WSET Diploma: Retrospective
After two years of balancing wine studies with a full-time job as a finance lawyer, I am finally done with the Wine & Spirits Education (WSET) Diploma program!
I will be publishing a few posts with some study tips that I found helpful along the way, but first, here is some background on the WSET, together with a few of my thoughts on the road to achieving the Diploma.
What is WSET, and what is the WSET Diploma?
WSET is a company based in London that provides educational programs in wine, spirits and sake. They produce and update WSET textbooks, run courses through accredited affiliated schools across the world and issue certificates and awards for the successful completion of their programs. WSET has four levels of certificate programs in wines, Levels 1 through 4, which go up in complexity, the amount of information you are expected to learn and the commitment required.
Level 1 Award in Wines: This is a beginner-level course typically taken over one day, with a closed-book multiple choice theory exam administered at the end of the day. The course covers a few major types of wine, wine tasting principles and wine and food pairing concepts. If you work in the wine industry or grew up in a family that drank a lot of wine regularly, this course is probably too basic for you. This was my first serious encounter with wine outside of drinking cheap Moscato and slapping the Franzia bag in college, so this was a perfect starting point for me, and I was hooked on wine education after taking this course.
Level 2 Award in Wines: Level 2 is held over a few weeks, and according to the WSET website, the course is focused on learning about and tasting eight principal grape varieties: Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio/Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Shiraz/Syrah. Students taste wine in class and learn about wine tasting principles, but the examination is a one-hour closed book exam of 50 multiple choice questions with no tasting assessment involved.
Back in my day, WSET allowed students to skip Level 2 and go directly to Level 3, which is what I did, but the WSET no longer permits this for good reason, as I came to understand the hard way, since the disparity between Level 1 and Level 3 in terms of complexity and information is vast, and I do think that it is a disservice to yourself to skip Level 2.
Level 3 Award in Wines: This is the advanced level qualification for serious wine enthusiasts. Held over multiple months, the course dives into the key factors of wine production, significant wine regions around the world and wine tasting skills. The exam consists of a closed-book theory exam of 50 multiple choice questions and a few short-answer responses, together with a separate blind tasting exam of two wines. If you do not pass either the theory portion of the exam or the tasting portion of the exam, you can re-sit for the component that you failed without having to take the entire exam again. Full disclosure: I did not pass the tasting component of my first exam, but I kept practicing my tasting skills and re-sat the tasting exam for a successful passing score to achieve the Level 3 Award!
Level 4 Diploma in Wines: The Diploma program is for the real nerds of the wine world. It usually takes about two years to achieve and consists of six separate units:
Unit 1: Wine Production
Unit 2: Wine Business
Unit 3: Wines of the World
Unit 4: Sparkling Wines
Unit 5: Fortified Wines
Unit 6: Independent Research Assignment
Successful completion of the L3 Advanced course is a prerequisite to enrolling in L4, and unlike Levels 1 through 3, which may be taken in languages other than English, candidates must sit for all of their exams and write their papers in English.
Unit 1 and Unit 2 are assessed by 90-minute “open-response papers,” which consist of closed-book essay or short-answer responses to theory questions. These units have no tasting component in the exams.
In Unit 6, the candidate submits a 6,000 word research paper on one of the two research prompts given each year. The papers are expected to contain full academic citations and reflect research conducted from a wide variety of sources. The topics tend to be broad, on subjects such as climate change, sustainability, orange wines and South African wines.
Units 3, 4 and 5 each have a tasting component and a theory component to the exams. Units 4 and 5 have 90-minute exams in which the examinees can divide up their time between the theory portion and the tasting portion (a blind flight of three wines) as they wish. In Unit 4 and Unit 5, if an examinee fails either the tasting portion or the theory portion by a certain margin but scores a high enough score on the other portion, the examinee may achieve a “Pass” for the entire unit.
With respect to Unit 3, this unit is fondly called “The Beast” for a reason. The exam is a formidable two-day affair, with the first day reserved for writing open-response papers for three hours and 20 minutes. During the morning on the first day, candidates must write open-response papers on three of the four questions offered within a two-hour limit. After a lunch break, candidates will write open-response papers on two of the three questions offered within an 80-minute limit.
During the second day, examinees will assess 12 wines blind, six in the morning within 1.5 hours and six in the afternoon within 1.5 hours. In contrast to Level 3, Diploma candidates are expected to identify the grape, region or country of the tasting sample if so prompted, provide explanations as to why candidates came to those conclusions and write quality assessments containing arguments for why a wine was “good”, “very good” or “outstanding.” You think you know Nebbiolo until you’ve had 12 wines blind.
Furthermore, unlike in the D4 and D5 Units, when taking the D3 Unit, candidates must pass each of the tasting exam and the theory exam separately in order to pass the course, although as with the case for L3, candidates may re-sit for only the component they failed without having to re-take the entire exam again (thankfully).
On our D3 exam day, our proctor told us that we should actually be grateful that the WSET decided to split up the D3 exam into two days because it apparently used to be a grueling one-day exam, all hand-written. Needless to say, your hand will feel cramped for a couple of days after writing furiously for all of those hours while trying to keep your handwriting legible. Note: The examiners will dock points for illegibility at their discretion, so that’s just an extra layer of stress on the exam days.
Upon successful completion of all six units, candidates will receive their Diploma certificate, will be entitled to use the letters “DipWSET” after their names and will be invited to the graduation ceremony in London at the gorgeous Guildhall. As noted above, I do not come from a background in wine, either personally or professionally, but I studied my ass off for the past two years and you can bet that I will be making my way to Wine Hogwarts next spring for the graduation, where I look forward to meeting my fellow recently awarded DipWSETs from around the world!
What do you learn in the Diploma program that you don’t learn already in the Level 3 course?
Level 3 is a beast on its own. The 200-page L3 book is incredibly dense and loaded with the names of regions and grapes that are unfamiliar to most people outside of the wine world, in addition to technical facts about grapegrowing and vinification. The course is challenging even for those who have worked in the wine industry, because it is very unlikely that someone has tons of experience in grapegrowing AND vinification AND all of the various major styles of wines in the world, including sparkling wines and fortified wines. Passing the L3 exam is a commendable achievement requiring serious commitment and discipline, and I studied for it like I was studying for the bar exam.
For the most part, L4 covers the same topics, regions and styles of wine as in L3. As a result, it can be hard to imagine how much more you have to learn in L4 over L3.
Level 4 is Level 3 on steroids.
The L4 course covers everything that is covered in L3 but on a much deeper level. Just the D3 Wines of the World book, which covers only still wines (no sparkling wines and no fortified wines), consists of over 600 pages.
Students are expected to get very familiar with the technical knowledge they gain in the Unit 1 Wine Production and Unit 2 Wine Business course. In addition to knowing the terminology, students need to be able to demonstrate that they can apply the concepts to the other units. As a result, it’s not enough just to know the terms, you have to understand where they fit into the wine world and how producers elect various options to achieve certain results in wine production.
WSET never actually outright says this, but it seems to me that their overarching theory is that wine isn’t produced in a vacuum; the final bottled wine is a result of a series of careful (or in the case of not-so-good wines, less careful or ill-advised) decisions made with the intent to achieve a certain result in the wine. As a result, it seems to me that the biggest benefit of going through the Diploma program is understanding the “why” in the various aspects of the wine production process so that you can continue to progress your own wine education independent of the WSET program.
For example, my L3 book describes Sauvignon Blanc as a “highly aromatic grape variety with high acidity…A number of wine regions are capable of making high-quality Sauvignon Blanc but the Loire Valley, France and Marlborough, New Zealand are perhaps the most famous. Sauvignon Blanc wines from Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé in the Loire Valley show elegance and restraint. The cool climate gives aromas and flavors of green apple and asparagus often with a hint of wet pebbles. Marlborough is similarly cool but long hours of intense sunlight give wines of very vibrant flavours. The wines display powerful aromas of gooseberry, elderflower, grapefruit and passionfruit.”
The L3 book does a great job of describing the various styles of wines around the world and what you can typically expect of them. However, the L3 book does not really dive into why Sauvignon Blanc has these characteristics or explain how the different methods of harvest, temperatures during vinification, micro-climates or the soils are factors in producing these different styles of Sauvignon Blanc, nor does it describe the nuances of the sub-regions within the Loire Valley or Marlborough the way the L4 book does.
After finishing the L3 course, I felt that my own knowledge was confined to what I had learned through my textbook, as I did not work in the wine industry, and I felt like I was a bit stuck in place. However, after finishing the L4 course, I feel like I can take the principles and concepts I learned along the way and apply them to regions, grapes and wine styles outside of the four corners of the WSET textbooks and keep progressing my own learning.
Personally, I thought that nowhere was this more apparent than the process of researching and writing the D6 Independent Research Assignment paper. My research topic was a very general prompt on the subject of climate change in wine production, and I found myself going down rabbit holes of academic articles discussing all kinds of nerdy concepts like molecular compounds and pH levels. Science is definitely not my forte, but I realized that, while I didn’t understand everything completely, I could actually follow along with these articles to synthesize the general concepts.
Outside of the WSET program and the exams, the Diploma studies have been a gamechanger for how I visit wine regions. I used to be pretty passive when it came to wine tourism - Get to a location and just let the guide or host do all of the talking. But now I place a high premium on being able to have a conversation with my guide or host about what they’re doing in the vineyard or the winery - What kind of yeast are they using? Why are they choosing ageing in concrete over wood or steel and what kinds of results are they seeing? Visiting wine regions and being able to see the practical on-the-ground application of the things I learned in my classes has been one of the highlights of my wine studies over the past few years, and I completely nerd out when I’m visiting wineries.
What do you not learn in the Diploma program?
You do not learn how to become a sommelier.
You do not learn about all of the vintages.
You do not learn about all of the major producers, except for one or two examples for each region.
You also do not get very deep into soils and geology.
Most of all, you do not learn everything about wine, so please do not expect DipWSETs to know everything about wine!
If anything, I think that the Diploma program shows us just how much we do not know about wine, as the world of wine is infinite in its scope, which is the fun part of wine!
Sounds painful. Was it worth it?
100%.
The process is undeniably daunting and a significant investment of time and money. Just the Level 4 Diploma can cost anywhere between $7,000 and $10,000 in US Dollars depending on which school you enroll through (not including the cost of the wines you will need to practice tasting with), and you will feel like you do not have a life for a year or two while you are going through the Diploma courses.
Self-doubt, imposter syndrome and anxiety are common feelings shared by all Diploma candidates, regardless of their level of experience in the wine world. Some people struggle with tasting due to the fact that they just do not have much experience working in wine (me), while others struggle with the essay writing and the memorization aspect, given the immense amount of knowledge students are expected to learn. Life inevitably gets in the way, and students have to contend with family obligations, health issues and also just trying to sustain a living through their jobs. However, people do get through it at the end, and I believe that it is completely achievable if you want it and put your mind toward it. As of 2020, there were almost 11,000 DipWSETs across the world and many more candidates working toward the same goal, so if you need anyone to commiserate with, you will have plenty of good company.
From a purely nerdy perspective, going through the WSET courses up to the Diploma has really confirmed for me how much I love learning about wine. To be clear, I do not think that anyone needs a certification or a formal education to learn about wine. There are tons of people who know way more about wine than me or many of my Diploma classmates because they spend so much time studying on their own and are actively curious about wine on a day-to-day basis. But I have a pretty busy full-time job as a lawyer, and for me, the structure and rigor of the programs were important to me to help me stay on track with my studies and to open my eyes to all the things I didn’t know about before.
There is empowerment in knowledge and education, and as a female attorney who goes out with colleagues and clients from time to time, I now feel much more confident in my wine choices when I am out at work events. Where I would otherwise have felt the need to defer to others (often men) to make decisions for me at the table, I can join that conversation now and be able to provide some substantive input. And that doesn’t mean that I never talk to the sommelier. In fact, being able to have a real conversation with the sommelier about their thoughts on the wine list is one of my favorite parts of the dining experience now!
I enrolled in my first Diploma course in the summer of 2020, a couple of months after my mom passed away. For almost two years starting in 2018, I went back and forth from the East Coast to Seoul where my mom was getting treatment for pancreatic cancer, and for those years, I felt like I was struggling just to hold on to what I had at that time - my mom, my family and my job. 2020 was the year that a whole host of other horrible things were going on in the world - the pandemic, the lockdowns, the hate crimes - and after my mom passed away, I felt like I needed something positive to move my life forward outside of work. After going back and forth about whether I should take on the two-year commitment, I decided to pull the trigger and just go for it. Only the online courses were being offered at that time, and I took Units D1, D2 and D4 online. Even though I didn’t have the benefit of the in-person classroom setting at that time, I loved having something to work toward and to look forward to, and I honestly never imagined that this endeavor would become anymore more than just an academic side hobby.
As miserable as it was to fail an exam, to feel disappointed when I called the wrong wines and to feel the constant crush of the pressure that I put squarely on myself, there were also moments of some serious elation and happiness along the way, which were related not just to getting a good result on an exam but also sharing amazing wines with my study group here in New York, falling in love with styles of wine I had never heard of before (hello, Manzanilla!), connecting with other wine lovers through social media and feeling joy and pride in taking on new challenges. The wine world is incredibly generous, encouraging and social, and going through the same challenges and sharing perspectives with people from across the world from different backgrounds has been one of the most enriching and rewarding experiences of my adult life.
Going through the Diploma and want some helpful tips with the benefit of hindsight?
Are there any topics you would like to see covered in the study tips in my future blog posts?
Are there any other thoughts on going through the WSET or the Diploma process yourself that you would like to share?
Feel free to comment below or on my Instagram or send me an e-mail!
