On The Road To Becoming A Master Of Wine: Hitting Some Bumps As Insanity Sets In

Am I insane for wanting to be a Master of Wine candidate? Quite possibly. I am starting to think that trying to become a Master of Wine might be a nutty way of proving to myself that I just don't have the skills I think I have and spending a lot of money to find this all out.

Having passed the Level 2 Wine Studies Program at Boston University in May early this year, I have signed up for Level 3. I am about 7 weeks into this course, which roughly marks the halfway point, and I have the mid-term coming up this Wednesday, oh wait, it's today! I am not feeling all that confident. The midterm is almost all blind tasting. Ten wines from a pool of fifty-seven to identify blind, three taste components (bitter, sour, sweet, astringency, heat, etc.) to identify from solutions, and three Le Nez du Vin aromas to identify.  I am having nightmares. I am dreaming I am taking the test and I can't identify a single wine and I can't even come up with one wine term to describe them. I think I am trying too hard. I am taking Level 3 more seriously than Level 2. Am I taking this too seriously? Probably. Well, maybe not.

For me, Level 2 was a breeze. I scored 100% on the mid-term exam and scored a steak dinner at a Boston steakhouse. I scored 94% on the final exam, and, with rounding up, my final grade was 96%. Pass with Distinction is what it says on my certificate. I was in the Finger Lakes wine region the weekend before the exam and did not manage to get any studying in. I was able to answer all the blind wine tasting questions correctly, which was very important to me, but I failed to answer six multiple choice questions correctly. If I remember right, three of them were beer questions. I would have preferred another perfect score but I really can't complain.

Level 2 focuses on all the major wine regions in the world with some attention paid to the minor ones like Romania and Croatia. The course also illustrates an analytical way of tasting. Not tasting blind so much, even though there were blind tastings on both exams, but tasting systematically, and learning to identify acid, tannin, alcohol etc. and where and how they affect your mouth and tongue. It also focuses on tasting as a group and the importance of having a common language to discuss the wines, making sure everyone knows the difference between sour, astringency, bitter and heat and using the right words to describe them. If we are all talking about different sensations but using the same words, that won't work. Conversely, if we talking about the same sensations but using different words to describe them, that doesn't work too well either.

Level 3, at least the first half, is all about blind tasting. Level 3 blind tasting takes the basic principles of tasting wine in Level 2 and magnifies them; evaluating a wine by deconstructing it, looking at its parts, taking climate into account, and by deducting what it can't be, coming up with a sane answer/guess. This is how I am looking at it anyway. The exercise is meant to discourage sniffing a glass of wine and immediately pronouncing its identity. There are some amazing people out there in the world of wine who seemingly do this, but this is generally not true for the majority of us. Even if, on some occasions, I have managed this feat I am by no means amazing; nor is this a consistent way to successfully taste wines blind.

I have been meeting with a small group of fellow students on Sundays to re-taste the wines we tasted during the Wednesday class. I have had some good days, some mediocre days, but never a truly bad day - well, not until this past Sunday that is. This past Sunday I identified an Australian Semillon as a German Riesling; I got petrol, peaches, low alcohol, high acid and a general softness in the mouth damn it! I thought an Anjou Blanc was a simple Chablis. Oddly enough, I got the Verdejo and the Gruner right; and I was shocked. I got the Torrontes from a sniff and a check on the hue; yeah I know, I didn't use the process. It was Torrontes!  What really upset me the most, however, was that I screwed up four wines completely: a left and right bank Bordeaux, a Washington Merlot, and a Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. It wasn't that I confused the right and left bank,or even Washington and California. I confused the two countries! I was thoroughly humbled. The selected Bordeaux are of a modern style, but I guessed them correctly in class. Sometimes my notes of a particular wine in class did not resemble in any way the notes I made days or weeks later.  I am very humbled and I am not confident of doing well on the exam.Hence the dreams of me taking the test in my underwear.

I realize I can't expect to do great at every level and at every test. Well, at least that realization is starting to solidify for me now. For now all I can do is look over my consolidated wine notes, read over the grape characteristics from Essential Winetasting by Michael Shuster (Level 3 required reading) and How To Taste by Jancis Robinson and maybe do a little praying. While I am at it I'll pray for my sanity as well.