Teaching Wines
Since 2009

Sovna Puri graduated from IHM Dadar in 2003 with a degree in hotel management. Wine had been part of the curriculum in her second year, and while she was one of the few students who genuinely took to it, the Indian wine industry barely existed at the time. A career in wine was not something anyone planned for.

After graduation, she moved to France for a Masters in Hospitality at Institut Vatel in Nimes. Her internship placed her at a Relais and Chateaux Michelin-starred property in Talloires, near Annecy, where she saw a working sommelier for the first time. The hotel maintained its own private cellar. She watched him recommend wines to guests, pair them with dishes, and decant bottles with a quiet authority that held the room. She followed him around asking questions until she ran out of them. By the time that internship ended, she knew what she wanted to do.

She moved to the UK and joined The Compleat Angler in Marlow as a restaurant supervisor. From there she joined the wine team at Benares, the Indian Michelin-starred restaurant in central London, first as Sommelier and later as Assistant Head Sommelier.

When she arrived at Benares, most guests ordered beer. Wine barely featured. Under the guidance of the head sommelier, an Italian who became her mentor, she helped build an entirely new wine list from the ground up. Every wine was tasted individually, then paired with dishes to test how it actually performed at the table. The final list ran to over 300 labels, including some of the finest bottles in the world.

Standards in service matched the ambition of the list. Every bottle ordered at the table was tasted before pouring to check for faults and confirm it was at its best. On a given day, she was tasting 70 to 80 wines. She also helped develop a grazing menu, a tasting format where each course was paired with a specific wine, refined through hours in the kitchen with the chefs until every match worked.

Over more than two years at Benares, tasting and learning every day, she completed the WSET Level 3 Award in Wines with Merit while working full time.

A dinner at Benares changed the course of things. Rajeev Samant, CEO of Sula Vineyards, was a guest. They got talking, and Sovna made the decision to return to India to head tastings and training for Sula. She had never presented to a room before and had considerable stage fright. She took it on anyway.

One of her earliest tastings was in northern India: 60 consumers, a room full of expectation, and nerves that nearly won. Once she found her rhythm, the feedback told her what she needed to know. Teaching was where she belonged.

Over more than seven years with Sula, she conducted over 1,000 tastings and trainings. These ranged from intimate staff sessions at some of India's leading hotels and restaurants across major metros and growth markets to large consumer events and the Sula Fest, where she presented the reserve wine range to audiences of 200 or more. She completed her first WSET Educator Training during this period, qualifying her to teach WSET courses from 2011. Her role grew from tastings and training to General Manager of Marketing and official media spokesperson for Sula, a position that carried wine education into the broader public conversation about Indian wine.

In 2016, Sovna began the WSET Level 4 Diploma in Wines and Spirits, the highest qualification in the field, and completed it in 2018. She moved from full-time employment to independent consulting, continuing to deliver Sula's WSET programmes while building her own practice. After the Diploma, she completed a further WSET Educator Training that qualified her to teach up to Level 3 in Wines and earned her the designation of WSET Certified Educator, a senior title held by a small number of professionals globally.

Her first event as an independent was a wine and cheese pairing evening in 2018, co-hosted with celebrity chef Vicky Ratnani. Vogue India covered it. The room was full.

In 2019, she conducted India's first ever all-women WSET Level 1 course in Wines at The Lalit. Both the course and the educator were women, a double first in Indian wine education, documented by the Indian Wine Academy.

When Covid arrived in 2020 and classroom teaching shut down across the country, Sovna moved online and conducted India's first ever online WSET Level 2 in Wines, proving the format could hold up. That year, the Vedanta Foundation named her Educator of the Year for continuing to teach through the pandemic.