exams


Almost two weeks ago now, we had a reading week for WSET, so no trekking down to London for classes. This past week, I was sidelined with a stomach complaint, so also no trip to London. Both of these, however, left me time to sit back and reflect on larger issues. (Despite that, it took me ages to get this post to what I consider an acceptable condition – hence the silence on the blog. I’m still not as happy as I’d like to be with...

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Tasteless (re)marks

Tasteless (re)marks


Posted By on Jan 24, 2017

I’m not really that surprised to report that WSET and I remain at loggerheads over acceptable descriptions of fortified wines. Or, in more normative terms – as WSET itself prefers – I failed the tasting part of the fortified wines exam. Again. I passed the theory part and failed the tasting part, as with the first time. As with before, I passed the theory in the 0-9 point range, and failed the tasting part somewhere in the same range....

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Well, ok. Maybe I exaggerate a bit. But next week (Monday!), I start the second year of my WSET Diploma. It does seem a scarier semester, at least for those of us who are stronger on theory than tasting. What do I have to look forward to? It’s the same format as last time – nine weeks of getting up too early to catch a train to London to make it to WSET before 9 am. (Yeah, I know. It’s almost like having a real job, with a commute and...

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It seems every time I tell myself I’ll be better at blogging, I get worse. It’s with more than a bit of embarrassment that I realise it’s been almost two months since I’ve posted here. Here’s a brief list of what we’ve been up to since my last post. Anthroenology has done two short, but very rewarding periods of fieldwork. In September, we were in Austria, and in October, we spent a few days down in Sussex & Kent. I’ll do...

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Last week however many (I didn’t count this time) of us gathered at the Royal National Hotel in London to take our WSET Diploma Unit 1 Case Study exam. This, basically, is an essay. Or, in our case, four shorter essays. About a month before the exam, we were given the general topic: social media and the wine industry. We were expected to revise and read up on whatever we could get our hands on. On the day of the exam, we went in and...

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Well, according to the WSET Unit 6 (fortified wines) exam results, anyway. My pride is somewhat assuaged by the fact that at least I passed the theory section. (One can insert here all the jokes about academics being useless in the real world.)I’m still debating spending the money WSET charges to get the feedback on the tasting section. It might be interesting to see how close I was to what they thought the fortified wines should...

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