r/Sommelier

I'm a cheesemonger, and I want to increase my wine knowledge (which at the moment is basically non-existent). I currently work at a retail cheese shop so in the immediate future it'll help me when suggesting cheeses for wine pairing, but long term I want to move into sales/import/distribution, and many of the companies I'm interested in working for *also* deal in wine, so it'd be a good bump on my resume to have some kind of certification of more-than-just-basic knowledge.

My plan is to take an introductory course and spend the rest of 2026 getting a general baseline understanding, and then in 2027 go deeper and possibly look at some kind of certification at the end of next year.

I'm fortunate to live in NYC which has tons of options for courses, so I'm having a hard time choosing which is right for me. Wondering if y'all can weigh in if one is better than another, or if they're all pretty much the same, or if there's one I'm overlooking that I should check out. I prefer in person in NY but I'm open to online as well.

I'm currently considering:

-CMS Introductory Sommelier Course (in person). This one is my top choice, but it's also quite pricey.

-WSET Level 1 Course (in person). This one also seems like a decent option, and a little cheaper, but I'm not sure if it's as good of a course?

-ICE Wine Essentials Course (in person). This one seems like it may not be as in depth as I'd like, but maybe good to start out with?

Any advice or recommendations are welcome!

To the creator of cork dork. Thank you! It was really helpful I just passed my level 2 cms exam today! Beside cork dork the wine bible, the world atlas and the corkdork app were where I got most of my information. Nothing on the theory exam took me by surprise, some questions I had read or gone over already in the app or books just might have forgetten the answer. The level 1 on cork dork did alot of the heavy lifting, and level 2 on cork dork gave a little extra brain reps. Thank you again to the creator of the app!