About 6 months or so ago I sat my WSET Level 3 exam. For anyone who’s sat it, you’ll know that first up is the tasting bit, then the multiple choice, followed up by the short answers bit. Then you leg it out of the exam room before anyone else finishes because you don’t want to sit through the “what did you put for this?” crap that always happens at the end of exams.
I was pretty confident. I’ve always been a good book learner so parts 2 and 3 were surely in the bag, but part one? The tasting? Hmmmm. I’m still really nervous about blind tastings. One of the reasons I do NWTW is to try more and more wines. Daft thing is I can pick Barbera D’Asti from a Barbera D’Alba cos I’ve drunk so many of them. Ask me the difference between an Aussie Shiraz and a Carmenere in a blind tasting and I’m second guessing myself til the cows come home. And that’s exactly what the buggers did!
As slightly mitigating things, about 5 seconds after the exam started my phone went off which sent me into 5 minutes of pure Englishness telling everyone how sorry I was, and then the anxiety of taking an exam you should definitely pass is almost worse than doing one you probably won’t. That enough excuses? Good!
Needless to say I nearly went through an entire pencil and rubber guessing, second guessing, and so on, until I just thought “Sod It!” and plumped for one of them. Can’t remember what I put but given my marks of “Distinction” in the written and just a “Pass” in the tasting I’m guessing I got it wrong.
I only started drinking more wines than just Northern Italian about 2 years ago and I’m still ticking them off the list and learning as I go. Ant’s given me the chance this week to get the Level 3 Aussie Shiraz monkey off my back! Thanks pal.
Cheers
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