WSET Diploma: Tasting
I’ll just put it out there and say that tasting is not my natural forte. I have significantly improved tasting skills over time, but I do not believe I have any kind of innate sensory aptitude.
That said, as someone who doesn’t consider herself to be an expert taster, I have thought a lot about the WSET tasting exams to overcome my weaknesses. I failed my tasting exam for the WSET Level 3 exam the first time I took the exam, but I passed the second time to move on to the WSET Diploma program, and I actually did quite well on some of the Diploma tasting exams, with a “Pass with Distinction” on the D5 Fortified Wine tasting exam.
Below are some considerations to keep in mind while preparing for the tasting exams. Note: This post is not about how to become a better taster but how to increase the likelihood of your success on the WSET Diploma tasting exams. As with my other Diploma advice, these are my personal views and not reviewed or vetted by anyone from the official WSET program, and I offer this advice simply as additional tools to help you in your Diploma journey.
Taste routinely with a tasting group
I cannot overstate the value of having a regular tasting group for the Diploma. Aside from the fact that tasting with a group cuts down on how much you rack up in wine purchasing costs along the way, tasting regularly with a group helps calibrate your palate, and I think it’s really the discussions among the people in the group about the wines that bring the most value to the table. I was wrong on so many wines during our tasting sessions, but that was completely fine, because by talking through these mistakes with my tasting group, I learned how to avoid those pitfalls during the actual exams. The Diploma can be an incredibly stressful and miserable process, but I look back on my experience fondly because of my weekly tasting group in New York.
Volunteer to read your tasting note out loud in class
Many people hate reading their tasting notes out loud in front of the entire class because they are shy, embarrassed, don’t like the sound of their own voice and/or are afraid of being wrong on their notes. However, it was a bit of a shock to me when I learned that, other than in my online D1 and D2 courses (for which there is no tasting component on the exam), the instructors in my Diploma courses did not read and provide written feedback on our tasting papers. As a result, the only time we received feedback on our tasting papers was when the instructors asked someone to read their notes out loud in class.
I’m not saying that you should be an annoying gunner and try to read your tasting notes for the class every time, and you should let other people have their turn, but if the instructor is getting no volunteers and you are not willing to read your note in front of the class, that is one less opportunity you are getting to receive feedback on your notes.
Also, who cares if your notes are wrong? It’s just practice!
Do some non-blind tastings by yourself
I am a huge advocate of doing non-blind tastings or half-blind tastings by yourself. Especially for wines that you have never had before or have little experience with, I think it helps a lot to know what the wine is, and having the space to consider whether your notes match what you know about the wine helps you sharpen your senses tremendously.
I had very little experience with most of the fortified wines prior to taking D5, so after I did half-blind or blind tastings with fortified wines, I would actually go back and sit with the wine again while looking at the tech sheets to see if I was able to pick up anything I missed while working on the wine the first time.
Write your notes in one color and your revision notes in another color
Everyone has certain aromas and flavors that they have a hard time picking up or just always forget about. For some reason, I always forget about the aroma, “licorice.”
When I wrote my tasting notes, I always wrote my notes in black or blue ink, and then when we were discussing the wine, if I agreed with someone else on additional aromas that I didn’t initially pick up while I was writing my notes by myself, I wrote down their aromas or flavors in red. While I was preparing for my exams, I went back through my old tasting papers, found all the aromas/flavors in red and wrote down charts of the notes I tended to forget about under lists of certain wine types so that I would remember them right before the exam.
For example, if cassis or bell pepper doesn’t come to you readily for Left Bank Bordeaux, putting together a similar chart may help you remember to think about whether those notes are present. You don’t lose points for putting down “wrong” aromas! (Unless they’re seriously off.)
Learn from my mistake on my D3 varietal flight
When working on the D3 varietal wine tasting flight, stick with your gut on the reference wine instead of focusing so much on the wine that is the outsider.
The variety on my D3 tasting exam was Chardonnay. The first wine I had was a dead ringer for a New World Chardonnay - oaked, medium+ acidity, somewhat full body with evidence of malolactic fermentation (creamy, buttery). I don’t remember what my thoughts were about Wine #2, but the third wine was an intensely tropical-smelling wine, and the thought that became lodged in my mind was that I had never seen a Chardonnay so tropical before and that this wine had to have been Sauvignon Blanc or a variety blended with Sauvignon Blanc. I ruled out Sauvignon Blanc because of Wine #1 and Wine #2, and I went back and forth between Chardonnay and Semillon, and instead of sticking with my gut and calling Chardonnay for the flight due to Wine #1, I let myself focus too much on weird Wine #3, got paranoid that the examiners were trying to trick us and ended up calling Semillon for the flight. In my explanation, I wrote that New World Semillon is often aged in new oak, with toasty, vanilla flavors as seen in Wine #1, and Semillon is sometimes blended with Sauvignon Blanc, which would explain the intensely tropical aromas coming out of Wine #3. My explanation showed that there was some deductive reasoning behind my choice, but it wasn’t the correct call.
Aside from the fallacy of my reasoning that Semillon would be on the varietal exam over Chardonnay (although it’s not impossible), the examiner’s reports actually do show that the WSET will often have one non-classical expression on the varietal wine flight. The purpose of having a non-classical wine in a varietal flight is likely so that you can demonstrate that you recognize that this particular grape has versatility and the potential to show itself in other ways - a key trait of many of the “major” grapes of the world.
How to approach the “suitability for ageing question”?
Diploma students abhor this question, and understandably so, because it’s such an ambiguous, open-ended question. For how long? For whom?
For certain types of wines, such as sparkling wines and fortified wines, there is usually a clear right answer. Most sparkling wines, with the exception of some Vintage Champagnes, are made ready to drink and are therefore not suitable for ageing. There are also very few fortified wines that are suitable for ageing (for example, Vintage Port), and the answer often depends on whether there was extensive oxidative ageing before bottling. With D3 still wines, the answers get a bit more opaque due to the diversity of wines on the exam, and then the success of those responses will hinge on your ability to explain your reasoning over whether you chose the right answer or not.
In the D3 course, I usually considered first whether the wine has the structural components (acidity, sweetness or tannins) to sustain the ageing process. However, just because the wine has the structural components does not mean it should be aged!
As a result, I next considered whether the wine is worth the time and effort of ageing wine for years in the bottle. Bottle ageing wine is not for the faint of heart! You need a cellar/refrigerator, space and a reliable source of electricity! If it’s just a “good” wine lacking concentration, then I consider it “not suitable.” The flavors are not likely to withstand the ageing process given their weak concentration at this point in time. Likewise, a “good” wine lacking complexity would not be considered suitable in my view. Such simple or basic flavors now are unlikely to evolve into much more complex and interesting flavors that would merit the investment necessary for years of ageing.
If a wine has the necessary structural components, then I also consider what was the winemaker’s intention when making this wine - the intended style of wine. For example, a fresh, fruity white wine with no evidence of oxidative winemaking or oak ageing, like a classic New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, may have the high acidity to sustain ageing, but I would consider it “not suitable for ageing.” The predominance of fresh primary fruit flavors and the lack of any evidence of oak maturation or oxidative winemaking suggests that the winemaker intended to preserve these fresh fruit flavors with anaerobic winemaking and cool fermentation temperatures for early drinking.
On the flip side, if a wine is “very good” or “outstanding”, and there is quite strong evidence of barrel ageing being used and plenty of freshness in the wine still present, I tend to steer toward stating that the wine is “suitable for ageing.” Barrel ageing using either new or old barrels is a significant investment of time and money for the winemaker. New wooden barrels in particular are not cheap, and winemakers who use it in their winemaking process do so with the intention of adding complexity and texture to create a wine expected to develop positively over the span of a few years. In a wine that is presently “very good” or “outstanding” with a good amount of acidity and/or tannin still present, such wines should be expected to further evolve in terms of complexity and become further integrated with bottle ageing while still maintaining freshness.
Each wine should be considered individually for its suitability for ageing, but if you have some general principles you keep in the back of your mind, then you can spend less time stressing about this question and devote more time into the quality assessment!
Use Secondary Resources
The Big Vin Theory episode featuring Nick Jackson - This episode was a gamechanger for me, as Nick discusses his approach to answering the region question on blind tasting questions. Hint: Start by thinking about climate first.
Beyond Flavor: Wine Tasting by Structure (Volume 2) by Nick Jackson - I didn’t understand everything in the book, and I’m still not sure if I’m on board with whether the acidity in Grüner Veltliner has a rollercoaster shape. However, the book is a must-read because it helps you think about wine, not so much in terms of flavors and aromas, but in terms of structure, which I do agree is the true cornerstone of blind tasting.
Interpreting Wine by Lawrence Francis - In these episodes, leaders in the wine industry taste through flights of wines using WSET Diploma principles and terminology and explain how they analyze the quality and distinctive attributes of these wines.
Stay tuned for my next post on everyone’s favorite part of the tasting paper…the quality assessment!
In the meantime, any other pieces of advice you would provide to other Diploma candidates for the tasting exam? Any thoughts on the advice above? Comment below!
