pop & pour

Oh right, did I mention this wine is cricket-themed? All the more reason to Costco it up.

Long time no speak!  I was shocked and appalled to discover that it’s been almost a full week since my last PnP post, but rest assured that I have not been wine-slacking:  after 17 hours spent in classroom for the WSET Advanced last weekend, I’ve been spending my weeknight evenings preparing for my exam next weekend by re-reading my textbook (which we were told we should do 4 times in the next 2 weeks.  The book is 300 pages long.).  The whole experience to date has been both more intense and more rewarding than the Intermediate course that I took in the summer; I walked in Saturday morning feeling intimidated and out of place and left on Sunday feeling like I actually belonged in the class, which was gratifying.  I also thanked my lucky stars for 8 months of doing Pop & Pour reviews, because we had to sample, evaluate and identify FORTY wines blind in two days using the WSET’s copyrighted Systematic Approach to Tasting, designed to allow someone to create a quick, consistent, (mostly) objective analysis of the main components of a wine and use that to formulate an opinion on the wine’s price, quality level and identity.  It’s fun for the first few times, but increasingly taxing as you hit wines #18 and 19 of the day.  To give you a sense of the WSET tasting method in action, I thought I would write up tonight’s wine using their proprietary method…just to ensure that I don’t get sued, let me clarify again that I did NOT invent this approach and am a mere student and user of the WSET’s brilliant taxonomy.

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