Barbara Fitzgerald hosts Sarah Heller MW for Masterclass US Wine Market. Sarah is a US- based Master of Wine and leading expert on Italian wine. She has been a Vinitaly International Academy faculty member since 2018 and one of the first VIA Ambassadors, certified in the inaugural course held in 2015. Sarah reviews for Club Oenologique, serves as the wine editor for Tatler Asia and hosts wine masterclasses. Her visual tasting notes and educational videos have reached millions, blending her background in fine art from Yale with profound wine expertise. A Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy, Sarah is also an advisor to Hong Kong’s International Culinary Institute and speaks multiple languages including Italian. Sarah gives us more details of her background, including the fact that, although she was in Asia until about 3 years ago, she did not begin her wine career there. Initially, she tried to get into the French culinary and wine sphere while she was in university. She got interested in cooking, took courses at the French Culinary Institute over the weekends, wanted to open a restaurant, and wanted to learn to be a chef. Her parents convinced her to find a job in a restaurant, so she put out feelers with French restaurants, none of whom expressed the least amount of interest. Ultimately, she got a job in Turin, and the chef happened to be a big wine enthusiast. She began touring the countryside and the wineries, and Italy became the center of her wine universe.
Sarah Heller MW
Her plans to work with a wine importer distributor in New York had to be ditched when she had an accident and had to move home to Hong Kong. Happily, she ended up in one of the most dynamic wine markets the wine world will ever see. It was there that she took the very first Vinitaly International Academy course in 2015, and was honored to come on board as faculty in 2018.
Barbara is a Vinitaly International Academy certified Italian WIne Ambassador too, so they reminisce about when Sarah was Barbara’s teacher for the course. Sarah says she “always enjoyed education as a sort of collaborative exercise, but never necessarily wanted to teach. I taught a WSET Level 1 as a training session and it just felt like a spectacular shame to spend the afternoon doing something that should be so pleasurable, with nobody really wanting to be there. Following that experience, I promised myself I would never be involved in wine education except for people who were genuinely passionate.” She talks about the VIA course, which is infamously very serious, very rigorous, “but people are there because they love the wine. Nobody is there because their boss told them they had to be there. VIA is not a box ticking exercise.” She recognizes the extra level of dedication it takes to pass the course and comments “we don’t want those who don’t make it the first time to feel like they failed. In fact, I routinely tell people, after they’ve not passed on the first round, that it’s the people who stay in the program the longest who retain the most.”
The upcoming 33rd edition of the VIA course which will be held in Chicago in October 2025. Sarah says, “increasingly, our intention is also for it to be a self study program, rather than a taught course in the traditional sense. I see myself more and more as a facilitator for this community built program.” VIA is currently revamping the educational platform, evolving from a platform that was developed as a response to the pandemic restrictions. Since 2020, the platform has moved towards a more community driven approach, relying on the expertise, in-depth knowledge, and firsthand experience of our ambassadors and experts to create audio guides that go beyond the course material.
VIA Chicago 2024
Barbara asks Sarah how she incorporates her visual tasting notes into how she communicates about wine. Sarah references her background in art and says she “has always been thinking about things visually rather than necessarily with words, although I also love writing. And I think wine, because of its very sensual, sensuous nature, is experienced primarily through our least intellectual senses – nose, taste – which don’t naturally lend themselves that well to language.” She goes on to add that one of the classic memorization techniques is trying to get as many senses involved as possible in order to embed a memory and get neural pathways solidified. When she is teaching VIA, she wants to “get people out of the weeds, basically not be so fixated on what kind of cherry is this exactly. I’m sort of trying to pull back. Where are we? Are we red fruit? Black fruit? Are we more in a sort of green, white direction or a more yellow, golden, even orange direction? I think starting from these more abstract directions calms us down and helps us sort of think a little bit more intuitively.”
The topic of the difficult exam was bound to come up. Barbara remembers “everyone is just so stressed for the exam and wants to make sure they’re doing the right things, learning the right information.” The VIA course has a reputation for being incredibly challenging and Sarah addresses some of the misconceptions students have. She says, “something that has hindered a lot of people who genuinely are Italian wine experts in their field, is that they think their personal experience will carry them through the exam. People who’ve been working in the industry, 20 or 30 years, they have all of this knowledge. It may not necessarily align with the way that we’re teaching the wine today, or they may have very deep experience with a particular region, but not have the breadth that this course requires.” She wants students to approach the course as something entirely new, so they can open up to new ways of thinking about the wine. She believes that VIA is really trying to create “Italian wine professionals who understand the 360° of the history of Italy, the culinary traditions of Italy, the grape varieties, the regions, all of the complexity around climate and geology, better than anybody out there.”
Tips for VIA exam prep are always valuable and Sarah starts immediately with Italian Wine Unplugged 2.0, the fundamental textbook for the course. The book was created by VIA Ambassadors, international Italian wine experts and professionals, and educators, with a key essay by Chief Scientist and leading grape DNA expert Professor Attilio Scienza, as well as a section on Sarah’s approach to Italian wine tasting. The book encompasses all 20 regions of Italy and the important grape varieties. The book was specifically designed to be the foundation for the course and all the material “needs to be solidly in your mind” for success on the exam.
VIA Almaty 2024
Sarah brings up the group video project part of the exam, which requires students to form groups and do additional research, often specific to particular markets. When the VIA course was held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, students were asked to talk about their regional cuisine and how it pairs with different Italian wines. VIA expects people to bring additional knowledge from their experiences as wine professionals. The essays are also places where students have the opportunity to show off expert knowledge. Sarah views the tasting portion of the exam as another area where rote memorization comes into play, and students must have a clear understanding of what each of the wines should taste like based on the textbook. There is certainly a synergy between the tasting and the theory, but Sarah says that, in the VIA tasting now, the structure is around archetypes, such as sheer reds, textural whites, the northern influenced darker hued grapes, aromatic grapes, and so on. VIA understands that international students from various markets around the world have not tasted every single style out there, which is why there is an intensive tasting workshop immediately leading up to the exam. Discussing the tasting workshops and tasting exam, Sarah and Barbara explore the differences between benchmark Italian wines and innovative, atypical styles, and how both kinds of wines have important roles to play in Italian wine study.
Barbara asks Sarah to explain how VIA stands apart from other wine certifications. Sarah points to the fact that VIA is a community, ever since the beginning ten years ago, and it continues to intentionally grow as a community led and self study based program, driving forward the knowledge base and staying right at the cutting edge. Professor Attilio Scienza’s active role as Chief Scientist is also unique and crucial to VIA, and Sarah describes him as a “nexus of so much grapevine research taking place in the Italian wine academic world, and we get access to his fresh off the press research. We’re always pushing forward, including things in the course that may be speculative, but we want our students to know about them. Most conventional wine education courses are reluctant to include information that maybe hasn’t been vetted by a general academic community. VIA is willing to put fresh discoveries in the course and make very clear that it’s not necessarily been validated by the entire community. We want our students, our ambassadors, and our experts to be people who have access to the freshest information and are completely up to date. Our community gets news very quickly through our social media channels, through our private WhatsApp community which is very active. VIA is somewhat the product of the hive mind rather than being a limited academic product going through a very lengthy sort of validation process. This makes VIA something very different within the world of wine.”
Andrea Lonardi MW
Attilio Scienza and Stevie Kim
The VIA course is never static and Sarah recounts how adding Andrea Lonardi MW as
Guest Faculty has brought a breath of fresh air, a business and market driven contribution to the material, as well as an authentic “Italianicity.” Sarah herself has been delving deeper and deeper into site specificity, using MGAs, UGAs and other detailed regional distinctions to bring even greater depth to the course. She hopes to add more winemaking material in the future and her focus is on helping develop the communication skills of all VIA students and Ambassadors.
Pinning Ceremony at VIA Chicago 2024
For the US Market part of the interview, Barbara asks Sarah for a tip for Italian producers on mastering the US wine market. Sarah’s advice is to remember “there are any number of really fertile markets around the country that are not overcrowded yet, we have some really exciting metropolitan areas in states that might not come to your mind immediately.” A tip to her younger professional self is, “stop trying to prove how much I know and listen to people where they are.” Best travel hack? “Red lipstick covers all manner of ills. If I’m wearing bright red lipstick, nobody’s going to notice anything else.”
For more information about VIA Chicago, please visit: https://www.vinitaly.com/en/academy/vinitaly-international-academy/courses/via-chicago-2025/
Or contact via@ext.veronafiere.it
The pinning ceremony for the VIA Chicago 2025 course will take place in the evening on 6 October at Navy Pier in Chicago. The ceremony will include the presentation of the Franco Ziliani Award for Best Student, provided by VIA Educational Partner Guido Berlucchi & C. SpA.
wine2wine Vinitaly Business Forum will be held concurrently with VIA Chicago, at Navy Pier in Chicago, 5-6 October. For information and how to attend, please visit:
https://www.vinitaly.com/en/events/vinitaly-around-the-world/vinitalyusa/
During wine2wine Vinitaly Business Forum, a Masterclass entitled: From Critic to Sommelier: Mastering Italian Wine with VIA Benchmark Wines will be presented by two Vinitaly International Academy Italian Wine Experts Stephanie Johnson, long-time Italian Wine Editor at Wine & Spirits Magazine, and Torrence O’Haire, sommelier, wine educator, and hospitality group beverage director, for a dynamic tasting of VIA benchmark wines.
From Stephanie’s vantage point as a journalist and critic, Italian wines tell stories of place, culture, and evolving styles that shape international perception. From Torrence’s role as a sommelier and educator, the focus shifts to how Italian wines live on the table: how to communicate their character to guests, pair them with food, and integrate them into diverse wine programs. Together, they will contrast their perspectives while sharing how the VIA tasting methodology has sharpened their approach to Italian wines, both in writing and in practice. Participants will gain not just tasting insights, but also a deeper understanding of how critical and service driven lenses can complement one another in appreciating Italy’s extraordinary wine landscape.
