About Sommelier Laura Winter Falk

Experience! The Finger Lakes founder Laura Winter Falk is a Certified Sommelier with the Court of Master Sommeliers, she also holds a level 3 award of wines from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), and a PhD in Food & Nutrition from Cornell University. Laura’s passion for wine and food started as an undergraduate at Cornell and had the opportunity to take Introduction to Wines her second semester senior year.  Little did she know at the time, that more than 30 years later she would be living in Ithaca and enjoying a career that celebrates the food and wine of the Finger Lakes, and its place in the world of wine.

Laura has been an educator her entire career, and finds that her role as a sommelier is the perfect way to share her passion for learning, her love of wine, and her knowledge of food and nutrition (There’s so much science in wine!!).  She is a regular contributing wine writer for Edible Finger Lakes Magazine  and Vineyard Registry and has authored the Culinary History of the Finger Lakes: From the Three Sisters to Riesling, available through The Arcadia Press.  In 2014, she was offered a position as an Adjunct Professor of Wine within the Wine Marketing program at Tompkins Cortland Community.  This brought her full circle by having the opportunity to help young students discover the world of wine, and become enamored the same way she did in that course at Cornell all those years ago.