually preparing for.

As Elizabeth said, “Do you need to know every single grape variety in Georgia? … How’s that gonna help somebody make money? How does that help the trade at all?”

Have a big vocabulary, but if you can’t describe things simply and clearly to somebody and they understand exactly what you mean, then all you’re doing, you’re just performing.

Everyone in the industry needs a shared vocabulary. So when I’m saying that a Pinot Noir is varietally correct, you know exactly what I mean. Then you can say, like, the variations: Willamette Valley versus Central Coast. Know those things so that we can have a very quick conversation about styles and what things are, and that everyone can understand.

Reduce the Tower of Babel.

The very first day of a level two program, I have everyone smell a Sauvignon Blanc, and I say, “Okay, ignore all the things you like, like all the fruit. Notice the thing you don’t like, the weird thing, because it’s always the weird thing that makes things interesting, and give me a name for that.”

Some people will say jalapeño. Some people will say swamp. Some people will say my litter box. Also, like, cooking leeks and anything else.

But here’s the thing: we’re all describing the same thing. The industry agrees on a couple terms for this, so the most likely thing is grass or green pepper, and that’s how we describe this.

Is it perfect? No, but is it a shared word?

We don’t wanna walk around like total a-holes saying, “Oh, that smells like methyl pyrazine.” We don’t wanna be that person, but you also don’t wanna be too precise, and we don’t wanna be too obscure, too.

Once you have that shared language and you’re looking at things, you notice more. And the more you notice, even if you dislike something, ask yourself why, because most likely it’s reminding you of something, and you gain more knowledge by putting words to things and focusing on things you dislike as well.

Elizabeth said it beautifully:

“It’s important as a professional to recognize that something, even if you don’t like it, is made well, that the winemaker didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just not your style.”

Outcome-based, not credentialing-based

Here’s the difference in the approach we’ve built: we’re outcome-based, not credentialing-based.

We issue credentials, but the sole goal of every class is: Can what we teach get someone a job? Do they have everything they need to step into a position and actually have that employer very, very happy?

We run a winemaking program, so that if you’re going into production, you know exactly what to expect. We run a wine-business program. You need to know what shrinkage is if you’re going to actually run a business.

If you’re in a restaurant, how much do you have to make in your beverage program per seat? How do you do that? If you don’t know that, then you’re not ready for the job.

You also, if you’re high level, you do need to have a deep dive into French wines. You do need to have a deep dive in American wines. You do need to understand that.

And if you’re going all the way and you want to be really in-depth, you’re going to have to understand the history of modern wine and ancient wine. You can do that, especially if you’re planning on being an author or writer.

Like, you really should understand how Prohibition completely changed the American landscape. How did phylloxera completely change the world of wine? Understanding why that happened and how it happened and how it actually reflects on today’s world.

I’m teaching that program right now: modern wine history. Fantastic, but that’s a very esoteric thing that you should only be taking when you’re a master-level student.

We do all five levels. Level one, two and three, those are the core. Blind tasting is in that, regional knowledge is in that. Knowing all your major grapes, all your major wine regions, all of that’s in there.

And then everything past that, which we call our level four, the advanced program, you can pick and choose what you want. By that point, we know where to point you.

You really want to be able to get someone in and out for a reasonable cost, depending on what level you want. It should be cost-effective, targeted, and you don’t have to take all the other things.

We’re focused really on the skills. Brass tacks, not the whole thing. We’re usually training people who have had jobs before. They’re tired of what they’re doing. They want to change careers.

Teach grownups. Welcome everybody.

The people who really are my star students might be a kindergarten teacher from Southern Jersey who’s brilliant and really knows her stuff and is now working as a winemaker.

It’s actually remarkable who our clientele is. It’s everybody.

And you’re oftentimes teaching people with advanced degrees. But we are a school that attracts PhDs and GEDs, and they both feel comfortable in our classroom.

You have to be able to do that. That’s not easy.

We have a teacher-training program, which is very different because it really teaches you how to be a teacher. People who think they’re good teachers, people who come as professors, realize it’s a very different audience and you’re very exposed.

You have to prove yourself in front of that audience. They have to trust you in a way that usually you don’t have that. The dynamics are completely different in a wine class.

The first line of any school, like an actual school, is you can’t be invited, you can come. It doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you follow basic rules.

I want everyone to be lifted up, everyone to be able to communicate, everyone to succeed.

A third way that travels beyond Philadelphia

Elizabeth asked, “Do you let other people take the credential and your program and have them teach it in Minnesota or wherever? What’s the vision here? … How do you get people that are not in Philadelphia?”

Oh, God, absolutely. And here’s the thing. We actually have all that already.

All of our programming can be white-labeled so that it can be yours. Say you’re a professor. You can just take whatever programming you want, you plug it in, you get all the material, so that you can actually put your own spin to it.

You have to understand our programs, know what our outcomes have to be, and we will audit people teaching our programs.

We don’t have to say, “Oh, you’re National Wine School.” You can if you want, but for the most part you can just do it.

Elizabeth pressed the question: “Can they grant the credential, though, without the National Wine School?”

No. We actually do all the credentialing.

Just like if you’re a professor at a university, the professor isn’t credentialing that student. They have to actually hit the minimums, and then the university issues that credential. So we do the same thing.

We do the assessments through our systems, and we track our students no matter where they are so that we know how well they’re doing.

Our educator program provides the required readings, quizzes and exams while approved instructors teach locally, online or in hybrid formats.

I don’t want to be famous. The only reason I pop my head out once in a while is because I believe that the wine industry in America is at this point where it has to change or we’re gonna keep dying.

This is exactly when the industry should change

From my view, fine dining has already kind of become like haves and have-nots.

There’s no going out and just having a nice glass of wine and a bowl of pasta, and feeling happy with how much you paid. And having a great experience with the wait service staff. That’s something that I truly miss.

Elizabeth agreed:

“I don’t like feeling like I just left a bazillion dollars on the table when I go out for something that wasn’t that great.”

This is something that’s happening right now, and as we lose things, the audience doesn’t go away. They’re just like us, they’re longing for that.

This is a perfect moment when there’s these massive dips. You buy in the dip.

We need a change of how we in the industry talk to each other, and if we talk to each other differently, then we’re talking to our customers differently, then they talk differently, too.

We right now come off as snobs. We come off as awful human beings that are aping wealth.

We’re not okay anymore, and it’s time to change some things. Or at least bring in a market where we can compete on these things.

What I’m asking is, give what we’re doing a try. Professors, wine school owners, just try it out.

Your students are gonna be very happy with the results. It’s a perfect time to have a more holistic approach.

Elizabeth put her finger on the reason it matters:

“There is one big forgotten chunk of the most important people in all of wine, which are the wine drinkers. We are not serving them in this industry.”

If we can get better people, we can get better wine lists. We can get happier customer service professionals. We can get better distributors. We can get everything.

Everything flows down.

Let’s have arguments and conversations about this. Let’s not just start yelling at people. Let’s actually open up the conversation.

What can we do?

That is the third way I want to build. Not an exclusive club. A place where people become good at something, and everybody gets to come.