Thursday, September 1, 2011

WSET Unit 1 - The Business of Wine

So I passed the French Wine Scholar exam "with distinction" and met the requirements to apply to teach it. So stay tuned to these pages, as I may have a new topic to write about.

Until that time however, I am turning back to my Wine and Spirits Education Trust certification. As noted before there are 6 Units or modules to the WSET Diploma course.  I don't think I ever mentioned what they were, so here they are now:
  1. The Business of Wine
  2. Viticulture and Winemaking
  3. Light Wines of the World
  4. Spirits
  5. Champagne and Sparkling Wines
  6. Fortified Wines
You are required to take Unit 2 before starting any other module. Other modules can be taken in any order.  The timing of my studies and when courses were offered meant that after Unit 2 I self studied for the Unit 6 course. I took that test last June and failed, not because it is especially hard, there is a lot to learn, but it is not a hard test. I failed it because of a cup of coffee. I got hyper, my hands shook, and I couldn't write.  Then my hand cramped up and it was all down hill.

So I am restudying for Unit 6.   I will retake the exam in November.   Meanwhile I will be practicing my writing.  Another thing that I am working on is to make sure that I don't take  more than 5-6 minutes to evaluate a wine and write my notes. On the last test I took 10 minutes a piece for 3 wines and in the end only had 30 minutes to think about and write my 3 essays.  I need to build that up so I get 45 minutes of the allotted hour to write essays and only 15 minutes to actually evaluate wines.

So I am back to tasting fortified wines !! :-)   I also have extensive notes - 2 or 3 versions of them from the first time I took this test.  I have time lines of events within various properties / organizations.  I have notes about each property / organization and its history.  I will probably review the source material once more ( Jancis Robinson's Oxford Companion to Wine ) but my notes have the material refined to the important facts and they are all on one document so I don't need to thumb through the OCW to find the topics all over again.

The next thing that is going on is that I am writing the "Course Work Assignment" for Unit 1.  The course work assignment is a ~2500 word research paper on a topic that WSET assigns each 6 months. The current assignment ( due in November ) is to write about "How Advances in Science and Technology have affected Winemaking over the Last 50 Years".  A sub requirement is to pick an advancement in both Viticulture and Winery Technology and write about how each of these affects the resulting wine.   The final requirement is to pick a topic that you think will affect winemaking 20 years from now and describe what its effects will be. Footnotes and Bibliography are required. Even though they don't say ( write ) it out loud, you ARE expected to have a business slant to your theme. So the advances should probably have some aspect of efficiency, quality or economics of wine making behind them.

The Course Work Assignment is one half of the Unit 1 grade.   The other half of the exam is a closed book paper that will be written under exam conditions and lasting 1 hour.  A generic brief about the topic will be posted 1 month in advance, and you have that time to research the topic.  The actual question that will be on the exam is NOT known until you actually sit for the exam. So hopefully your research is comprehensive and you can think on your feet. In this case you are not expected to cite your sources of information.

The Unit 1 exam is offered 2-3 times a year, so even though I am writing the course work assignment for this November I will not take the written exam until later because I want to finish Unit 6 and not sure if I can write for 2 hours in one afternoon without my hand cramping again.  Plus I am also studying for my American Wine Society Wine Judge Certification (Year 1) exam that is also being held in November. This is a day long exam with a written test and several tasting tests. 

So I am trying to balance my time between these 3 exercises all of which are due in the first 10 days of November.   Because of this I decided not to attempt Certified Wine Educator ( CWE ) from the Society of Wine Educators. This exam is offered in Napa several times a year, so I am comfortable putting it off for another 6 months or so. I have already passed their Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) exam and the CWE builds on the Wines of the World aspect of that, plus adds in some of the Wine Components and Wine Faults exercises that I am studying for Wine Judging.  So many of these different programs build upon a common knowledge base. Study for one and you become partially prepared for another.

I have a new goal !  I picked this one up from taking the French Wine Scholar course with several Sommeliers.  I now want to pass the Certified Sommelier exam from the Court of Master Sommeliers and I will add a new post-nominal ('CS') to my professional titles.  I think I have the information required regarding the wines, I just need to learn and practice the proper procedures for opening sparkling wine and serving a table using all the proper procedures.

More fun !!

     john