There are quite a lot of jobs which require wine tasting skills. As well as the job of tasting wines for retailers and other buyers, some bar jobs use them, and of course a sommelier in a top restaurant is a wine taster and expert as well as a waiter.
A lot of people who taste wine for a living have grown up in the wine or hospitality trade – for example if their families were wine growers or wine merchants, owned a hotel or restaurant or, in some cases, simply loved wine, knew a lot about it and taught their children to develop a palate from quite an early age. This was quite a common in thing in many French families especially, and often still is.
For those who didn’t have the opportunity to develop a knowledge of wine in ways like these, but are interested in getting the skills needed to become a wine taster, it would be a good idea to get some work experience in a hotel or restaurant, which is relatively easy to find, and at the same time to look at courses in wine tasting. There are lots of short courses for amateurs to give a general idea of how to choose and enjoy good wines, and you can learn a good deal from one of these, but if you want to make a career out of this you should probably look at a professional accredited course. There are organisations like the East London Wine School, for example, which offers a range of courses from basic introductions, aimed at the general public, to a nationally recognised qualification leading to a diploma with the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET). This is an international body that is recognised in more than 50 countries, and is held in such high regard that a WSET diploma is the major qualification needed for those wishing to become a Master of Wine, as well as being an entry qualification to a number of jobs in the wine trade.
The Institute of Masters of Wine is the highest level of awarding body, and its standards are so high that only about 300 people have received this qualification. However, for those who want to go further than the WSET diploma there are other routes. A fairly new but highly regarded qualification is the MBA in wine, offered by the BEM-Bordeaux management school. This is a part time course and students have to divide their time between the UK, France and Australia. The emphasis here is on management and market knowledge as much as on traditional tasting skills, so whether it is suitable would depend on the career path you want to follow.
A number of universities in different countries offer degree and other courses related to the wine industry. These vary from straightforward wine tasting courses to courses in wine growing and also specialist training in aspects such as the growing of disease resistant varieties. You can find a good overview of wine related courses here.
But in addition to work experience and any professional training courses you manage to attend, you are also recommended to practise! This could include seeing if there are any wine tasting clubs in your area, or even reading up on the subject to gain a theoretical background. A wine taster is expected to know a lot about the history, production etc of a huge variety of wines, and not just to be able to taste the difference between one and another. And finally, a lot of wine selection is about pairing wines with foods, so you need to increase your knowledge of food too.