To supplement the Tasting Notes available on this site…

A good friend asked me for recommendations of wines to exercise for the practical exam of the WSET Level 3 Award in Wines. In this post, I propose an exercise and also a way of thinking about the exam

Fundamental is that all points of the Systematic Approach to Tasting of the WSET Level 3 Award in Wines must be covered. One line, one point. The reason many students fail is that they simply “forget” to include an item of the approach. The most forgotten lines are intensity and finish. These are 3 points that we, examiners, can not give to the student in their final mark.

The critical point to pass with a high level is to be crystal clear with the skills required to demonstrate to the examiner.

Before we go into that, Level 3 does NOT require identification, the golden rule. That is important to grasp this concept because it is the primary source of the mistake. Too often, students try to guess the wine on the 1st sniff and then write a tasting note based on what they think the wine is. This leads to significant problems with the palate components. You must write a note on what is in the glass, NOT what you think is in the glass. It sounds pretty basic, but I saw many students failing because of that. To reinforce my point: the exam listed 4 choices as to what the wine might be in the past. My fun when I was marking papers was hiding the student's preferences, reading their notes, and then trying to guess their choice. Invariably, the wrong choice always matched the mistakes of the tasting note. The wset does not do this anymore because they want the students to focus on tasting, not identifying.

This brings me to the skills that you need to demonstrate:

Taste accurately. The main objective of tasting in a classroom with a teacher and other students is to benchmark yourself to the others. It is imperative to understand how you taste wine compared to other tasters and adjust. For example, suppose you constantly note high acidity and the consensus in the group notes medium acidity. In that case, you must understand that when you taste what you taste, it means medium and not high. For this, you must be open-minded and ready to know where you differ from others. The WSET aims to train wine professionals to work for their customers, not themselves. Therefore, a wine professional must taste wine like a group and the exam test this skill.

Taste for a specific style. As an examiner, we are given precise specifications by the WSET regarding which style and quality of wines to use for the exam. Each specification has its own set of marking keys. For example, we might be asked to select a "simple" wine because the wset wants the students to identify the wine as such. This is not as easy as it reads.

As you know, your tasting note must list 5 aromas for the nose and 3 flavours for the palate. Many students want to take shortcuts and use "generic" aromas and flavours to hedge their bets.

The problem with a simple wine is that it can be pretty tricky to note 5 aromas and 3 flavours. Therefore, if you state "simple", it will give you a mark and show the examiner that you know what you are talking about.

Another one is related to primary, secondary and tertiary notes. Again, many students hedge their bets by listing only primary notes. Unfortunately, it will not always work because we may be asked for a wine, including secondary winemaking and tertiary maturation notes. We cannot give you marks if you do not list any aromas and flavours in these 2 last categories.

Same thing for oaked versus unoaked wines or dry vs sweet wines.

For quality, although your justification is not required in the exam, it is still an important skill to demonstrate. Remember that quality of complexity, balance (of components) and length. An acceptable wine is one that, being well made (meaning it is clean and not faulty), is so generic as to be any wine from anywhere made with grape. An outstanding wine has incredible complexity, balance and length. Still, it has purity, style, precision, originality, and raw materials. If it is made for this purpose, it has ageing potential due to its powerful structure of acidity and tannins supported by fruit concentration.

Therefore, for your practice, you must taste a good range of wines to help you build your confidence to demonstrate these skills.

You should taste in pairs:

• high acidity vs low acidity

• dry vs sweet

• neutral vs aromatic grapes

• high tannins vs low tannins

• youthful vs developing (or fully developed wines)

• simple vs very good wine

• good wine vs outstanding wine

Here are my suggestions of wines you can purchase in Italy for these exercises. The key would be to mix and match them and focus on 1-2 skills at a time until you are perfectly comfortable with the levels of each component - again, this is not about identification but about tasting accurate.

Savanah Western Cape Chenin Blanc 2020 (acceptable/simple, youthful, unoaked, medium body, high acidity)

Spier Private Collection 21 Gables Chenin Blanc 2020 (very good, youthful, oaked, medium + body, high acidity)

Vignerons de Bel Air Beaujolais Villages 2020 (good, carbonic maceration, youthful, medium body, high acidity, low tannins)

Prunotto Bussia Barolo 2017 (very good, developing, full body (>14% abv), high acidity, high tannins)

Guigal Condrieu 2019 (very good, aromatic, developing, tertiary notes, oaked, full body, medium acidity)

Domaine de Vaudous Chablis 2020 (very good, neutral, youthful, primary notes, unoaked, medium body, high acidity)

Guigal Cotes du Rhone 2019 - Old World GSM (acceptable/good, developing, full body, medium acidity)

Torbreck The Steading 2018 - New World GSM (very good/outstanding, developing, full body, medium acidity)

Trial Hill Vineyard Eden Valley Riesling 2018 (very good, dry, developing, medium body, high acidity)

DR Thanisch Bernkasteler Graben Riesling Spätlese 2020 (very good, sweet, youthful, medium + body, high acidity)