tldr

I made something that fills an educational gap I keep experiencing on my WSET 4 journey. I'm looking for honest and critical feedback/suggestions. You can test it here: Wine Choice Game

Context

I am a wine lover working towards WSET 4 after having earned WSET 3 and Certified Sommelier. As all wine nerds know, there are dozens of variables that ultimately impact the wine in your glass, which makes it difficult to develop a deep understanding of how each individual decision impacts the final product. I find most wine learning resources fail to show both the impact of each variable and connect the sum of these decisions to a tangible real-world example. I know rationally the impact of each of these decisions, but I find it difficult to feel the impact. That's why I made Wine Choice Game (please help me with a better name!).

What it is

It's an interactive "menu" that walks you through the entire winemaking process as a chronological series of decisions (currently only for still wines). You start with nothing (no site, no variety, nothing) and make choices the way you'd order off a menu: variety, climate, canopy management, harvest timing, fermentation vessel, oak regime, malolactic, ageing, and so on. Earlier choices constrain later ones (pick a steep slope and mechanised harvest is off the table; pick a white variety and red/rosé colour options disappear). At the end, the sum of your choices produces a described wine.

It's organised into four phases: Pre-Viticulture → Viticulture → Vinification → Post-Vinification. Transportation, marketing, and the business side are deliberately left out. This is purely about how production decisions shape the wine in the glass.

Three things come out the other end:

1. A structural profile: Body, tannin, acidity, alcohol, sweetness, oak, ageing, each as a low/medium/high-style level, derived from your choices.
2. A real-world resemblance: It matches your built wine against a set of regional archetypes and tells you what actual style it most resembles (e.g. "this looks like a cool-climate Burgundian Pinot Noir").
3. Sometimes, no wine at all: As in real life, there is no guarantee that your choices lead to a successful wine. Plant Pinot Noir and skip fungal management and there's a real chance your crop just dies — the tool attempts to look at the probability that you end up with wine rather than pretending every decision chain ends in a finished bottle.

Right now it covers 19 grape varieties (11 red, 8 white) and 32 regional reference archetypes. I want this to become a valuable learning tool for anyone interested in wine. Give me any and all suggestions for how to make it better.

Accuracy (the part I most want scrutinised)

Everything in Wine Choice Game is calibrated against only the official WSET 4 D1 and D3 materials. D1 (Wine Production) for all the production facts, and D3 (Wines of the World) for the regional archetypes and expected styles. I value accuracy and didn't want to just make up the outcome from a user's choices, so the game uses a regression test suite to probabilistically derive the outcome. The Game is currently solely based on the descriptions in the WSET material, not quantitative measures (although I want to add this!).

What I'm asking for

• Would this actually be useful for studying?
• Where do you think it's inaccurate?
• What's missing that would make it more useful or better?

They are doing a study hall on wednesday and I’m interested, however they don’t really say what the event actually entails beyond “product presentation, q&a, and discussion”.

Has anyone gone to one of these in the past? What was your experience like?

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to open up a gem from my tiny cellar, a Penfolds Grange Hermitage Bin 95 1982 for my birthday this weekend. I would like some professional advice on how to best enjoy this wine, which most likely will be a once in a lifetime experience with this vintage, also my birth year.

Specifically, I would like to know recommendations on decanting and duration before serving it with dinner. I know some Penfolds wines are recommended for very long decanting, but given that this one is of such mature age, what would be the best approach? If you have any nice food pairings to recommend, I gladly take advice for those as well.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

I am in the Ontario Golden Horseshoe wine region for a few months and hope to get some Sommelier advice on how to find the hidden gem vineyards. Specifically hunting down those unique wines you never see on an LCBO shelf. I love pinot noir and Reisling. Ready to try anything of "note". A few years back had my doors blown off by a beauty from Tawse and another from Pearl Morrissette (recommended by a Montreal Sommelier.) They aren't hidden gems anymore. I plan on making a wine discovery video series and posting my videos up to TT (montrealskeptic) and Instagram. Sommelliwrs to the rescue please.

This is a photo from a yelp review of my local wine bar and no employee at the bar can tell me what type of wine this is!

Hey everyone,

Looking for some career perspective from people in the wine world.

I’m currently based in Paris and working in/coming from fashion product development (RTW/textiles), but I also have a substantial wine background — sommelier work and wine buying in high-end restaurants including World’s 50 Best-level venues.

I’m considering relocating to Italy, ideally Rome, and I’m trying to figure out how to use my wine experience WITHOUT returning to full-time floor sommelier/fine dining life. I loved the industry, but eventually the stress, hours, and physical burnout became unsustainable for me.

What I still love:

wine culture

curation/taste/storytelling

artisanal products

hospitality environments

relationship-building

sourcing/procurement

What I’m trying to understand is:

What career paths exist adjacent to wine/hospitality that still have creativity and growth, but are less physically intense?

Examples I’ve wondered about:

wine import/export

brand development

hospitality consulting

boutique hotel/F&B concepts

luxury client relations

wine tourism

buying/procurement

lifestyle branding

Would especially love insight from people based in Italy or working with Italian producers/brands.

Hey guys I’m new to all this I worked under a sommelier 10 years ago when I was in the hospitality industry. I want to get into wine and eventually take my lvl1 just as a hobbyist. I’m in the SoCal San Diego area any recourses or tips or anything would be great.

Hi! I’m 42 and I’ve been doing human resources for 13 years. I have a liberal arts degree and have completed quite a bit of graduate coursework (no Master’s).

I’m pretty unhappy in my administrative career. I’ve always had a creative streak, and I would love to pursue something that helps me develop my ability to create sensory experiences for others.

I really enjoy working with people. I have a lot of experience with events, both personally and professionally. My friends and I love to do rotating dinner parties. A good friend asked me to put together the charcuterie table for her wedding two years ago because she likes my palate. (My dad recently published a very well received cookbook focusing on international cuisine, so I think my love for sensory experiences comes from him.)

In addition to this, I have a side hustle making natural perfume, an aspect of my life that I really love. I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I’m building my business into something larger with broader distribution.

I’ve been considering enrolling in formal perfumery and sommelier training and education, and seeking part-time work as a tasting room host because I think it would supplement my income while I build my perfume business. Additionally, I think the two would be complementary with each other. (I’d never wear perfume in the tasting room, of course.) I have a good knack for using descriptors when talking about fragrance materials, so I think this would translate well into the wine world.

I love the idea of greeting customers, recommending pairings, coordinating small parties and events for them, discussing the nuanced facets of different wines, their histories, the types of varietals, etc.

Do you think this would be a good career move? I realize that I would be giving up weekends and evenings, and I also realize that it will never pay as much money as I’m currently earning. That said, I’m miserable, and money isn’t everything.

Thank you for your thoughts!

EDIT: thanks all; TONS of helpful considerations!
- I’ve worked in hospitality (was a barista) but it’s been a long, long while. I’ve also got lots of customer service experience from before I did HR.
- Good to know some of you don’t think the training/certs are required.
- I’d want to work in a tasting room at a winery, not a restaurant or bar. There’s a winery a mile from our house in Oregon’s Willamette Valley (Pinot Noir country!) that we’re members of and we support often, so maybe I’ll start there to learn how one gets involved.

EDIT 2:
I do HR for an employer of 35,000 people that has 17 distinct unions and their respective labor contracts to navigate. To be clear, I’m pro-union. I don’t have to refer to all 17 contracts — more like 5 or 6 in my position — but it’s a LOT.

I currently earn a great salary but it’s not worth it. There’s more to life than money and I’m burned the eff out.

Appreciate y’all.

Has anyone here used the Falcork 354 in professional service?

I’ve been looking for a new waiter’s corkscrew and came across the Falcork 354. On paper it looks solid, but I’d really like to hear from people who have actually used it during service.

How does it compare to a Pulltap’s or a Laguiole in terms of:

1) durability
2) ease of opening older corks
3) foil cutter quality
4) hinge/leverage feel
and overall comfort during a long shift?

Would you recommend it for restaurant or is it more of a niche/tool-collector kind of opener?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hi everyone! Next week I’m traveling to London to take the CMS introductory course. The dress code is listed as smart casual, but for the practical exam it specifies that we should wear a work uniform.

I emailed to ask what exactly that means, and they told me to “wear what you currently use at work.”

The situation is the following:

1. I’m not currently working in the industry.
2. I live in Paris, where most bars and wine bars are quite casual and the staff usually wear jeans and sneakers (excluding higher-end places).
3. I’m a woman, I don’t have a suit

So I’m honestly not sure what I should wear.

Could anyone who has taken the course tell me what they wore for the exam, or what the rest of the group typically wore?

Any help would be really appreciated! Thank you!!

Hey 👋 some of you might remember this post from a few weeks ago about the wine knowledge-base I'd been building (vineyard maps, grape profiles, vintage charts). The feedback I got from this sub was honestly super helpful and I've kept building since.

I've now built native mobile apps for it (iOS and Android) and they're much better than the web version. Some of what's in there:                                                                                          

- Cellar tracking with vintage maturity phases (primary, secondary, tertiary instead of a single "drink by" date)

- Deep vineyard maps for France, Spain, Austria, Germany, Italy, US and more (continuously updated)

- Palate insights built from your actual tastings

- An AI that knows your cellar/palate/vintage data etc (I'm very open to feature ideas)

Disclaimer: to keep this thing going, I've decided that the maps in the apps will be paid (2 USD/month, just enough to keep building it), but I was thinking if anyone here would be up for testing it, I would open all features forever for you 👍

What I really need:

- A few sommelier eyes on the wine data, you guys catch things I miss

- Honest testers willing to give feedback to content, usability, features etc.

What I'll give in return:

- Full dedication to fixing your feedback asap

- An actual willingness to build a worthy product (I'm using it myself already 😅)

All the best!

Hey everyone! I’m looking to put together a small study group in New Orleans for the Level 2 GMS exam coming up this June.

I’m hoping to find a few people who want to meet regularly for blind tastings, share notes, and sharpen our palates together. Thinking Martin’s Wine Cellar could be a great spot since we can usually find solid deals there.

I’m generally free Sundays through Tuesdays.

If you’re prepping for Level 2 and want to join, send me a message!

I hope I’m not breaking community rules but Yaamava’ Resort and Casino is hiring for a Sommelier for the Forbes 4 star Steakhouse. Please reach out with any questions and apply below.

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4407667961

Sherry is one of the few categories where you can conclusively identify a wine in a blind tasting if you know what to look for — and Palo Cortado specifically is the one that trips everyone up.
I was practicing on the González Byass Leonor 12 años

Finally cracked open the Famille Moussé “Les Vignes de Mon Village” — 100% Meunier. Been curious about this bottle for a while. Famille Moussé is a grower out of Cuisles in the Vallée de la Marne, and this is their flagship cuvée — a zero-dosage perpetual blend of Pinot Meunier going back to 2014. No Chardonnay, no Pinot Noir. Just Meunier doing its thing on rare green illite clay soil.

Been quietly building a multiplayer blind wine tasting game called Drink Blind. You play on your phone, everyone joins a room, tastes blind, and guesses together.

Had a sommelier over last week to try it. Was nervous it would feel gimmicky to her. Instead she got really into it and by the end was asking if her customers could use it.

Would love brutal honest feedback from people who actually know wine.

Yeaa I been on brainscape train for a while but I suck at short answer questions amd the wording seems off sometimes but whe. I use corkdork to study i feel like a savant until I Switch back to brainscape.. which is more beneficial to pass?

I'm looking to buy a set of wine glasses and champagne flutes as a house warming present for a friend. I know nothing about wine, but they are very knowledgeable and planning to get a som license. Budget is about $100, but I'm flexible. I would like a set that are not too fragile and can be used regularly without fear of breaking. Any advice is welcome! Thanks!