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This week I got an important grade through my door. It was my long over-due WSET Level 3 exam (having passed their first 2 levels some time ago). I got a merit overall, something I'm fairly chuffed with (I came out predicting a destinction, perhaps arrogantly).
The exam is in two parts, tasting four wines is the first part, the idea is that you assess each wine for how it looks, smells and tastes, then make an educated guess to which grape is used in each one, and the region it was made (not country, but area within a country, and a region within that area). The second part is a lot more difficult, the exam is split into a few different parts and tests your knowledge on wine production techniques, labelling laws for each country, and the things that affect style and quality of certain wines. These theory aspects are all split over about 5 questions, making study towards the exam pretty difficult. You have to know labelling laws, climate, soil type, winery techniques, grape names and names of individual villages for each winemaking region of each winemaking country on the planet.
So yeah, chuffed with a merit.
These WSET exams are nothing to do with my BSc, the BSc is more geared towards the science aspect of wine, analysing the wines in a scientific way so you can make good judgements in terms of when to perform certain tasks in both the vineyard and winery. Something that holds weight in terms of getting a job in making wine. The WSET is very much about trade and business. Aimed at professionals in the trade parts of the industry. Level 3 is the "passport" into the trade. Each retailer, sommelier, importer/exporter, brokerage and any other serious wine business will demand this qualification.
So where now? In terms of WSET, I'm zoning in on their diploma course now (this will take me over a year to get, and cost a couple of grand). Obviously my degree in wine takes the overwhelming majority of my time, but the WSET courses are a pretty decent thing to rack up at the same time.
