WSET

[Croquet King]

A few months ago I completed the WSET lvl 2 course.
I did it at Ryde TAFE over 7 or 8 Saturdays from 10am to 3pm

A big part of the course is the structured tasting and assessment of wines. It really helped to work through and think about each wine.
We tasted about 12 wines each day.

The course was mainly younger people working or wanting to work in the wine or hospitality industry.
There is a 50 question multiple choice exam at the end with a pass mark of 60% from memory.

The main thing I learnt was how much I didn't know. I was all over Australian wine and reasonable on French but other countries was a real eye opener.
The other take away was how much I enjoyed the Italian Reds and French Whites (Vouvray and Sancerre) even though I don't like NZ Sav Blanc.

I'm planning a trip to Italy to Piedmont and Tuscany to focus on those wines.

A few things to note :

Things that helped me were

• Being older and having a few more years of tasting experience

• Having access to a wide range of wines especially older wines and at high price points.

• Doing the course for fun and personal interest rather than for a job requirement made us more motivated and study harder

I'm going to move on to lvl 3 at some point and see if I can move into associate wine judging at a later date as part of my retirement plans.

I'd highly recommend it as an enjoyable and interesting course

[Robbo27]

I retired a couple of years ago and have looked at this course but Saturday golf gets in the way.
I did wonder if the average age was younger. Thanks for the post.

[Waiters Friend]

Hi Croquet King

I did WSET Level 2 nearly 10 years ago, and a small group of the graduates established the Grand Cru wine tasting group here in Perth as a consequence. I agree it was well worth the undertaking, and I am also looking closely at Level 3 when the courses here in Perth align with my free time. It's also available as an intensive course, so I may take holidays to do it that way if I can't do the former.

If you're travelling to Italy, jump over to the Italian Wine, Food, Travel - Italy page and get involved.

Cheers
Allan

[Ian S]

If you're travelling to Italy, jump over to the Italian Wine, Food, Travel - Italy page and get involved.

Cheers
Allan

Indeed, there are a few of us that have travelled a bit in Italy, and more than happy to share insight.

Piedmont / Piemonte has become our favoured region (much through the food, wine and culture), whilst Tuscany (Toscana) is one of the easiest places to start, as English is widely understood, given such a long history of English tourists enjoying it (hence the nickname Chiantishire).

[mychurch]

A friend of mine did the Dutch version of this last year and managed to pass levels 1 and 2 without any study - 20+ years of collecting wines from all over the world was enough education. The next level was a real step up though and he really had to study a lot, especially for the blind tasting - I noticed a change on Vivino as to what he was drinking on school nights.

I don’t want to do it though. I think it’s important for those in the trade - you develop a wine Esperanto language - but as a lover of the stuff I think I have tried enough different styles of wine to know a) What I like and b) I know that I always want to try something
different.

Another thing that puts me off are the reviews from professional wine writers. Log onto Farr Vintners and read the tasting notes of some of the wines. The descriptors used by different critics are usually all over the place - somebody’s raspberry is another’s wild strawberry etc Sure, bottle variation and other factors can effect the tasting notes and they do want to show off their own style, but I wonder how useful in practice learning the WSET definitions are.

On the plus side though, the social aspect of meeting a bunch of wine fans would be a real plus.

[GraemeG]

I did the WSEET L3 certificate back in 2006; the one-night-a-week variant hosted at then Fine Wine Partners office (shared with Lion Nathan) in Sydney CBD. I wasn't the oldest there (42 at the time!) but it was the same mix of younger, in-the-trade crowd leavened with a few "connoisseurs" like myself! There was no-one in Sydney teaching the Diploma at the time (which I've never gone on to attempt, chiefly because of cost v perceived value), so it was L2, L3 or go for the MW!
I do recall doing a previous Wine Sensory course via Ryde TAFE back in the mid-90s, when it was being administered by Clive Hartley (I think, from memory.) That was a much broader crowd for age and experience - industry types were almost the minority as I remember.
I don't ever seem to have written up the TAFE notes, but I did publish the WSET ones on CT:
[url]http://www.cellartracker.com/event.asp?iEve ... ource=list[/url]

Should see if I can find the Ryde notes - I do remember taking an '83 Lascombes as part of my assignment...!