A Discussion On Course Days

Course days are the last tuneup prior to taking the exam.  The format is Day 1 as a “calibration exam”, which is shorthand for a mixed bag of wines to get your feet wet and back into the 2 hour and 15 minute exam format.  Day 2-4 follow the tasting exam schedule of white, red and everything else to finish it.  I have been tasting pretty well rolling into course days, so I was cautiously optimistic about how I’d do.  However, the Calibration exam was a disaster.  I can’t even remember the wines now, but I wasn’t even in the ballpark on a few of them.  The best part about when you miss a group of wines badly is afterwards.  The mock exam ran from 1030-1245 give or take.  Everyone shovels down some lunch they crammed in the Napa Valley Wine Academy fridge and then we go back inside to go over the wines in a big reveal/discussion.  

My personal favorite is when you miss something badly.  Let’s say you really get slogged down on three wines.  The question is like “Three wines, same country, same grape(s).  Identify region/origin and discuss key winemaking methods.”  Let’s say they are deep dark colored, have noticeable tannins and have black fruit.  Sometimes I can sit there and the lightbulb just is not flickering on.  I’m like “OK, dark red wines… Could be syrah, malbec, cabernet sauvignon or merlot.  The clock is ticking.  Fuck.  OK.  I dunno.  There’s some violet on the edge of two of these.  Malbec?  Yeah.  It COULD be but I don’t think so.  Syrah?  I dunno.  They’re not really olive or meaty.  How about merlot?  Doesn’t feel plush enough.  Tick tick tick.  Fuck it.  I’m going merlot.  These aren't Cali or Aussie.  Fuck, I don't know.  Maybe they’re all Italian?”  As you are writing it, you know it's wrong.  YOU KNOW you missed something but you still have to feign confidence in your written answer.

Now you're sitting there after lunch and the instructor says, “OK, so wines 1-3.  You’re all on syrah?”  Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, is nodding along like “fuck yeah, what else could they be?”.  There you are staring down at your three lengthy answers for three merlot from some bullshit obscure region like Maremma where they would have NEVER provided three examples from.  My move is to re-taste the wines looking for answers as people debate if wine 1 was the Hermitage and wine 2 the Cote Rotie with wine 3 obviously a Cornas.  This goes on for a good 20-30 minutes.  Then you sit there while people read an answer much better written than yours as you try to grapple with the fact that about 90 minutes ago you declared three obviously Rhone syrahs some obscure ass rustic ass merlot.  It’s terribly humbling.

After the disastrous calibration exam, I really was hoping for a better showing as the “real” tests started.  I’ve gotten pretty good at letting these bad exam results roll off my back.  It’s sort of like golf where even if you shot a 78, you still need to tee it up the next day.  You can always shoot a 66 and get yourself back in contention.  I have a good day on the whites, identifying or getting a reasonable lateral on 11 of the 12 wines.  I missed some points by overestimating a Mosel riesling’s sugar level (it was a kabinett), not mentioning easy things like malo or oak treatment and leaving points on the table, and as always failing to call a three white flight South Africa (I called France for a chenin/oaked chard/sauvignon blanc+semillon blend).  My answers still weren’t good enough to pass but it would have been reasonably close.        

A quick aside… The IMW is absolutely obsessed with South African wines and particularly Elgin.  The sauvignon blanc and chardonnay were both from Elgin.  This comes after a dry note assignment a month ago for three South African whites, one of which I was chastised for in the feedback for not funneling out Elgin.  Elgin, for those of you not in the know, is an 800 hA area of vines.  11% of that is chardonnay, making 88 hA of chardonnay in Elgin.  To put that into perspective, the Finger Lakes has 11,000 acres under vine.  If I were to funnel out Finger Lakes on a Riesling answer, they’d be like “What the fuck are you doing?  Why would we put something that obscure on the test?  You dick.”.   Meanwhile at the same time it’s “How could you NOT have considered Elgin for everything.  It’s the center of the wine universe.”  What is the deal with this Elgin obsession?  The wines don’t even blow you away.  They are like “yeah, that’s pretty good” but not “Holy mother of Christ, did you try that?”.  I could drive around Ohio all day long with a handful of money and never see a wine from Elgin.  They must be guzzling the fuck out of Elgin wines in London right now OR the Elgin producers are sending the IMW lots of free wine for sampling.  I don’t get it but I now reflexively consider Elgin for EVERYTHING.  There's a 50/50 chance on any exam that the ringer for white Bordeaux you're swirling in your glass in an oaked Elgin sauvignon blanc with semillion despite this tiny corner of the world making about 73 bottles of the stuff versus the 5 million cases of white Bordeaux.  

The red wine exam the next day is a disaster.  I think I went 2-12?  It was 12 full bodied tannic reds that were sitting there laughing at me.  I called three merlot a flight of cabernet, which is OK I guess.  I called four syrah which came in two pairs as 4 malbec.  That was really bad.  I was running out of time and had to make a call and let the savory nature of the Hermitage lead me to Cahors.  That was me absolutely POUNDING a square peg into a round hole.  The quality of the Hermitage wasn’t too good, but that’s a bad miss.  Then there was a flight of “Five wines from the Americas, all single grape, all different countries.”   So what you have in play is logically USA, Argentina, Chile.  The USA wine could be anything, so that's a wild card.  They could toss in a Tannat from Uruguay, especially since we need five different countries, so I need to place that.  Then you are between Canada and Mexico for the other wine unless Paraguay is doing something I don’t know about.  I really jumble these up.  I let tannins carry over from one wine to another and as a result called a Zin the Uruguay Tannat and the Tannat a cabernet.  Ouch.  Hey, I got the carmenere and some really shitty Argentine malbec which I called a shitty Argentine cab franc.  That was agreed by the instructor as being close enough as it was essentially a $9 “red wine” without any definable character.  I don't know why it was there either.  Who had Mexican petite sirah?  You?  Yeah, me either.  I drink a lot less Mexican Red Wine than people suspect I do.  Really poor showing.  My track record was now Bad Day, Good Day, Bad Day.    

I need to bring it on Paper 3.  If I have a good Paper 3, the self narrative is “You can do this.  You just had an off day on P2.”  If I do poorly, the inner narrative becomes “You’re not very good at this Bro.”.  I get a good night’s sleep, wake up early and walk over to the Napa Valley Wine Academy to take P3.