Earning the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Level III Certification
The First Challenge: Finding a Class
My wife (Suzan) and I had such a great time in the WSET Level II course that as soon as we had our shiny blue lapel pins in hand we began looking for a way to earn the WSET Level III Award in Wine. Declaring our intent was much easier than actually finding an Approved Program Provider (APP).
Part of the difficulty related to the requirements set on the WSET schools. In order to teach a WSET course, you need to hold the credential one level above the course you want to teach. This means that any provider that wants to teach the WSET Level III material needs to have their Level IV (Diploma). Getting the WSET Diploma is a huge commitment and, from what I have read, an extremely difficult undertaking.
Just looking at the relative study time expected for the various programs gives you a feeling for the daunting scope.
Level I : 1 Day
- Classroom: 6 hours
Level II : 6 Weeks
- Classroom: 16 hours
- Personal Study: 11 hours
Level III Advanced: 12 Weeks
- Classroom: 30 hours
- Personal Study: 54 hours
Level IV Diploma: 2 Years
- Classroom: 116 hours
- Personal Study: 370 hours
- Cost : $7,500 minimum
Unless you live in a state that is home to a major wine industry, the chance anyone has put in the effort to get their Diploma is pretty small.
Our local WSET II instructor at the Wine Academy of Utah (Jimmy) is amazing, and provides an exceptionally engaging class that has cultivated hundreds of wine enthusiasts in the state. Sadly, his school only provides the Level I and Level II courses.
After investigating various online programs offered through providers in California we were getting ready to enroll. However, we kept postponing, mostly due to the added costs of going through the program remotely. Signing up for an online course would have still required us to fly out to California to take the certification exam, which would dramatically increase the course cost. Also, we would be on the hook for the full expense of any wine samples needed to develop our tasting. I think this is an issue for a lot of wine enthusiasts that don’t live on the coasts.
Apparently, we were not the only people in the Salt Lake Valley who were itching to tackle the WSET Level III because one afternoon we got an email from Jimmy that he had negotiated with another WSET provider to work with him and give the residents of Utah a chance to take the WSET III.
The Wine Education Institute, based out of Colorado, agreed to fly out an instructors to Utah in order to administer the exam for people who enrolled in their Online Level III course. Concurrently, Jimmy would host an optional weekly tasting group so that we could spread out the cost of wine samples and help each other in dialing in our tasting to the Level III standards.
We should pause here to mention that Jimmy went above and beyond to arrange this opportunity. The amount of effort to investigate, coordinate, and provide a study group was enormous. I suspect Jimmy put in this effort because he wanted to help improve the expertise in the local wine community.
Not knowing if this kind of opportunity would ever come around again we immediately signed up.
If you happened to read my previous article about the WSET Level II experience you know that Suzan crushed me in the final exam. She won the Golden Wine Key from the Wine Academy of Utah for the high score in the class and had claimed the title of Corkmaster in our home for beating me. This was my chance for a rematch.
Tasting
Unlike the WSET Level II certification, there is a tasting component to the Level III exam. Candidates are presented with two wines, a white and a red, without being given any information about what is in the glass.
They are then required to evaluate the wines according to the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting (SAT). The instructor evaluates the same wine and points are awarded to the candidate according to how accurately they assessed the samples.
For those who took the WSET Level II course and got familiar with the SAT, the first surprise is learning that the level of detail required in a WSET Level III tasting note goes up dramatically. The addition of an evaluation of alcohol, splitting medium out into medium(-) /medium/medium(+), increasing focus on finding evidence of winemaking process, and added weight to indicators of quality all increase the level of difficulty in a SAT III tasting note.
To illustrate, here are examples of two of my tasting notes using the different SAT requirements.
WSET Level II Tasting Note
Chianti Classico Reserva. Ruffino (2014)
The appearance of the wine is a clear medium garnet. On the nose the wine is clean, of medium intensity with aromatic characteristic of smoke, leather, wet straw, red cherry, and baking spice. On the palate this wine is dry with medium acid, high tannin, and medium body. The flavors of red cherry, leather, and baking spice persist on the palate. The finish is long. The quality of this wine is very good.
And here is another of my tasting notes for comparison. Differences between the two standards are bolded.
WSET Level III Tasting Note
Chianti Classico. Ducale Oro. Ruffino (2014)
This wine appears a clear medium garnet. On the nose this wine is clean, of medium(+) intensity with aromas of farmyard, soil, clove, cedar, and cinnamon. Prominent raspberry and plum are present . This wine is fully developed. On the palate this wine is dry with high acid, medium(+) tannin, medium(+) body, and high alcohol. On the palate farmyard is dominant but balanced with the flavors of raspberry and plum. This wine has a medium(+) finish. This wine is of very good quality. This wine can be drunk now but has potential for further aging.
Most importantly, the Level III tasting note must be self consistent. For example, I declared that the wine was fully developed because of the presence of farmyard and soil aromas that indicate bottle aging. The garnet color also hinted that the wine was old enough that some form of bottle maturation should be present. The primary aromas (fruit) were well balanced with the level of bottle maturation and winemaking techniques (the presence of oak from the clove, cedar, and cinnamon). These efforts, coupled with the balance of acid to the level of tannin in the wine, give it the very good rating. If the finish had been longer this wine may have approached an outstanding rating. Lastly, the level of fruit was high enough that the wine could bear additional aging.
With limited time in the exam, evaluation needs to be a habit and the SAT structure / allowed terms need to be memorized.
It is critical that candidates be blind to the identity of the wines as expectation bias can influence tasting notes. When practicing, it is best to have someone else pour your samples and evaluate them before you know what they are. For our tasting group Jimmy would keep bags over the bottles until we had finished our evaluations.
At home Suzan and I picked up ten reds and ten whites and would draw off samples for each other with a Coravin. We tried to write at least 6 tasting notes a week outside of the group study event. I’m glad we did, I struggle with describing wines as accurately as Suzan does and needed all the practice I could get.
You can get a perfect score on the theory section of the exam but if you can’t evaluate wine consistently using the SAT then passing Level III is going to be very hard.
This also means you need to have your palate calibrated to your examiner to have any hope of passing. You need to build the flexibility and experience to adjust your definition of magnitude. For example, if the evaluator would call a wine as having medium plus tannin, and you would normally think is medium, you need to be able to recognize that difference and adjust your scale.
It is a game of experience, and all the practice you can get helps. In the online course we had a Master of Wine candidate who was responsible for evaluating two weekly tasting assignments and answering questions. His palate was wildly different from our study group. This was a good thing because it got us into the habit of calibrating our notes to different tasters. We knew that the Wine Education Institute proctor would be yet a third palate to consider so the practice in being flexible was important.
Given all the subjectivity, despite the SAT being an attempt at standardization, the tasting component was the piece I was most worried about.
Studying
When we first received our textbooks I sat down and read through most of it during a weekend. It was completely demoralizing.
I remember looking at Suzan over a cup of coffee and saying, “Honey, there is no way I can remember all of this. I’m not going to pass this test.” I was really worried I had just effectively flushed a bunch of money down the drain.
She just smiled and said, “If you help me understand all of the vineyard details and wine making processes I will help you with varietals and regions.” Then she looked back to her textbook.
Although the volume of information is daunting, the goal of Level III is to help the student understand how geography, climate, vineyard management, and winemaking processes impacts the quality and content of the final product in the glass. All of the facts you must learn should be framed in this context.
For example, it is not enough to know that the flagship red grape of Central Otago, NZ is pinot noir. You must know how that extreme low latitude, continental climate, and diurnal temperature range produce a shockingly high alcohol and fruit forward expression of the grape.
For the written part of the Level III exam there are 50 multiple choice questions worth 50 points. I found these to be very similar in scope and difficulty to the Level II Exam.
There are also 4 essays, with many components for each question, worth 100 points. These questions are meant to prove your ability to tie together facts into a narrative of how place and process influence wine.
From what I have been able to find, if you are going to fail the Level III exam it will most likely be on the essay section. Practice writing essays on regions and topics. There will be intense time pressure on exam day so being accustomed to organizing your thoughts quickly is helpful.
For the first month of the course we focused on tasting and re-reading the textbook.
We tried taking notes and making flashcards but there was simply too much information and too little time. It took me three hours to make flash cards covering all of required knowledge in the first chapter on France and I had effectively just transcribed the textbook. WSET is dense with detail. The flash card route was not going to work.
Eventually we settled on highlighting the textbook to make finding and organizing important details easier. We then took turns holding the book and quizzing each other.
I would ask Suzan to “Walk me though Northern Italy starting from the Northwest corner" and she would have to describe each viticultural area in that region, moving through the geography in her mental map. I would sit with the book and make sure she knew every detail in the textbook before giving her the thumbs up to move onto the next area.
The sheer volume of information was daunting. The eight weeks leading up to exam day were stressful, but also exhilarating. We would get up early to quiz each other before work and then stay up late walking maps and describing winemaking techniques.
Suzan and I have been together since high school and had never taken much more than a three day weekend camping trip as a vacation. The previous year we had decided to take our first real holiday in fifteen years and booked a flight to Hawaii.
It happened to fall in the middle of the WSET course. There was not enough time to skip a week of study so we took the books and enjoyed more than one evening filled with cocktails and wine study.
We crammed up until the last minute. I don’t regret it.
The Exam
We all came in early to meet the Wine Education Institute examiner (Barney) who would be administering the test. He had planned a morning tasting session to make sure our palates were calibrated before the the actual exam started. I appreciated that extra effort because it could make the difference between a passing score and a failing grade.
We tasted and evaluated two practice wines under test conditions and then compared them to Barney’s evaluation. Even though they were just practice wines I was surprised how nervous I was.
After the morning review we took a lunch break before the exam began. It was more of a working lunch since we did not stop reviewing material.
When we got back to the Wine Academy of Utah and sat down for the Tasting portion of the exam my heart was pounding. They poured the wines for us from unmarked decanters and gave us the go ahead to begin.
The rest is a blur. I barely had time to write out my tasting notes before time was up. I almost forgot to write any flavor components at all for the red but caught that mistake at the one minute warning.
We transitioned to the written exam while my blood was still pumping from the tasting. From that moment until the end of the allotted time my hand did not stop writing.
It physically hurt to write that much in such a short period of time. I was sore for days after.
It’s funny how my cramping hand left such a vivid impression.
Results
It was three agonizing months waiting for the exam to be graded. I would alternate between being convinced I had failed to positive I had passed it with Distinction.
In the end I had no idea how I had done. However, without Jimmy and the tasting group I would have not had any chance of getting through the tasting. Without Suzan, the theory section would have overwhelmed me.
The story of my WSET journey has truly been defined by the community that has helped me along the way.
I don’t think I have ever had more anticipation to get back an exam result in my life.
I did earn my Level III certification. I received a Distinction in Theory and a Merit in Tasting, with an overall score of Merit. I worked hard for that score and am proud of it.
Suzan passed with Distinction. I was told she was the only one in our class who did.
It looks like I’m going to need to do the Diploma program if I want another shot at beating Suzan in a wine exam.
