Nurse the Hate: Closing In On The WSET Diploma Grail

Today marks the first day I have woke up and not felt an immediate wave of guilt wash over me that I have not already been reading wine text books.  For the last two plus years I have gone to sleep reading about topics like Champagne Villages and then kicked myself in the morning when I realize I forgot maximum yield rates in the Aube when I re-read the data in the morning at breakfast.  The fact is that although a number like this has nothing to do with improving the quality of life, the minute chance that it could come up in one of these wine exams has me trying to force it into an area of the brain where I can recall it.  If I ever get into a conversation with a grape farmer in Northern France, it’s good to know I can say “So, looks like you harvested at under maximum yield this year.”.  After that we will probably struggle to communicate, especially since I can’t speak or understand French.  He will hate me for that alone.  Then he will smoke cigarettes and glare at me.

I took what could be my last wine exam on Tuesday, the sparkling wine unit exam for the WSET Diploma.  If I pass this exam, a distinct possibility, I will have earned the WSET Diploma.  Only one year ago, this seemed an impossibility.  It should be noted that almost no one has earned this certification as it is very tedious and takes forever.  I just read a blog post here http://www.anthroenology.org/parting-ways-lsh-wset/  where a guy got crushed by the exams and folds up his tent.  There are something like 4000 people on the planet that have this Diploma title.  It seems to be growing in popularity lately though.  The numbers of people getting the diploma should swell based on the 80 uptight people that took the sparkling exam in San Francisco.  It’s really sort of stupid on my part.  Essentially, I went and got certified to be an anesthesiologist without being in position to put anyone under gas.  I’m an expert in a field I’m not in.  This either makes me the worst dinner party guest on the planet droning on about wine, or just a damn fool.

As usual, I got lucky with the exam.  I can’t tell you any specifics about the exam at this time as some goons from the WSET office in London will be dispatched to disembowel me if I do.  They threaten you right before taking the test.  It’s sort of great actually.  Eighty people are very uptight sitting in a hotel ballroom, and the test proctor reads a prepared sheet.  “We are now under test conditions.  Do not talk to anyone else at this point.  If you have anything on your desk but a pen and scrap paper, the WSET will fail you.  If your phone is anywhere near you and in the “on” position, you will be drowned in the San Francisco Bay by a surprisingly strong pale English boy named Roger.  If you reveal any information about the test on social media in the next 48 hours, the WSET will fail you and then disembowel you in front of your pets and then allow them to feast on your intestines before killing them in front of you and then finish you.  Oh, and put your candidate number on all the pieces of paper.  Good luck!”

There’s an overwhelming amount of information to try and learn for the exam.  From that potential pool of data, they ask you just three essay questions.  That’s it.  Three.  It could be anything.  You need a certain amount of luck.  These things tend to work out for me.  I just happened to meet seven wine producers from an obscure European region three days before the exam (as that is the kind of thing that can happen in San Francisco when you go to places with obscenely good wine).  There they poured their wines and patiently answered super dorky questions from me about soils, regional climate and yeast selections for second fermentations.  I was boring myself, but I figured what if this came up in the exam?  Against all odds, there it was…  “In regards to sparkling wine, discuss this obscure wine region”. 

The second question is about a place where the Daredevils and Cowslingers have toured though.  We spent an off night at this weird little town where I spent the afternoon talking to a no-nonsense winemaker that answered all my questions in a combination of annoyance and wonderment about how any person could be as stupid as me.  I could hear his deadpan voice in my head as I attempted to regurgitate all this information on a piece of notebook paper while cramming in whatever random stats I could in a desperate attempt to show I knew just enough to cross the finish line.  The odds of getting that question, once again, rather long.

They pour three sparkling wines to analyze.  At this point I have had so much sparkling wine I can identify some of them if you poured it into a styrofoam cup on a windy day.  The test wines were totally fair.  One was sort of lousy, one was sort of OK and one was really good.  I thought they were relatively easy to sort out.  If they wanted to, they could destroy you by pouring three wines blind like a dry sparkling Vouvray, a Tasmanian blanc de blanc, and a Blanquette de Die.  This test was actually quite reasonable (said the man hoping he didn’t screw up the wines).  I suppose I will see in another 6-8 weeks or whenever they get the results back to us.

If I fail this test, which in the world of the WSET is always a distinct possibility, I will just take it again.  I still think they jammed me up on that fortified exam last year because of all the terrible things I have written about them here.  “Yes, Miss Yardsley…  Please send Candidate number 13490084’s exam directly to Mr. Bates for a more thorough grading.  I believe he needs some special attention…”   I have since evolved.  I now have a more love/hate relationship as I understand The Beast that is English Education.  It took me longer than I would like to admit to understand the rules of the game.  There is no point in fighting with them about anything.  Like a student version of a submissive, I am now subservient to my pen wielding master.  If Roger or any of his goons are reading this, please spare me the rod.  My ball gag is inserted.

I await the result.