United States Wine Educators offers classroom-based wine education and training in this wine course in the Las Vegas area. Their course is provided through UNLV’s Continuing Education college. Their Wine Education & Sommelier Training wine class’s daily activities include wine education lectures, wine tasting with fundamental training, physical training on proper wine service of still and sparkling wine, wine industry Q&A, food and wine pairing activities, guest speakers, and field trips.
Students will be engaged daily in studying new grapes and regions while tasting 12+ wines per session over 13 weeks of classroom activity. Their goal has been to be the best classroom-based wine education program for students while offering this education with no pre-requisite training or education-level expectations.
The UNLV Sommelier Academy course meets 13 times per week for 7 hours. The course finishes with a 3-part examination testing the students in written, essay, and blind tasting format. The course covers general winemaking, prominent varietals, and major wine regions worldwide. Students taste over ten wines per session to learn about varietal and regional standards while learning to examine wine in a blind-tasting format.
The program includes wine service and food and wine pairing. Daily discussions about current trends in the wine industry, and wine professionals will be brought to talk about their experiences in the trade. In addition, field trips will show students career opportunities in the world of wine.
United States Wine Educators was founded in 2010 by Heath Hiudt. Heath has been involved in the wine industry his whole life: From being the son of a nightclub owner to his first beverage management job at age 23. He is currently running STK inside the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas. In addition, he has been a wine instructor in Las Vegas for the last ten years, teaching with the International Sommelier Guild and creating the UNLV Sommelier Academy.
UNLV has scrubbed its site of United States Wine Educators and Heath Hiudt’s name. While the sommelier program is still listed, the program is not currently open for enrollment.
Good program.
I loved my class, but was cancelled half way through.
So many of these programs are just dull WSET programs. Here is one that actually is run by real academics at a real accredited school. Kudos!