Jancis Robinson: Of mastery and masochism

By Jancis Robinson
FT.com site; Oct 31, 2003

September brings the annual harvest of grapes in the northern hemisphere. It also yields an annual crop of Masters of Wine. Ten of these rarefied creatures will have collected their certificates from the Master of the Vintners' Company in the City of London on Thursday night.

All these new MWs will have dedicated a minimum of two years - often more - to study, put their jobs and family life at risk, and taken a week of fiendishly difficult exams both theoretical and practical (aka blind wine-tasting) in pursuit of those coveted initials.

I took the exams back in 1984 when the wine world was considerably smaller: California wine tasted reliably Californian, Australian wine was a pimple on the vinous landscape, and we had never heard of physiological ripeness in grapes or micro-oxygenation of wines. Today's exams must be truly terrifying.

Yet there is no shortage of candidates: 173 on the 2003 MW course with the greatest concentration from the US, UK and then Australia but also students from another 23 countries, including the Maldives, Brazil and Japan. In the past few weeks I have been asked to sponsor applications for the 2004 course from an Oxford academic, a Bulgarian off-licence manager and an American wine writer who describes himself as Virginia Wine Man.

There was even a Hollywood lawyer without any professional connection with wine whatsoever, who successfully studied to become a Master of Wine in 1993. Some people are just exam junkies.

The Institute of Masters of Wine was founded exactly 30 years ago as an association of Britain's more cerebral wine merchants and continued very much in this cosy vein until the 1980s when the members realised that despite their valiant consumption of red wine, Masters of Wine were not immortal and the Institute would have to inter- nationalise or die. Michael Hill Smith of Australia (and now Shaw & Smith winery) was the first foreigner to pass the fiendishly difficult exams but now more than 50 of the 270-plus MWs are based outside Britain.

The process is a complicated one. First, potential candidates have to convince the MW educators that they are worth teaching by submitting an essay and tasting notes. They then have to cough up for the two-year education programme held in the UK, US and Australia - wherever they live - at the equivalent of about £1,250 per year. Each candidate is assigned a mentor (who may live thousands of miles away) but often finds that a group of fellow students can be even more useful - especially in the training schedule required to become a blind tasting athlete.

The fateful exams are held in June (bad news for hayfever sufferers) on the same four days in Sydney, London and San Francisco, offering interesting possibilities for those prepared to take advantage of the time differences and able to do very last-minute revision.

Typical theory questions might be: "Discuss the factors that influence the choice of rootstock and scion" or "How do you create a cult wine?" They look deceptively simple and have lulled many an unwary wine lover into having a go without the slightest hope of passing. Answers are expected to be very much more complicated than the questions.

There have long been complaints about a lack of feedback to both successful and unsuccessful candidates but, amazingly, the pass rate has been rising and now stands at about 30 per cent - much higher than 20 years ago.

Nowadays, once someone has managed to pass both practical and theoretical parts of the exam, they have, in a final test of devotion, to write a dissertation before being fully qualified as an MW. Recent subjects have included "Parasitic Wasps - are they really a Practical Solution in California?" and "Wine and the Heart - can the Wine Industry Benefit from recent Medical Research?" The first three MWs to be announced this year, who have not only passed both parts of the exam (in some cases after many a long year) and also had their dissertations approved, were German "best sommelier in the world" Markus del Monego; Colin Gent, who works in Bordeaux for Europvin; and Stephen Skelton, an authority on English wine.

Cathy van Zyl, a Cape Town public relations consultant, is currently working on her dissertation and demonstrates the lengths to which candidates will go once that MW certificate is within their sights. Here is how she described her life immediately before the exams to a fellow student: "For three-and-a-half months, I did practically nothing else but study for at least four hours a day.

Up at 7.00, get Luke ready for school, drop him off at 8.00, check mail and redirect queries and generate a few ideas for business, 10.00 to 12.30 study, check e-mails and pretend to be working, spend half-an-hour with Luke, study from about 14.00 to 16.00, check e-mails and finish off the day's queries from clients and my partner, 17.00 collect Luke from after-school care, get Luke sorted for bed and make supper, 20.00 Luke to bed, have supper myself with Phil, read for an hour, sleep. Weekends - kick Luke and Philip out my office and study from 09.00 to 20.00."

Thanks to this punishing routine she passed the theory papers at the first attempt and then had to fly back to London last June to tackle the three tasting exams. In preparation for this she submitted herself to something called "dry tasting" (an activity, unknown to me, whereby you write notes on wines that are only theoretically in your glass), compiled a 40-page book of her own notes on how various wines should taste and be described, and took it with her everywhere - even on the exercise bike in the gym. She passed, and now the exact details of her strategy, note-taking and file-arranging are being relayed from screen to screen among fellow supplicants.

Another successful student in 2003, Sheri Sauter, who runs a New York wine marketing research company with her father, confesses that at this stage in her life she had been expecting to be studying for a PhD in Tudor history: "But I decided the MW was a bit more interesting. And I have never been one to let a challenge go by . . .

"I approached the exam like a marathon and tackled it from the physical perspective (wrote everything I could to get my hand in shape for a four-day exam), mental (positive visualisation, stress and breathing techniques) and then, of course, worked on preparation of materials and refining my arguments.

"I also worked part time in my local wine store to gain some first-hand retail experience. I visited bottling lines, talked to barrel makers, screw cap companies, cork companies and QA/QC specialists. This year I also spent 10 days down in Chile working in a winery to gain some hands-on winemaking experience. And last September, I helped some home winemakers with their bottling process.

"I was also able to take off from work several weeks before the exam to do nothing but study. And lastly, perhaps the oddest thing that I did, was to bring my mother with me out to San Francisco when I sat the exam (both last year and then this year with the paper II resit). It was hugely comforting to have someone along to eat meals with and wash glasses, etc, etc. It was also helpful to have someone around to help you "let go" of that segment of the exam and move on to the next part.

I will admit that some of the other candidates found it amusing, but deciding to bring along a 'support team' was one of the best decisions I made."

We Masters of Wine are a disparate lot in all ways but two. We share a love of wine and a strong streak of masochism. www.masters-of-wine.org

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