Originally published on .July 17, 2008
A few weeks ago I was writing about studying for my WSET Diploma Unit 2 test. (It beat actually studying.) Well, I passed! With Distinction! I was sort of hoping I would fail, because then I could just end this whole madness of getting this fancy-dancy certification.
So what is this whole WSET Diploma thing? To start, WSET = Wine & Spirits Educational Trust. It’s a London-based organization that offers wine education and formal qualifications (certificates, diplomas, very British). Originally, the qualifications were intended for people in the wine trade, but increasingly, a lot of people not in the industry are taking the courses as well. It’s pretty intense and fairly wine-geeky.
The Diploma is the top level of the various qualifications the WSET offers. Going after it entails a 2 – 3 year commitment and the completion of 5 units. Courses in New York are taught at the International Wine Center.
You start off with the Unit 2 (I’ll get to Unit 1 later) which is culminates in multiple choice test on viticulture and vinification (grape-growing and winemaking in normal-speak). Sample questions: what’s the maximum sulphur content that can be added to red wine in the EU (which is different that what can be added to white wine, sweet wine, or very sweet wine.) If you remove a tree from plot 3 (referencing a cute little diagram) what happens to plot 5?
Once you take that test, you can move on to the remaining units in any order you chose. Unit 3 focuses on still wine tasting. The final test – 3 flights of 3 wines each. You taste each flight blind, write tasting notes, including a guess as to what each wine is. (You need to be more specific than ‘red’ or ‘white’.) Then you have lunch and come back and answer a bunch of essays. Units 4, 5, and 6 are similar to Unit 3, but focus on sparkling wines, fortified wines, and spirits. And Unit 1 involves writing a series of research papers on various business issues related to wine or spirits.
And when you’re done, you get a Diploma! And wine-world bragging rights! And probably a pin!
So why go though this gauntlet? For me, it’s a challenge, and I like challenges. And a lot of interesting people in the industry are ‘going for their Diploma’ so it’s a good networking environment, even if some of the people in the program are a little, um, intense (aka annoying, smarty-pants types.)
And once I’m done with this, I can move on to the Masters of Wine, another extremely fabulous qualification. But more on that next time…I have a research paper to start…