Notes On Notes

 

I've been diligently working on my written notes for the tasting exam.  I have spent a few weeks coming into contact with people that look at me either like I'm insane for quitting my old job or with fierce jealousy because I quit my old job.  After I explain to them that I'm not going to even start looking for a job until after I take the MW exam, they reliably say "Oh, so you are going to be a somma...summa...soma...".  That's when my role is to mercifully cut them off and say "sommelier?" as they eagerly nod their heads excited they don't have to try to say "sommelier" on their own anymore.  It's sort of brutal, but reminds me of when I worked in radio and had to answer "no" when they asked if I was a DJ.  Nothing like the look of incomprehension to bring the conversation to a screeching halt.

If I wind up getting into it a bit (and I will if you give me a glimmer of interest) the focus usually comes down on the tasting exam.  Almost everyone thinks of this as being an identification exam, which it sort of is, but really it's a "tell us what this is the way we want you to tell us" exam.  The basic idea is to identify the wine and then provide your reasoning.  For example, let's say it is a sauvignon blanc from Marlborough NZ.  That's one of those wines that smells like cut grass and gooseberries and is pretty obviously what it's supposed to be.  You need to provide an answer that is like a little prosecuting argument so the examiner knows not only that you know the wine but why you know the wine.   

Let's take that Marlborough sauvignon blanc...  They are all sort of similar in that they have high acid, smell like gooseberries, are light bodied and the acid really rips.  If you are sitting in a restaurant and someone pours you one, that's essentially what you would say.  Despite that all being true, that answer won't play in the test.  You need to build a largely irrefutable argument like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.  So you need to make "Dude, that's a NZ sauv blanc" sound something like "Low alcohol (13%), high acid and crisp primary fruit (lime/gooseberry) point to a cool climate.  Clean vibrant gooseberry/citrus dominated palate points to New World sauvignon blanc.  Considered Marlborough, Walker Bay and Adelaide.  Crisp fruit (steel tank) with phenolic aromas from skin contact (fresh cut grass), slight CO2 note (reductive winemaking), and intense acidity points directly to Marlborough.".  

Now the downside to this is it isn't like when you try to pass the WSET Diploma exam where they want you stay on a grid.  Light straw color/high acid/light body/moderate alcohol/lime/gooseberry/kiwi is sauvignon blanc.  Loire would be grassier and maybe show some oak.  California would be more tropical.  Thank you!  Instead you'll go over these little haikus you're writing as evidence like mentally ill people scouring over Dylan lyrics in 1968.  "Fuck... should I use the word "assertive" or "lively" to describe that acid?".  Like that sauvignon blanc note I just jammed out would probably get ripped apart by one of the examiners.  I could change it to how they would like to see it, and then a different examiner would rip that one apart.  The beauty is I might have identified the wine correctly, but that wouldn't matter because I led with the aromatic profile let's say and they think I should have led with the acid.  Then next time if I led with acid, I'll get torn up for not leading with how the friggen thing smelled.  It's really tedious.  

I can get some tips from someone that passed the exam, try to apply those ideas, and then the next time I show "dry notes" to someone else that passed they'll say "what the fuck are you doing?".  The lack of the system is the system and you'll pass the exam when you are ready to grasp the system that is always in flux.  At various times I think to myself "you must be the dumbest motherfucker on the planet" because I just can't seem to grasp the system.  Then, I'll have a chat with someone in the program who will show me these clean gorgeous notes and I am even more convinced that I have a learning disability.  I'll try to do it the way they're doing it, and get that system down.  Next time I show someone those notes, they're like "what the fuck are you doing?" and proceed to tell me to write the notes the way I was doing it a month ago.  My biggest issue is not even about identifying the wines at this point.  It's more about writing these friggen notes.

I had some notes that had been rubber stamped by an MW a couple days ago as being "good".  I sent them to another MW, and within a few minutes got an email with a "do you have time for a call?" with a tone that felt like if a surgeon walks out to a waiting room saying something like "It's never easy to deliver news like this..."   I have a call set up in a couple of hours to discuss words like "moderate" v "medium" and the implication of using either.  

Goddamn this thing is a bear.