You own the wine list in a restaurant, buy the bottles and sell them at the table. The exams are famously hard and the pay is mostly tips.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$35,230
Part time or new
$18,100
Top tenth
$64,720
The federal wage survey has no separate line for sommeliers. It counts them inside Waiters and Waitresses, where the national median is $35,230 a year and the bottom tenth sit near $18,100. That number is dragged down by everyone working part time, so read it as the floor of the trade rather than the job.
$18,000 to $28,000
Bussing, running food or serving while you study for the first exam
Almost nobody is hired as a sommelier straight away. You take a floor job in a restaurant with a serious wine list, taste everything you can, and ask to help with the cellar.
$64,720
Wine directors in fine dining, hotel groups and restaurant companies
The biggest pay jump is moving off tips and onto a salary as a wine or beverage director, where you also control buying. Selling wine for an importer or distributor is the other route, and it usually pays a base plus commission.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is the introductory course and examination plus an alcohol server permit, which is usually under $25, taken by someone learning the rest on a restaurant floor. The high end adds the certified level examination, which many people sit more than once, and the Wine and Spirit Education Trust awards at Levels 2 and 3, roughly $800 to $1,500 each. Neither figure includes the wine you buy to taste, which runs for years and is the real ongoing expense. There is no federal student aid for any of it, because none of it is a college degree, but good restaurants often pay part of an exam fee for staff who stay.
There is no federal student aid for any of this, because none of it is a college degree. Good restaurants often pay part of an exam fee for staff who stay, so ask before you pay yourself.
Tips
Most floor sommeliers are in the tip pool. A busy Saturday in a high end room pays far more than a quiet Tuesday.
Salary
Wine directors and beverage directors are usually salaried, which trades the big nights for a steadier number.
No pension
Restaurants rarely offer retirement plans. Health insurance exists in bigger groups and hotels, and almost never in small restaurants.
Nights and weekends
The money is on the nights everyone else is out. Plan your life around that.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
No degree, no license. You work the floor and pass exams while you do it.
High school diploma
Grade 12
That is the only school requirement. Hospitality classes help but are not needed.
Get into a restaurant with a real wine list
6 to 18 months
Start as a busser, runner or server. You are learning service first and wine second, because a sommelier who cannot run a section is no use.
Introductory Sommelier Course and Examination
A few days
The first of four levels run by the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas. A short course and a written exam. You must be of legal drinking age.
Certified Sommelier Examination
Usually 1 to 2 years later
Theory, blind tasting and a service test where an examiner plays a difficult guest. This is the badge that gets you hired as a sommelier.
Advanced and Master
5 years and up
The Advanced Sommelier Course and Examination, then the Master Sommelier Diploma Examination. Years of study each, and most candidates never finish.
Geography
Wine is mostly maps. Rivers, hills, latitude and soil decide what grows where.
A second language
French, Italian, Spanish or German. Labels, regions and grapes are all in them.
English and speech
The job is talking to strangers about something they may find intimidating, without making them feel small.
Chemistry and biology
Fermentation, acid and sugar are the mechanics behind everything you taste.
Anyone can call themselves a sommelier. No state licenses the title. What states do regulate is serving alcohol. California, for example, requires anyone pouring alcohol in a bar or restaurant to finish RBS (Responsible Beverage Service) training and pass a state exam within 60 days of starting, and to redo it every three years. Most other states have some version of this, sometimes called a server permit or an alcohol awareness card, and you usually have to be 18 or 21 to serve at all.
Three organizations run almost all the credentials you will see on a resume.
Court of Master Sommeliers Americas
Four levels, built for people working on a restaurant floor. Heavy on blind tasting and service.
WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust)
A British school with approved providers in most large American cities. Levels 1 to 3 and then a Level 4 Diploma. More academic, less service.
Society of Wine Educators
Runs the Certified Specialist of Wine and the Certified Specialist of Spirits, which you can study for at home.
Community college hospitality programs
Some run wine courses inside a culinary or hotel degree. Useful if you also want the management side.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Certified Specialist of Wine
From the Society of Wine Educators. A written exam you can study for on your own, respected in retail and distribution.
WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust) Level 3 Award in Wines
The point where importers and distributors start taking your resume seriously.
Spirits and sake certifications
Beverage director jobs cover the whole list, not just wine. Knowing spirits makes you harder to replace.
Advanced Sommelier
The third Court level. Rare enough that it usually comes with a pay rise or a better room.
A tasting group
Blind tasting alone is close to useless. Everyone who passes trains in a group, splitting the cost of bottles.
A harvest
A few weeks picking and working a crush at a winery teaches you more than a term of classes.
Inventory and ordering software
Wine directors are buyers. Being the person who can actually run the cellar count gets you promoted.
A second language
Especially Spanish in an American kitchen, and French or Italian for the wine itself.
Every bottle in every restaurant was sold by a distributor representative. Those jobs pay a base salary plus commission, run on normal daytime hours, come with a car allowance and hire people who have done time on a restaurant floor. Plenty of sommeliers move over in their thirties when the nights stop being fun. The wine knowledge transfers completely, and the income is steadier than tips.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
You arrive mid afternoon, before the cooks are ready. Check what sold last night, place orders, carry cases up from the cellar, polish glassware. Taste whatever a distributor representative has brought in. Line up by five and run the pre shift meeting on the two wines you want sold tonight. From six until close you are on the floor, opening bottles, decanting, and reading tables to work out who wants a $60 bottle and who wants a $600 one. You leave after midnight and do it again tomorrow.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Court of Master Sommeliers Americas runs four levels, ending in the Master Sommelier Diploma Examination. Since it began in the late 1960s only a few hundred people in the Americas have passed it. Candidates commonly fail one section and come back the following year to sit that part again.
Blind tasting is a graded part of the Certified and Advanced exams. You get a glass and a few minutes to talk through the grape, the country, the region and the year, out loud, in a set order, while an examiner times you.
The Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) is a charity based in London and its wine qualifications are regulated in the United Kingdom. Its courses are taught by approved providers in cities all over the USA and its Level 3 award is a standard line on American wine resumes.
California requires every on premises alcohol server to finish Responsible Beverage Service training and pass a state exam within 60 days of their first day, then redo it every three years. No state asks for any wine qualification at all.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.