MW Exam Week 2024

 

The MW exam is being given this Tuesday through Friday.  I am not sitting the exam as I took my one deferment to, frankly, avoid failing the theory portion.  The exam has two parts each day for four days.  In the morning you sit down in front of 12 wines and try to identify the wines and answer key questions about how they were made, their price tier, and likely sales strengths.  Like most people at this stage of the game, on any given day I can execute this task fairly well.  Are there people in the room that are better than I am at it?  Yes.  Do they always do better than I do?  No.  On any given day you see the pitches well.  Sometimes they look like beachballs.  Unfortunately, sometimes they look like dimes.

In the afternoon, after a quick lunchbreak which you typically spend speculating on what the wines were and talking yourself into how you were right/wrong on a group of them, you then sit for a group of essay questions.  There are five different major subject areas.  Two of these I have some confidence in, those being business and the esoteric Paper 5 which is often current events/philosophy based.  There are three nuts & bolts areas focused on viticulture, winemaking, and handling of wine.  It is important to note that many of the people taking this exam are winemakers by trade and have masters degrees in oenology, which I imagine is helpful to answering questions like “write concise notes on smoke taint and volatile acidity”.  I find my telecommunications degree and marketing background don’t help me much on this (or anything else really).  My real world answer on smoke tainted grapes would be “Rage at the grape grower that delivered them and yell things like “we ain’t paying for this shit!” unless you think you could filter out that ashtray smell with a magic machine of some kind”.  That answer would not deliver enough points though, so I am still figuring out how to answer these types of questions the same way someone that has been in the profession for two decades would.  It’s rather challenging.

That lasts for four days.  Day one is 12 white wines with questions about viticulture.  Day two is red wines and questions about winemaking.  Day 3 is the “mixed bag” which tends to lean sparkling, fortified, rose and dessert wines with questions about handling of wine (bottling, closures, shipping, etc.).  Day 4 is a double essay day of business in the morning and the esoteric questions in the afternoon.  That’s a brutal way to spend a week. 

Afterwards you get really drunk on beer and forget about wine for the summer.  Sometime in the Fall an email will appear in your box one morning that will say, “Yeah I know you devoted your life to this over the last few years, but you didn’t pass”.  Hardly anyone passes this thing.  There were two new MWs named last year for example.  If you do pass, the fella in charge of the Institute calls you personally, which has to be fairly awesome when you look down at your phone and see an unknown number ringing in from the UK and it hits you it must mean either you passed the test or are about to be hit with a scam to get your PIN numbers.

I think there are two common denominators to the people that pass.  There is an undeniable group of Type A genius folks.  If you look at the MW website, the bios of some of these people read like they are super villains from a comic book.  “Bruno speaks seven languages, has degrees in molecular chemistry, quantum physics, and modern dance.  He has a law degree, plays French Horn in the London Philharmonic, and as a child was the prime minister of Bulgaria.”  I have more in common with the Nigerian Dwarf Goat than I do with people like that.   

The other group of people that pass are people with an unflinching belief in their own abilities and don’t allow the gravity of the once-a-year exam get into their heads.  You can’t memorize everything, so you wrap your head around the big topics, understand regional differences, and trust you know more than you think you know.  I think you have to go in loose and treat it as being fun.  It’s all about attitude.  If I say, “Everything you have worked for will be decided in the next 2 hours and even the smallest mistake will DOOM YOU TO FAILURE!”, I’m not betting on a successful outcome.  If I say, “Hey, want to come over?  I’ll pour you 12 white wines.  It’s a little game.  I’ll ask you if you can figure out what it is, and you tell me if the wines are any good.”.  Sounds good.  I’ll be right over.

I’m a year behind some of my pals in the program from when I got sick with covid before the stage 1 exam.  I had booked my trip to Napa for the exam that year as “non-cancellable” to save some marginal amount of money, like $35.  Thus, I flew out anyway with my whacked out senses and foggy brain since it was “use it or lose it”.  Two things happened.  I got to go on a tour at the ultra premium cabernet producer Harlan.  I got to taste three vintages, which would have been even more amazing if my tastebuds weren’t screwed up from covid and left everything tasting like Apothik and coffee.  I did nod knowingly and pretend to be knocked out by the wine, which seemed like a reasonable thing to do for our gracious hosts.  I’m sure the wines were dynamite. 

The other thing that happened was I got a feel for the test taking experience by being out there during the exams, and I rolled that into a passing mark the next year.  I was looking around that room on the day of the exam the following June and saw a bunch of the Type A Super Genius people with that “whatever, I get an “A” on every test I ever took” look.  There was also plenty of the “I’m stressed out of my mind/nervous energy” people that probably should pass but might be too deep in their own heads.  I felt really good.  I was in a good headspace.  I had fun with it, and as a result, I think I provided an honest assessment of my tasting ability and understanding of the essay question topics to get the passing mark.  See ball, hit ball. 

I sort of regret deferring this Stage 2 exam, but I need to spend enough time on the nuts and bolts of viti/winemaking so I can have that misguided sense of self confidence to at least give myself a chance at success.  There’s still so much I don’t know, but I’ll get there with another year.  As I type this there are a bunch of people in Napa 41 minutes into trying to figure out such monumental questions as “where the fuck is this chardonnay from?” and “wait… is there malo on this?” on their Stage 1 exam.  Stage 2 starts tomorrow.  I wish them all the best of luck, and hope they remember the most important thing of all… It’s fun.  It’s just wine.