Last Tuesday I began my day with a bottle of Pol Roger Reserve Brut Champagne and ended it with a couple glasses of Wynns Black Label Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon. Now before you wonder if I’m a boastful alcoholic, allow me to explain:
That day last week saw me take the hopefully final step in a long journey towards achieving the internationally coveted WSET Diploma qualification.
What, I can hear you ask, is the WSET Diploma? And why does it matter? Well, WSET stands for the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, a UK-based but globally recognized organization that offers the “best-in-class education and qualifications” (their words) to wine and spirits professionals and enthusiasts around the world.
The WSET is also a highly successful business, although it is officially a registered charity in the UK and claims that it’s a not-for-profit organization. Be that as it may, there is no denying that in the world of wine (and spirits), achieving the WSET’s top Diploma qualification is a serious feather in one’s cap, and opens doors in the wine industry worldwide. Their Diploma is the highest level award, there being three successively lower level courses below it. In short, it is serious stuff! Again, in the WSET’s own words: “The WSET Level 4 Diploma in Wines is an expert-level qualification covering all aspects of wine” from growing grapes to making wine, to marketing and selling it, to teaching and/or writing about it.
The Diploma is comprised of six (!) separate, detailed study units. These include, for example, Wine Production, Wine Business, Wines of the World, Sparkling Wines, Fortified Wines, etc. Each unit is taught and tested separately, over many months, and all the units must be passed in order to graduate with the Diploma. The Diploma syllabus is taught globally by approved program providers (APPs), and the exams take place almost simultaneously on the same days in multiple cities around the world, so that cheating is (hopefully) avoided.
It is notoriously difficult to achieve the Diploma award, with a decidedly low pass rate for candidates trying to nail it the first time round. Especially the dreaded ‘monster’ Unit D3 – Wines of the World (around 40% on average passed in recent years), which basically covers every wine from Albariño to Zinfandel, and every major wine producing country in the world.
I am proud to report that by the end of last year and some 20 months of intense study and tasting, I had passed all the units, with the exception of Sparkling Wines (I passed the blind tasting portion but failed the theory portion. Oh, didn’t I mention that there are both blind tasting and closed book theory exams?). So I had to resit the Sparkling Wine unit. Then along came the coronavirus pandemic, and all the scheduled 2020 exam dates were cancelled.
Finally, after several more months delay, WSET rescheduled the Sparkling Wines exam for the end of October, and I sat it again here in Vancouver…
Which brings us to last Tuesday morning. That bottle of Pol Roger Champagne that I popped was not in fact to drink with breakfast, but rather to taste (and spit out, as all professional tasters do) in order to ‘calibrate’ my palate for the upcoming exam that day. The Wynns Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon was indeed opened to drink with a celebratory dinner, after the exam was done.
I hope the Champagne helped me. I don’t know yet. As it turned out, none the three wines that we were given to taste blind in the exam was from Champagne: instead we were given (WSET releases exam wine lists 48 hours after the exams) a Riesling Sekt from Germany, a traditional method sparkling wine from Tasmania (Australia), and a Lambrusco Grasparossa from Italy. Don’t ask. As I said, this is far from straightforward stuff.
I won’t know for several more weeks whether my long and winding journey is over and I have finally achieved the WSET Diploma award. I am cautiously optimistic, although you never know… Either way, when I finally do get my results I am quite likely to pop the cork on yet another bottle of Champagne, but this time to drink deeply and swallow!