2025 MW Exam P3 (or Shooting Myself In The Foot In One Easy Lesson)

 

The last tasting exam can either be a favorite of students or the most dreaded depending on your interest and familiarity with wine styles almost no one on the planet drinks.  The last tasting exam can cover some mainstream wine styles like Champagne and rose, but you could also get poured a late harvest South African wine, a vin santo, fortified muscat, weird ass sherries or madeiras.  Had an Antique Rutherglen lately?  I have.  I generally do pretty well on this part of the exam.  I had embraced fortified wines when I was in WSET Diploma because I’d never heard of most of the styles and it was a “wait, they do what?” element to discovering the wines.  They are usually very high quality for relatively low prices because there is almost no market for sweet high alcohol wines in 2025.  If you get lucky with the wines, it can be a straightforward tasting.  The main wines in this exam SHOULD be sparkling, rose, port, sherry and madeira but that’s not always the case.  If the examiners choose, they can give you eight pinot noirs like they did in a previous year (which had to be a shock).  You could also get some historical style from some bizarre corner of the wine world you’ve never even seen much less tasted.  It’s a true “mixed bag”.  There’s nothing like writing a tasting note answer for a wine you’ve never had but might have read about once in the back of some dusty wine book, let me tell ya.  You’re not exactly brimming with confidence.  

There is a sense of relief when you are getting ready for this P3 exam, because at this point you just want the whole thing to be over.  The ordeal is surprisingly exhausting.  I have never taken this exam before, and to have my most challenging essay subjects as the first two tests wasn’t ideal.  I really took some hits on Day 1-2.  I went from knowing as much about viticulture as my basset hound Marvin to being able to appear to be knowledgeable on many key topics in the last year.  Appearances are, of course, deceiving.  Opening the question envelope on those essays, I held my breath and looked at them with one eye.  “Please ask me a foundational question… please…”.   My areas of strength are at the end part of this exam.  The final day of business and contemporary issue essays I found perversely enjoyable.  It’s good to see the tables turn at the end.  All the winemakers in the room that laughed it up on questions about “management of light strike” will now have to toss around marketing bullshit lingo like “engagement” that is my second language.  You can wake me up from a dead sleep and I’ll tell you how “we need to increase engagements amongst female deliverables in Q4 to increase share in our core domestic markets”.  It’s better to not ask me about “light strike” though.

When I see the wines poured for the P3 exam, my hope is to see lots of dark ruby wines and fizzy stuff.  I know my port thanks to an unhealthy obsession with it in the late 1990s.  I also drink as much champagne as possible while having also ferreted out potential cheaper sparkling workarounds.  Bad news, there isn’t a cheap horizontal to champagne.  I checked VERY thoroughly.  You can have good cava, but it’s still cava.  You have to hand it to those smug bastards in Champagne.  

I look at the decanters being passed down the rows to fill our glasses.  It’s a wide array of colors including several amber/copper colored wines.  Not exactly what I had hoped for, but I can manage.  It’s not as bad as the one time there were five roses poured at a mock exam which led my friend Yoann to laugh out loud and say “it’s going to be a massacre!” but honestly, this isn’t my ideal set either.  We walk outside as the proctors pour the sparkling.  I’m sure everyone is thinking to themselves variations of the question “what the hell is the residual sugar on a cream sherry again?”.  

And we are off…   

Question 1 

Wines 1 to 3 are made from the same single grape variety. 

a) Identify the grape variety with reference to all three wines. (12 marks)

        For each wine:

 b) Identify the origin as closely as possible. (3 x 7 marks) 

c) Comment on the winemaking techniques. (3 x 5 marks) 

d) Comment on the style and quality. (3 x 9 marks)

The first wine is sparkling. Small bubbled mousse, persistent, and acidic.  It’s not champagne.  It’s like something you get at a business function when you walk in the door when they didn’t want to spend too much money on the “welcome drink”.  I’m getting some green apple here and lots of acid so I’m thinking chenin.  Yeah, this feels like crémant.

The second wine is off dry, and the last is sweet with botrytis.  In my head I have already decided that these are crémant de Loire, Vouvray and Quarts du Chaume.  I feel really good about this.  Absolutely rock solid.  It’s hard now looking back why I didn’t think the obvious Riesling based not really on the high acid but on the way the acid was structured, but similar to the last exam I rushed to a “Fire, ready, aim” approach here.  This is my most embarrassing miss of the three days.  I cannot fucking believe I missed these wines.  Like, I’d get the last two wines of this set blind 99 times out of 100.  It really illustrates the mental game you’re playing with yourself.  You’re pushing for speed so you want to fly through one you feel confident about with almost no data.  I decided those were all Loire chenin the second I tasted the second wine was off dry.  I didn’t even worry about any other data coming in.  This is the biggest problem I need to fix on my tasting game, but at least I know what the issue is now.  Don’t fly out of the gate and stay in your shoes early.

Wine 1:  Riesling Sekt Extra Dry, Dr. Loosen, NV. Mosel, Germany. (11.5%)

Wine 2:  Riesling, Framingham, 2023. Marlborough, New Zealand. (12%)

Wine 3:  Riesling Berrenauslese, Dr. Loosen, 2018. Mosel, Germany. (7.5%)     

I am writing extended notes here thinking I am just rolling in the points despite not knowing I just lost 33 points due to a two second decision I made before most people even sipped their first glass.  Even if I picked up all the potential points on the winemaking, style and quality (where I would have been in the ball game to be sure), I’m now really in a hole.  The thing is, I have no idea.  I have just made a back breaking error.

Question 2 

Wines 4 to 6 are from the same country. 

For each wine: 

a) Identify the origin as closely as possible. (3 x 10 marks) 

b) Comment on the winemaking techniques. (3 x 5 marks) 

c) Comment on the quality and commercial position. (3 x 10 marks)

This is a little puzzle.  Who can do wines in three different styles like this?  Looking at these, there is a pale sparkling wine, a medium ruby red wine, and an amber/copper colored wine.  The sparkling wine is not very exciting traditional method with a little less acid than I would have wanted which places me in a warm climate.  The red though is earthy, soft ripe tannins, and a tart fruit character pointing at what I think at the time is a cooler place.  It seems high alcohol, so maybe it’s from elevation.  It’s Old World for sure.  The last one though is a beast.  I can smell how oxidative the last one is before even lifting the glass.  It’s savory like chewing on walnut skins.  The only place that has wines this savory is either Italy or Spain.  This has to be from Jerez or Sicily.  That first sparkling wine could be Cava or it could be Franciacorta.  That red wine is really weird, and I don’t like it very much.  I’m thinking that red wine might be Mencia because of how earthy it is.  I can’t figure out where to put it in Italy.  Who would even do something like this in Italy?  It would have to be somewhere north but I can’t make anything fit.  Clock is ticking.  Gotta make a decision.  OK, here goes nuthin.  Spain it is.  I go Cava, Mencia and jerez.

Wine 4:  Cava Brut Reserva “Essential Púrpura, Juvé y Camps, 2021. Penedès, Spain. 

Wine 5:  La Bruja, Comando G, 2022. Valle del Tiétar, Sierra de Gredos, Spain. (14%)

Wine 6:  Oloroso VORS 30 Years, Bodegas Tradición, NV. Jerez, Spain. (20%)

Again, I try to write good winemaking, quality and commercial position notes that will be relevant even if I missed on the origin.  Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter if you think the last wine is a sherry or a marsala, the doomed commercial position of the wine is the same for both styles.  The sparkling is a champagne alternative with more ripe fruit character no matter where you place it.  There are 75 points here and despite feeling like I killed question 1 and might have missed on this, in fact, the exact opposite has happened.

Question 3:

Wines 7 to 12 are a mixed bag. 

For each wine: 

a) Comment on the quality and commercial position with specific reference to its classification. (6 x 15 marks) 

b) Comment on the winemaking techniques. (6 x 10 marks)

There are a vast array of colors coming up.  I see the pale salmon colored wine, and I’m thinking Provence rose.  It’s savory on the finish, so that lines up.  The question has a note about classification, and I immediately regret not completely memorizing the essentially irrelevant regional AOCs.   I’m expecting the next white wine to be sweet, but it’s not.  What the hell is this?  My brain is locked in on a grid of “P3 is sweet or fortified” and this isn’t either.  I’ll go back to this.  The next one is pale gold, sweet with some botrytis.  It’s either a Sauternes or Tokaji.  Sauternes has more alcohol and new oak usually, tokaji should be higher acid.  I’m not getting vanilla flavors from oak, but the acid is medium.  Alcohol feels about 13%?  That’s no help.  It’s rich and concentrated with some age.  I haven’t gotten one of these “Sauternes or Toakji” calls right in three years.  With the classification portion of the question there, I’m going Sauternes.  The next one is copper color with absolutely ripping acid.  This is sercial madeira.  I’m 100% confident on this.  The next one is ruby, high 20% ABV and obviously port.  It’s not as good as a Vintage lacking the massive palate and structure I’d expect.  It’s pretty decent quality, so I’m thinking an LBV from a good house.  Wine 12 is deep amber, almost brown.  It’s all secondary tertiary flavors.  What the hell is this?  There’s a lot sweetness here, like 100g/l+.  It’s fortified.  Maybe this is an old secco Marsala?  I can’t think of what else this could be.  

I’m taking too much time.  I’m really scrambling writing answers for the last three wines.  I still have to identify wine 8.  Shit shit shit.  The quality of my answers are not going to be my best.  I have to go too fast.  What the hell is this wine?  It’s very mediumy.  Alcohol is elevated.  It feels French for sure.  Marsanne/Rousanne blend from CDP?  It seems like it’s been in a big cask due to the squishy edges on the fruit.  I HAVE TO write something for these last two wines.  Three minutes.  With nothing else popping into my head I write CDP white for wine 7 and Marsala secco for Wine 12.

Wine 7:  Côte de Provence Cru Classé, Chateau Galoupet, 2023. Provence, France (14%)

Wine 8:  Pinot Gris Spiegel Grand Cru, Schlumberger, 2022. Alsace, France. (13.5%)

Wine 9:  Tokaji Édes Szamorodni, István Szepsy, 2017. Tokaji, Hungary. (12%) 

Wine 10:  Sercial 10 Years Old, Henriques & Henriques, NV. Madeira, Portugal (20%)

Wine 11:  Fine Ruby Port, Cockburns, NV. Douro, Portugal. (19%)

Wine 12:  40 Year Tawny Port, Kopke, NV. Douro, Portugal. (20%) 

Despite buying an Alsace pinot gris on Monday night to make sure to taste for exams as I was POSITIVE they’d pour one, I still missed wine 8.  I also missed Tokaji, keeping my streak alive for flip flopping those alive at 4-5 years.  Got the rose, sercial and close enough on the port.  Missing wine 12 was tough.  Forty Year ports are rare, so I think I have only had two in my life, and none from that producer.  Thinking about it now, what else could that have been, but you’re moving so fast a rare wine style like that can elude you in the moment.  The way the question was worded, you had to name the origin when discussing the classification, but I suppose it depends how much that mattered to the overall score on that question.  A high quality old premium fortified wine has the same commercial potential regardless as it is enthusiasts of that style that drive the market, so missing the fact it was a 40 Tawny might not be a killer.  I’ll never know how the points were weighted.  This was a tough group of wines.  Well, to me anyway.  A friend of mine that took the test sent me a text after this exam.  "P3 fucked me and did not leave a note". 

I was on point with my quality calls and style for almost all the wines.  Still, missing the first three on origin and grape will kill me.  It’s frustrating that all the work you put in can be undone by your own carelessness three seconds into a 2 hour and 15 minute test.  My takeaway on it is that I need to slow down in the beginning and prevent myself from drawing a conclusion until I have done a full workup of the wines in the set.  I need to create some drills for myself with potential red herring wines to trip me up.  I have to get better.

I can take solace in the fact that the MW that proctored the exam had to take it 8 times to pass.  Our course days MW was a guy that took three attempts.  There are a couple of unicorns that pass in their first go, but they are the exception and not the rule.  This test is a combination of skill to get in the room in the first place mixed with the luck of getting wines poured that you can identify that day PLUS getting lucky on your 50/50 coin flips of “Is this Spain or Italy?”.  It’s insanely challenging, but I am still deriving a sick enjoyment from the torture of it all.  

What’s wrong with me?