Celebrating the end of the WSET 3 course and exam

I really do believe that it is all about the journey rather than the destination. But yesterday was a BIG destination.

It was the day of my WSET 3 Exam and I was appropriately stressed out. Our teacher, Lynn, had done an excellent job of making sure that we were taking this completely seriously. The tasting guru from our tasting group, Andrew, had taken his WSET 3 a couple weeks ago and said it was really difficult. I have spent the last three weeks studying pretty hard and lamenting the fact that I don't have an eidetic memory. I was s t r e s s e d!

I arrived in Vancouver super early - I did not want to be late and miss out. I had my final dinner at Pokerrito (which I have done most nights through both courses) and then went to the BCIT building to - well - study some more.

It's amazing to be thrust into this kind of exam stress after so many years. Yes, my WSET 2 did require me to study but I ended up with 96% and felt very confident going into it. This exam was different.

There is so much material, so many grape varietals, so many geographical and environmental and winemaking and vine growing things to know that there is no way that I could remember every bit of information. I was very worried that some of the parts that I didn't study that much (Southern France, Argentina) would have major questions but I had to focus somewhere.

I really think that I haven't studied this hard since I was in university - so... 35 years ago! Hell, most of the people in the photo above are much younger than that! I have written my fair share of tests as a teacher and it was rather humbling to be on the other side.

It's a different kind of test than I would ever give - as a teacher I have been moving towards projects and in class assessments where students can access the information they need but how they present it and process it is what gets assessed. That's because there is so much information out there that it is crazy to get students to memorize scads of information. Students of today need to know how to manage the giant repositories of data that are out there.

However, there are still lots of tests like the WSET where you are required to memorize a lot of facts. And memorize is what I tried to do.

Before the test, members of the class gathered together. We were all anxious about the coming test and sort of resigned ourselves to the fact that it might be extremely hard.

Then, it was time.

The first part was the blind tasting. I'm not sure what the wines were and I wanted to blog about this before I find out. The white wine started off smelling like peaches and stone fruit to me, then become citrus, and then came back to peaches. I always struggle with white wines and if I fail the blind tasting, it will be because of the white.

The red was more in my bailiwick. I could pick out the black fruits in it quite easily and I am confident I nailed most of the components - although it's hard to know if, for example, a wine has medium plus body or medium.

If  I do, in fact, fail the blind tasting, I would take it again.

After that, we had the written.

The first part was 50 multiple choice questions. I whipped through that pretty fast. There were maybe 5 or 6 questions that I wasn't sure on and had to make an educated (not wild) guess but, overall, I was really confident.

The second part was the written test - the most feared part of the evening. I do not intend to rewrite the test if I fail so I put all my effort into this difficult section.

For reasons of not wanting to piss off WSET, I will be very general about the four questions.

The first question was about a famous German wine. I think I did well on that although there were parts where I was reaching for an answer. There were labels to interpret, varietals to describe and winemaking processes to discuss and I certainly didn't get everything but I think I did pretty well.

The second question was about a wine area in the US. Most of the questions I found pretty easy except for one table that you had to fill out that related to its geography and environment.  Still, I did quite well, overall.

I thought I would do really well on the third when I found out it was an area in France. Unfortunately, some of the grapes that they focussed in were ones that I wasn't solid on so I did just OK on this section.

The final section dealt with sparkling and fortified wines. The syllabus on the course does say that they will be examined in the written questions so I am glad that I studied this area. I think this was my best section.

I answered every question to the best of my ability, even if I had to guess or make up what I hoped was the answer. I did not have a question where I couldn't write anything, much to my relief.

It was a pretty fair test, overall, and I think I passed - but three months from now, when I get the results, I will know.

Afterwards,  a bunch of us (the people in the photo) went to the St. Regis Hotel for a drink - a place I probably haven't been in for 35 years as well! We talked about keeping the tasting group going and doing one in January which I think is a brilliant idea.

Back at the pub, the server asked what I wanted. I thought of all the different wines we had tasted and learned about over the past 15 weeks. We had sipped and spat around the world with some wonderful, strange and new wines. I pondered my choices.

So what did I order?

A beer!