Let’s talk about wine education and why you may want to know more
This looks serious.
Let’s talk about formal wine education. Suppose you read my earlier posts about the difference between drinking wine and formal wine tasting, and you said to yourself, “Hey! I do want to know about formal wine tasting and make up my own mind whether I use it or not.” That’s fair.
One way to look at certification with wine is getting formal “street cred.” You are no longer just a wino, as a relative described me. You are a wine professional!
With all of that in mind, I’ll go over some of the options.
First question you want to answer is: WHY? Why do I want to get formal wine education?
Here’s my why. I had spent years and years going to formal and informal classes and wine tastings. Many were extremely informative, and I learned a great deal.
Some were a waste. Not a total waste, since it is always fun to meet and talk with people who enjoy wine.
This young woman who taught one class had cutesy nicknames or abbreviations for grape types. I went to this class with my husband, and he commented that I was more knowledgeable than the “teacher”. Perhaps I should get formal education and get certification of some kind. Perhaps I should be taught by someone qualified to teach.
Anyone, and I mean anyone, can decide to teach a wine class. It does not mean they are qualified to do it.
I was not sure where certification would lead me. I was not working in a service business and had no plans to do so. That is an important distinction. Many options do have a service component.
If you do think you may want to be in a service industry or otherwise be involved with wine in a business capacity, do your research accordingly.
The next question is: HOW?
How do you plan to obtain this certification? You must know yourself well enough to know how much structure you need. Can you study at home on your own. Can you buy your own wine to taste? Do you live in an area that provides courses leading to certification?
All certification choices take the study of wine very seriously. We are talking seriously serious. There is a certification process that involves a written test at the least. In many cases a deductive blind tasting test is required as well. This kind of blind wine tasting is not the fun one where you decide which wine you like best, while covering up the bottle and label. It is using deductive reasoning to determine what wine it may be.
This is serious level blind wine tasting.
I will have numerous posts on fun options for blind wine tasting to determine what you like to drink so stay tuned.
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There are several certifications and levels of most of the choices.
The Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS): If you are considering this, rent the movie Somm and see above. There is a service component as well as written theory and tasting. There are multiple levels of certification. The intro level is a two-day course, but after that there is no classroom component. I am in awe of these exceptionally talented people, but I am not one of them. In addition, if my goal was to have fun with the process this didn’t scream fun for me. If you can visualize being this dedicated and focused, look into the program.
Institute of the Masters of Wine: This is basically graduate school. You need to have the WSET diploma or equivalent. This is clearly not a casual I want to know more about wine, so I’ll just try this type of class situation.
Society of Wine Educators (SWE) They offer many self-study programs within this umbrella. There is the Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) and the Certified Wine Educator (CWE). If you are interested in self-study this has an intriguing number of options. Many of the books are offered on Amazon so you could order them and learn with no pressure. No certification, but no pressure.
There are a confounding number of other options, but the above three and the following are the largest.
I was not in a service industry and wanted a formal class, so I chose the Wine Spirits and Education Trust (WSET).
WSET is taught at accredited wine schools worldwide, and online versions are available as well. There are 4 levels. Level one is for those who are just starting their journey. Level 2, which is what I took, does not require Level 1. However, levels 3 and 4 require that you have passed the previous level. All testing material is sent back to England to be graded.
Level 2 was humbling for me. The amount I did not know was astounding. There was a lecture component and a tasting component. The textbook looked small, but it was dense! When I took the course, it was wine and spirits. They now have a separate course for spirits, and a sake course too.
Some of my study material for the final exam!
I did torture myself by aiming for a top score on the test. I scored a 92, by the way. I have to say that all the studying worked.
And the maps!
Living in the Northern Hemisphere as I do, it’s hard to remember that in the Southern Hemisphere the weather gets colder as you go South.
This is how you analyze wines at WSET Level 3. As part of the final exam you must analyze two wines. Some people are gifted at this.
As for tasting, it turns out that I am extremely suggestible when it comes to what I can smell, and to a lesser degree, taste. If an instructor can smell cedar and pencil shavings and leather and dark fruit and who knows what else, suddenly I could. I could never come up with this on my own, however. While there is a multiple choice test you must pass to get to Level 3, there is no blind tasting component with Level 2.
It was at this point that I thought that if I always analyzed wine in this way, I would stop liking it. As I have mentioned in another post, you cannot have an opinion whether you like the wine or not. It is irrelevant. Since my first thoughts with a wine are yuck or yum, Level 3 was probably not my future. I decided to see if I could get better with the blind tasting component before I signed up for 3. Spoiler alert: I didn’t get better.
A future post will detail my efforts to improve my deductive tasting skills. Just because I’m not great at it, doesn’t mean you can’t be.
I can wow you with terms like rotundone, pyrazines, thiols and esters. Or maybe not, because I will never use those terms when talking about wine in this blog. I just wanted to show off that I knew them.
Yuck or Yum all the way!
