By DCist Contributor Katie Bahr

The world of wine is an expansive one, with countless vintages, blends, and varieties to explore. If you want your wine vocabulary to extend beyond “rosé all day,” there are plenty of classes available to help your knowledge of the grape grow. Here are our tips for some of the best wine classes in the District this summer.

Cork & Fork is offering themed wine tastings to accompany the World Cup and the Tour de France. (Photo Courtesy Cork & Fork Fine Wines)

Cork & Fork Fine Wines
1522 14th St. NW
Logan Circle’s Cork and Fork Fine Wines bills itself as a “family of wine lovers changing the world for the better, one great bottle of wine at a time.” With that in mind, the store offers fine wines from around the world that are hand-selected by the winemaking team, including store co-founder Dominique Landragin, a sixth-generation Champagne winemaker. This summer, the store is offering a lineup of regionally-themed tastings to accompany the World Cup and Tour de France, as well as a general three-part wine class taught by Wine and Spirit Education Trust certified instructor Matthew Stollenmaier, beginning July 11.
Price: $5 for themed tasting events, $90 for three once-weekly classes.

Flight Wine Bar’s intimate space also hosts wine tastings. (Photo by Scott Suchman)

Flight Wine Bar
777 6th St. NW
This intimate Penn Quarter wine bar offers a wine tasting class on the last Saturday of each month for its Flight Wine School. Led by the bar’s owners, husband-and-wife team Swati Bose and Kabir Amir, the classes explore winemaking processes and the various grape varieties and wine regions. Each class focuses on a specific country, region, style, or grape type and includes a tasting of four to seven wines, as well as complimentary bites. This summer, the bar is also launching a tasting series pairing wine with spring dinner selections. At the series’ first tasting at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Early Mountain Vineyard’s winemaker Ben Jordan introduces the Virginia winery’s products. “We find so many of our guests want to know more about wine or want to ask questions about wine, but are afraid to, and our goal is to make Flight a place that is easy for those who are new to wine as well as those who are looking for new adventures in wine,” Bose says.
Price: $55 for Flight Wine School; $75 for tasting series.

Grand Cata in Shaw specializes in Latin American wine (Photo Courtesy of Grand Cata)

Grand Cata
1550 7th St. NW
Since its opening in 2016, Grand Cata has specialized in exposing oenophiles to Latin American wines. Store co-founders Pedro Rodriguez and Julio Robledo use storytelling to explain the history and culture associated with various wine regions. Seated classes are offered on-demand for groups of six people or more and each 90-minute session lets customers sample five varieties of wine, while providing insights on the various wine regions, wine-making techniques, relevant history, and food pairings. Larger groups can book a standing class, during which they’ll mingle while tasting four different wines. Class recipients also receive a 10 percent discount on all purchases.
Price: $25 a person for a seated class (minimum of six people); $15 a person for a standing class (minimum of 17 people). Call 202-525-5702 to schedule.

Cork Wine Bar and Market’s latest tasting series lays down the basics of entertaining with wine. (Photo by Rey Lopez)

Cork Wine Bar and Market
1805 14th St. NW
This year, Cork Wine Bar, a combination wine bar and food market on 14th Street, launched a Host With The Most series, with themed classes discussing how to best entertain with wine. Cork’s Five Bites, Five Tastes classes provide a more in-depth experience by allowing guests to sample five wines in a theme alongside small bites from the Cork kitchen. The next class, A Toast to Sparkling Wine, is scheduled for June 28.
Price: $40 for Host with the Most tastings; $50 for Five Bites, Five Tastes classes. Tickets and event information available here.

Wardman Wines in Brookland offers four wine tastings per week. (Photo Courtesy of Wardman Wines)

Wardman Wines
625 Monroe St. NE
Taking its name from the Wardman-style row houses common to the District, Wardman Wines was founded on the belief that “wine should be accessible and that buying wine should be stress-free.” The Brookland store offers themed tastings four nights a week, as well as introductory classes on wine tasting and specific varieties of wine. Upcoming classes include Learning to Love your Palate on July 8 and A Rose is Not A Rose on July 29.
Price: $20 for introductory classes, and $35 for special topics classes, with $10 worth of store credit redeemable on that day.

Capital Wine School’s classes include sessions on Portugese wine and blind tasting lessons. (Photo Courtesy Capital Wine School)

Capital Wine School
5207 Wisconsin Ave. NW
Though Capital Wine School was originally founded to offer certification courses for those in the wine and hospitality industry, owner Jay Youmans soon realized that the majority of its customers were simply wine lovers interested in increasing their knowledge. “You don’t need to know much about wine to enjoy it, but it is a fascinating subject that brings together history, culture, art, food, science, travel, and human interaction,” Youmans says. Most classes are taught in the evenings or on weekends and include about 10 tastings. Classes—which include Essential Blind Tasting Skills, Michael Franz Presents His Top Red Wines … For Summer? and Wines of Portugal—are taught by wine writers, distributors, importers, retailers, and sommeliers.
Price: $45 to $95 for a two-hour class.