Wine as a Working Professional Skill
Wine Fluency for Professionals

You've mastered the pitch, the presence, and the handshake. But nobody ever taught you wine.

Wine is one of the few things still bringing people together in person — and one of the only professional skills no one ever taught you. Versed in Vino is the briefing that lets you walk into any room ready: the dinner, the mixer, the gift exchange — hand the moment back to the conversation, and focus on the people across the table.

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You've mastered the room and the research. Wine shouldn't be the one variable you can't account for. I've seen brilliant professionals hit this wall — and it's the easiest gap to bridge.

Sound familiar? — You're not alone. And it's completely fixable.

Created by

Shilpa Moorthy

A wine fluency expert with 6 certifications and 13+ years of experience in wine retail, including managing a multi-million dollar wine program, private clienteling, and teaching numerous public and private classes. As a former intelligence analyst, Shilpa understands how to distill complex ideas into just what you need to know.

Shilpa Moorthy
13+Years in Wine Retail, Education & Private Clienteling
6Wine Certifications (CMC, IWS, FWS, WSET)
$11MWine Program
Managed
100sof Classes Taught to Professionals

Built by Someone Who Knows Wine, and Knows Your World

Shilpa Moorthy has spent over a decade working with both wine experts and passionate wine amateurs, enabling her to discern what people really want to learn and what matters to them most.

Thirteen-plus years on retail floors, in classrooms, and inside multi-million dollar wine programs — that's where Shilpa's wine expertise was acquired. Focusing on what matters most is helped by her former career as an intelligence analyst where she learned to distill complex information into the need to know.

Take a dense, intimidating subject. Then strip out the parts you don't need. Hand people the parts they actually do.

She built Versed in Vino for the people who encounter wine throughout their professional lives — board dinners, networking events, client entertaining, corporate gifting, and everything in between.

The work isn't about memorizing a menu. It's about giving accomplished professionals the wine fluency to handle the moment, whatever form it takes.

Shilpa believes that whatever you do, it must always be fun. She has extensively traveled the world's most famous wine regions to share with you the ultimate gift: discovering the beauty of wine and traveling the world through every glass.

Meet Shilpa →
Certified Master of Champagne — with Honors (CMC)◆ Italian Wine Scholar with Honors (IWS)◆ French Wine Scholar with Honors (FWS)◆ WSET Level 4 Diploma Candidate (5 of 6 units complete)◆ WSET Level 3 & Level 2◆ 13+ years in wine retail, education, and private clienteling◆ Former U.S. Intelligence Officer, Department of Defense◆ B.S. Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University◆ M.A. International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University◆
Why People Choose Versed in Vino

The Professional Skill You Were Never Taught

You've refined your education, your wardrobe, and your presentation skills for a reason — because presence matters. But for many, that confidence wavers the moment wine enters the conversation.

The Moments You Know Too Well

The Default Move
You've likely leaned on "whatever you recommend" for years — but you know that delegating the decision can sometimes feel like a missed opportunity to lead the table.
The Spotlight Moment
That beat when the wine decision lands on you and you'd rather be talking to anyone than thinking about it, and it pulls your head out of the conversation you actually came for.
The Rapport Gap
While you're focused on decoding the menu, a prepared colleague or competitor is already using that time to build rapport.
The Knowledge Assumption
In your world, you're often expected to "just know" wine etiquette the same way you know your industry — even though nobody ever formally briefed you on it.
The Efficiency Problem
You don't need a formal certification; you need the strategic 20% of wine knowledge that covers 80% of the professional situations you actually encounter.
The Thing Nobody Says Out Loud
That small flicker of doubt when a bottle hits the table. It's almost universal among professionals and it disappears the moment you actually know what you're looking at.
Shilpa Moorthy

Why the Versed in Vino Approach Works

Most wine education is built for people who want to become wine experts. Versed in Vino is built for professionals who want to feel confident in the conversations, dinners, and social settings where relationships are formed and opportunities often begin.

Wine isn't the goal. Connection is. The purpose of this program is to help you navigate wine naturally, so you can build rapport, strengthen relationships, and show up with confidence in professional and social environments.

The Five Pillars — regions, labels, communication, etiquette, and AI — are woven throughout the program to give you practical wine fluency that translates into stronger conversations, greater confidence, and more meaningful professional interactions.

Every lesson is structured around working directly with private clients / connoisseurs and managing high-level wine programs, organized through an analytical framework to ensure the knowledge is always practical. Shilpa understands the pressure of high-stakes environments because she has spent her career navigating them — first in intelligence, then as an advisor to professionals in sophisticated boardroom environments and social circles.

What Changes When You're Versed

Read the Room

You handle the wine moment the way you read a menu — quickly, calmly, without making a show of it.

Ask Like You Mean It

You know how to ask a sommelier or a wine merchant the kind of question that actually gets you a great bottle — no pretension, no hedging.

Get Out of Your Own Way

The dinner stops being a quiet test of your wine knowledge and goes back to being a dinner — which is the whole point.

Build Better Connections

Use wine naturally to create rapport, make others feel comfortable, and engage more confidently in conversations that matter.

Be There

You walk in prepared and stay there, fully in the room, not half-managing the bottle or etiquette in your head.

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Testimonials

What Clients Are Saying

From the sales floor to the boardroom — what real preparation looks like in the room.

“
Shilpa is a powerhouse of info and full of passion — your personal wine guide!
Lisa P. · B2B Payments & Software Consultant
“
Shilpa is so knowledgeable about wine! And loves to share! Thank you, Shilpa, for all of your support at my Wine, Women, and Wealth group.
Lesa A. · Wealth Manager & Legacy Builder
See the Professional Impact →
Statistics & Impact Proof

The Data Behind Relationship Capital

Technical expertise may get you in the room, but relationships often determine what happens next. The data shows that trust, connection, and meaningful conversations play a significant role in business opportunities, influence, and long-term success.

93%of executives say dining skills impact deals
82%say dining skills impact brand & bottom line
41%more likely to close a deal over a face-to-face meal
Explore the Impact →
Pain Points & Solutions

Common Problems. Clear Solutions.

Traditional wine education is built for people who want to spend the rest of their lives studying wine. Versed in Vino is built for people who want to spend the rest of their lives doing the work they actually do — and have wine stop being the awkward part.

Traditional Education
The Versed in Vino Briefing
×Designed for the enthusiast: curricula built for those entering the wine trade or pursuing viticulture as a hobby.
✓Built for working professionals: the people who need to be good in the room, not behind a tasting bar.
×Technical immersion: focuses on deep academic theory and vineyard specifics that require years of study.
✓Scenario-based: focused on real-world application — the client dinner, the high-stakes gift, and the social mixer.
×Standardized knowledge: general information not always linked to the specific professional situations you face.
✓Built for the moments where relationships are formed: from client dinners to private gatherings, wine fluency can become a natural tool for connection, conversation, and confidence.
×Instruction-based: traditional methods that often focus more on the teacher's expertise than the student's utility.
✓Built around the student: 13+ years of teaching working professionals by someone whose actual job is making this easy, not making it sound impressive.
×Time-intensive: requires a massive time commitment regardless of your professional schedule.
✓Designed for your schedule: short modules, no filler — you can pick one up between meetings and actually finish it.
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The Programs

Three Ways to Get Versed

Whether you want to learn on your own time, bring your team along, or have someone in your corner whenever wine comes up — there's a way in.

The Briefing Room — self-paced wine library
Digital · Self-Paced

The Briefing Room

A self-paced library you can pick up between meetings. Real wine knowledge, organized around the situations you'll actually be in.

  • Scenario-Based Lessons: Modules built around the situations you'll actually face — paired with grape and region deep-dives.
  • Five-Minute Lessons: Short enough to actually finish — designed for the pace of your work, not a hobby class.
  • Relationship-Driven Learning: Every lesson connects wine knowledge to the moments where trust is built.
  • What You Walk Away With: Enough working knowledge to stop guessing — to ask better questions, make better choices, and feel at home around wine.
Access the Briefing Room →
The Experience — live corporate training and private events
Live · In Person

The Experience

Live corporate training and private events that read as a great evening and double as real wine education. The kind of session your team brings up months later.

  • Guided Tastings: Sessions that build real wine confidence and double as some of the best team-building you'll have all year.
  • Client-Facing Skills: Practical training for the people who lead the table — how to read a list, talk to a sommelier, and host without overthinking.
  • Retreats & Summits: Tasting-driven sessions that slot into a retreat agenda or stand on their own as the evening centerpiece.
  • What Your Team Walks Away With: A team that stops sweating the wine logistics and starts using the meal for what it's actually for.
Inquire About an Event →
The Wine Concierge — private advisory, sourcing, and gifting
Private · Advisory

The Wine Concierge

A retainer relationship for executives who want a wine expert in their corner full-time — for the cellar, the gift list, the trip, the dinner. The wine equivalent of having a great advisor on speed dial.

  • Sourcing & Allocations: Access to winery-direct bottles, small-production selections, and recommendations for whatever you're building or buying.
  • Travel Planning: Wine-focused itineraries across the major regions — from Napa and Sonoma to the established estates of Europe — built around what you actually want to drink, see, and eat.
  • Gifting & Events: On-call help for corporate gifting, boardroom bottles, and private events.
  • Direct Access: Text or call for whatever comes up — a list you want a take on, a bottle you're considering, a cellar question, a last-minute gift.
Inquire for Private Advisory →
Methodology & Framework

The Five-Pillar Method

A working system for wine fluency, built from 13 years of teaching real customers, connoisseurs, newbies and seasoned business professionals. The five pillars cover the parts of wine that actually come up in your working life — and skip the parts that don't.

The Five-Pillar method works because the pillars connect. Understanding regions and styles gives you the context to read a label with confidence. That confidence changes how you communicate with a sommelier or a client. Proper etiquette then ensures the focus stays on the relationship, not the wine. Learning the pillars as a connected system is what turns isolated facts into real wine fluency.

The framework is built for the professional schedule: 30–45 minute modules broken into focused, 5-minute briefings. You aren't memorizing facts. You're building a practical system of wine fluency you can use the next day.

I

Regions & Styles

A working knowledge of the world's major wine regions and the styles they produce. Enough to look at almost any wine list or label and immediately understand what to expect from the bottle.

Pillar 1 of 5
II

Decoding the Label

How to read a wine label in under a minute. Producer, region, vintage, style — so by the time you order a bottle or choose one as a gift, you already know what's inside.

Pillar 2 of 5
III

Strategic Communication

How to actually talk about wine, describe what you like, ask what's available, and work with a sommelier or a merchant to land on something great for the table. No jargon required.

Pillar 3 of 5
IV

Professional Etiquette

The actual etiquette of wine — the tasting pour, the cork, the order of pouring, the small rituals of hosting a table. Done right, none of it is performative; it just makes the moments feel easy and makes you look like a savvy business professional.

Pillar 4 of 5
V

AI & Modern Resources

How to use AI as a wine assistant: what questions to ask and what not to ask, what tech tools are good at, where they fall short, and when to ask a person instead. Practical help, used well.

Pillar 5 of 5
My job isn't to turn you into a sommelier. Sommeliers are brilliant at what they do. My job is to give you enough working knowledge of wine to feel at home in any room where it's part of the conversation — and to make you better at recognizing the great sommeliers when you meet them.
— Shilpa Moorthy, Founder
See the Framework in Action →
Founder Bridge

Behind the Framework

The Five-Pillar Method didn't come from a textbook. It came from over a decade on the floor of high-stakes wine programs, in private clienteling, and in a career before wine that was built on distilling complexity into what actually matters.

Meet the Person Behind Versed in Vino →
Mission & Vision

What We're Here to Do

Our Mission

Give professionals the wine fluency they were never taught.

To give client-facing business professionals the practical wine fluency they were never taught — so they walk into every dinner, mixer, and tasting prepared, present, and fully focused on the relationships that matter.

Our Vision

A professional world where wine is a source of connection, not hesitation.

Where the people across the table feel your ease before the first glass is poured, and where confidence around wine is the result of preparation, not luck.

Wine as a Working Professional Skill.

So much of professional life has moved behind a screen. The dinner table is still one place where serious relationships are built in person. Knowing your way around wine doesn't make you a connoisseur; it simply frees up attention so you can focus on the people across from you.

As technology automates more of our work, the ability to build trust, create meaningful relationships, and navigate in-person interactions becomes even more valuable. Wine isn't about memorizing facts. It's a social skill that helps people connect, communicate, and build rapport in the rooms where opportunities are often created.

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Most people who look effortless in these settings simply had the benefit of a head start or a background that exposed them to it early. For everyone else, it's just a matter of getting the right briefing. That's why I built Versed in Vino: to make confidence around wine accessible, practical, and useful in the moments that matter.

See the Methodology →
Free Download

Order Like You've Done This a Hundred Times.

A quick guide to the 3 wines that show up on almost every restaurant list — and how to use them to walk into any dinner or tasting ready.

You don't need to memorize the whole wine list. You just need a reliable starting point. This guide walks you through three versatile wines that show up on almost every restaurant list and pair beautifully with the kinds of meals you'll see at a business dinner. With these three in your back pocket, you can read the list faster, narrow your choices in seconds, and have a real conversation with the sommelier instead of a guessing game.

Download the Free Guide →

What You Get

  • The 3 Wines to Know: The three most versatile wines you'll find on almost any restaurant list — and why each one is a safe, smart bet for a professional setting.
  • Decoding the Style: How to use these three wines to understand what the list is telling you, so you can narrow your choices in seconds instead of minutes.
  • Real-World Pairings: Practical guidance on matching these selections with standard business dinner fare — no "cellar-master" knowledge required.
  • The Strategic Inquiry: A simple way to engage your sommelier that clarifies your preference and ensures you get exactly what the table needs.
  • One-Page Reference: Bookmark it, print it, or pull it up on your phone before any dinner.
The Last Variable, Handled

Move beyond the menu.
Start showing up Versed.

High-stakes professional moments don't just happen at a restaurant. Whether you are navigating a corporate gala, selecting a strategic gift, or hosting a boardroom lunch, wine is already part of the conversation.

The goal isn't to become a wine expert. It's to feel at home in any room where wine is part of the conversation and to stop noticing the part of yourself that used to dread the moment wine came up.

Immediate Benefits

01Walk In Prepared

Handle any wine moment — dinner, mixer, tasting, gift — with a level of ease that wasn't there before.

02Ask Better Questions

Develop the familiarity to ask sommeliers and merchants the right questions, and make informed choices for your table or your clients.

03Use Wine Strategically

Treat wine as the relationship tool it was always meant to be, not a hurdle to clear.

04Stay Present

Shift your attention from managing the bottle to engaging the people across from you.

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The ease you bring to any room comes from being ready before you walk in. That starts here.