You spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours working toward your Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) certificates and diplomas. You expect that those hard-earned qualifications to help you move forward in the wine industry. You should expect that such an august firm, one that has been offering professional certification for over thirty years, to offer legitimate professional credentials.

Your trust in the Trust has been violated. Their certifications are not legal in the United States. In the decades it has been taking student’s money and claiming to issue “professional training” The WSET never took the neccesary steps to legitimize their credentials.

None of the WSET programs or its affiliated schools across the country have been properly licensed in any state to offer professional training. Even a wine school cannot run a professional training program without a state-issued license.

Despite what generations of students were led to believe, the WSET is not a professional certification for the wine industry. Students who attempt to use a WSET credential to gain employment may be commiting fraud. In at least nine states, it is potentially illegal to use a WSET certificatation to gain employment or a raise.