Formal Wine Education 101: Let’s Talk About it Now!

This looks serious.

Let’s talk!

This is an updated post! Woo!

Can wine learning be fun? Absolutely!

It can also be quite serious!

I am all for not overthinking or overspending. I talk quite a bit about the difference between drinking wine and formal wine tasting.

You may say 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.

So…

Let’s talk about formal wine education.

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. I still go to wine classes every once in a while.

Many classes are extremely informative, and I learn a great deal.

Some are sort of a waste of time and money. Not a total waste, since it is always fun to meet and talk with people who enjoy wine.

Wine fans are the best! Well, most of them anyway! You know the ones that aren’t!

These are the people who think they know more than the winemaker and want to show off. They can be the person who is adamant about the shape of the glass you MUST have to enjoy a particular wine. They are the ones who bring their own glasses to a wine tasting at a winery with the winemaker!

I did not make this up! He did not bring these special glasses for his spouse, just himself. Speaks volumes!

I got off topic. Back to my why..

I paid to take a class where the young woman who taught it 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.

Spoiler alert: a sommelier at a restaurant does not need a certification.

WHAT?!?!?

The meaning of SOMMELIER is a waiter in a restaurant who has charge of wines and their service. (Thank you Merriam Webster dictionary)

That’s the definition!

However, many restaurants do have a sommelier who is formally trained. If someone says they are certified, I often ask where, by the way. It’s informative. Learn from them.

My other “why” was when a sommelier at a restaurant (now out of business!) tried to upsell me by double!! She said that if I wanted “more bang for the buck” I should order something twice the price of what I was looking at. I didn’t follow her advice to put it nicely.

Now, though, I wanted to know more so that I could choose wine even more confidently!

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.

I have met many wine distributors who are not formally trained.The same is true for those who work in a wine store (although many are.) Many, many knowledgeable people know a huge amount about wine and have no formal education.

So decide on your WHY!

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. This is not a current picture, but I doubt it has changed much.

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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. There are online versions available as well.

There are 4 levels.

Level 1 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 levels. Level 4 has 6 levels.

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 wines and spirits. They now have a separate course for spirits. They also have sake and beer courses as well.

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. Passing grade is way lower, by the way.

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. More specific than Level 2.

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. 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. Your personal preferences are technically irrelevant for formal wine tasting.

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 improve my deductive tasting skills for the blind tasting component before I signed up for 3.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t get better. I also did not continue onto Level 3.

However, just because I’m not great at deductive tasting skills, doesn’t mean you can’t be.

Decide if you want to be, though.

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!

Good luck with your adventures in Formal Wine Education!

Should you just want to just drink wine and have fun, I have a great post on fun options for blind wine tastings to discover your favorites.

It’s called: Best wine parties ever! This is how you do IT!

Click on the title or this conveniently located button:

This is where you can get more fun, and get a free wine guide!

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This is where you can get more fun, and get a free wine guide! ******

EXACTLY!!