WSET: Officially Advanced!!!

23 01 2012

Ten weeks and a day (but who’s counting) after I tasted and wrote my way through the Wine & Spirits Education Trust’s Advanced Exam, I officially got my results from WSET headquarters in London.  Thankfully, they were worth waiting for, on both the theory side and the tasting side:

Woooooooooo!!!!

I now have a fancy certificate (which I’m not allowed to reproduce in any form, hence the substitute pic of the boring accompanying letter above) to hang in my not-yet-built wine cellar, a somewhat-less-fancy green pin and a heck of a load off my mind…I think I was more nervous about this exam than I was when I wrote the LSAT.

An anticlimactic but hard-fought pin.

According to the WSET website, I can now work “in the drinks and hospitality industries in a supervisory capacity” (who’s hiring?  🙂 ) and, more importantly, apply to the WSET to use the “WSET Certified Advanced” logo on my letterhead and business cards!  I am totally doing this.  This has completely made my week.  I will crack and write about a suitable celebration bottle shortly, but for now I’m just going to sit back, savour the moment and thank my lucky stars that my tuition money didn’t go to waste.  Cheers!!

 

 


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WSET Advanced Complete!

14 11 2011

This logo and I have had a good 2011 together.

So how many different wines did you drink over the last three weekends?  I had about 100.  From White Zinfandel to Barolo, Tokaji to Pinotage, Sherry to Port — if it was from a recognizable world wine region, I probably tasted it over 50ish classroom hours in WSET Advanced class.  The wines we tasted in the course retailed for anywhere from $10 to $100, came from 15 different countries and ran the gamut of styles, preparations and flavours.  To top it off, the WSET threw in some spirits for good measure:  in the span of an afternoon this past Saturday, I had Cognac, Armagnac, Calvados (apple-based spirit), Irish Whiskey, Single Malt Scotch, Bourbon, Dark Rum and Tequila (it would have been like a Vegas weekend were it not for the spit cups).

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Goals & Milestones

27 10 2011

Once more into the breach!

One of the things I wanted to do in 2011 (other than making sure I muddled through figuring out how to keep our first child alive — so far so good!) is get some formal wine education.  I had read a ton of books and articles, gone to tastings, talked to shop owners and, of course, drank a lot of vino, but I wanted to take things a step farther and actually get into the classroom, which prompted me to enrol in the WSET Intermediate program a few months ago.  Thankfully, I successfully completed and passed the course, coming out of the summer with my Intermediate Certificate, and I enjoyed the experience so much that I immediately signed up for the WSET Advanced class later in the year.  Well, “later in the year” is now two days away — for the next three weekends I will be shut away in a conference room downtown with other like-minded wine die-hards, trying desperately to absorb reams of technical and geographical information while simultaneously tasting 20-30 wines a day.  If my course materials are any indication, the Advanced course will be WAY more, well, advanced than the Intermediate, so if you don’t see as many PnP posts as normal until mid-November, you can assume it’s because I’m studying.  The blog will be back up to full throttle once my exam (which includes a blind tasting this time) is blissfully behind me.

Thankfully, this blog continues to get amazing support even when I’m a bit lax about regular posting.  Sometime in the next two days Pop & Pour will clock over the 10,000 (!!!) hit mark, which is both gratifying and astonishing to me.  In each month of its operation, PnP has attracted more views than the month before, and I have all of you to thank for your interest in this site.  Once the WSET is done I’ll crack and review a suitable tribute bottle to celebrate both this latest round-number hit target and the fact that school’s officially out for winter.  Cheers!


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WSET Intermediate Complete!

4 06 2011

I came, I tasted 65 wines & spirits in a 3 day period, I wrote a test, and I think I passed.  I have a couple months to wait before I get my official confirmation, but WSET Intermediate is now in the books, and I cracked a special wine tonight to mark the occasion which I’ll write about tomorrow (hint:  it’s German, it’s Riesling, and it’s awesome).  In the meantime, I will again encourage anyone with a deep interest in wine to consider taking a course like this, because it really solidifies your base of knowledge and broadens your horizons (he says as he immediately goes back to his favourite region and grape right after class is over).  Until tomorrow!


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WSET

25 05 2011

With any luck, in a couple of weeks I’ll be removing all of your lingering doubts about reading a wine blog written by an uninitiated hack; if everything goes according to plan, by then I’ll be at least a semi-initiated hack.  Starting this weekend I’m taking my first ever formal wine education course:  I’m signed up for the Wine & Spirit Education Trust’s Intermediate Certificate in Wines and Spirits course here in Calgary.  I’m extremely excited, not only to lend some much-needed legitimacy to this poor site, but to learn a more systemic approach to tasting and evaluating wine that should improve both my analytical skills and my appreciation for what I’m drinking.  Even better:  we get to practice this tasting method in class by trying over 50 wines in a 3 day period!  Now THAT’s what I call a weekend. Read the rest of this entry »


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