On The Road To Becoming A Master Of Wine: First Speed Bump, Certified Specialist Of Wine, Part 1

A few days ago I decided to become a Certified Wine Educator (CWE). This is a certification that is awarded by the Society of Wine Educators. To become a CWE you must first become a Certified Specialist of Wine, or CSW, which is done by passing an exam of 100 multiple choice questions in an hour. A passing score is 75%. In addition to achieving CSW certification it is necessary to take another test consisting of 85 multiple choice questions in an hour, an essay in thirty minutes and two sensory evaluations, each in thirty minutes. Very exciting stuff indeed!

Shortly after deciding this wine-life affirming decision, I thought, "What the heck?" and decided to become a Master of Wine (MW), which, I believe, is one or two steps below Master of the Universe (MU). This is quite a bit harder than becoming either a CSW or CWE and usually takes a minimum of three years. I won't go into the details of how to become a MW now, because, quite frankly I am a very long way from this distinction. It is one thing to decide to become or do something. It is quite altogether something else to achieve that something. I am, however, a firm believer that if you put your will to something, you can do almost anything. Perhaps the ludicrous part of this is that I don't even need the CSW or CWE to achieve MW. For that I really ought to have a WSET diploma! I will do that next. One thing at a time.

Deciding to become a CWE is not nearly as pretentious sounding as, say, a guru deciding before conception to be born. That being said, I think my perception as to the difficulties regarding becoming a CWE was that this should be easy as cake, eating it that is. That is why I signed up for the test for the CSW, the first step to becoming a CWE, two weeks before it was to be given. "How hard could this be?" I thought. Perhaps harder than I thought.

So I joined the Society of Wine Educators as a Professional which costs $125. I did this for two reasons. One, it defrayed the cost of the exam. As a member it costs $180, but as a non-member it costs $255. Yes, I know, I lost $50 in that transaction. Two, being a member gave me access to their online Wine Academy study modules. I get a few other benefits from being a member, so, I am mostly happy with my decision to go this route. After looking at the study modules, I decided that two weeks may not be enough.

As I write this, it is October 24th and my test is on Nov 5th. I have thirteen days in which to broaden my mind. I have studied with the modules for two days now and I am finding that there is quite a bit that I don't know, much of which seems rather esoteric. Writing this all down should help me memorize some of this minutia. It may also provide some information and amusement. I am going to focus on writing about the things I know the least of, hopefully the reason for that is self-explanatory.


Wine Tasting, Etiquette, Service

This is an area that I thought I would have no problem with. Well, I took the pre-test of 21 questions and I scored a 66.7% Ugly, 7 wrong! After looking more closely, two of the questions I got wrong I had misread. I would have had a 76% if not for the reading error. Not that it would matter on the real test, but I knew those. Let's take a look at what I got wrong.

Sight gives us the least information about wine. I chose touch as my answer. This is because of the way my brain works. I was thinking fingers. If you put your fingers in a glass of wine I assumed you would glean very little from that experience. When they, SWE, say touch they mean tactile sensation on the tongue separate from taste. My bad. Even though sight is the least helpful of the senses, color and hue can give you a few clues about the wine. Age and weight of the wine are a couple.

Sight however is the most familiar and frequently used sense. I looked at this question solely within the realm of wine. They meant it in a more general way. I said smell is the most familiar and frequently used.

The olfactory epithelium is the sensory organ/tissue that allows you to smell. We have two of them and they connect to the olfactory bulb in the brain. I got that one right, but I guessed. What I didn't know was that only 5-10% of the air we breathe comes into contact with those tissues. I guessed 60-80%.

Apparently humans are least sensitive to sweet as a taste. I chose salty. We are most sensitive to bitter. (I got that one right.)

Humans, it seems, can be trained to identify 1000 aromas, out of the 10,000 we can detect, give or take. I chose 100. Wine is estimated to have 200 or so.

Lastly, 'aroma' when used to describe wine, technically, only refers to the scents of the grape variety itself, even though 'aroma' is commonly used to describe everything you smell. Bouquet, technically refers to the smells that come from the wine-making process, such as yeast, oak etc.

Those were the pre-test results. I then read the module and scored 100% on the post-test. Thirteen days to go.