2026 Master of Wine exam Paper 2

 

The second tasting exam is red wines.  This has been my undoing not only during last year's exam, but also during the occasional mock exam and course day.  My challenge has been an inability to accurately measure tannins on these wines, especially if the flight is heavy on bold rich red wines.  I find that the tannins linger on my palate, carrying over from wine to wine, which makes me grossly over/under estimate the level of the tannins and therefore skewing what I think I've got in the glass.  I can't smell shit, so if I am relying on poor structure perception, I'm not very good at this wine tasting game.  Day 2 is where I either pass/fail this exam.  I need to put a good day in.  I've got winemaking essays after the tasting, and that is my weakest area of expertise, so it's a real double whammy.

I am fairly relaxed as I sit down to set up my glasses as I felt like I didn't make an asshole out of myself yesterday.  If I can get a flight with some pale wines in it (pinot/nebbiolo/grenache) I can do pretty well.  If I see a bunch of really dark New World Bordeaux/syrah led wines, I'm going to struggle.  I am of the opinion that most New World cabernet sauvignon are the red wine equivalent of chardonnay, and the differences are fairly thin.  High end California cabernet=luxury Chilean cabernet=really good Bolgheri=international style St Emilion=Super high end South Africa.  It all tastes like country club wine.  Dudes in action khakis just off the golf course yucking it up with their buddies before getting into the bourbon.  This is what I'm hoping not to see.

We start pouring the wines.  Eight of the twelves wines are deeply colored.  Hmmm.  OK.  Not ideal, but hopefully I can pick out a few "bankers" and build around those.  We wait for the predictable delay of someone having trouble logging into the exam software.  The exam proctor notes that today we won't have a flawed wine like yesterday.  Well, that's good news at least.  Annnnnnddddd let's go...

Question 1

Wines 1-3 are from the same country and different single grape varieties.

For each wine:

a) Comment on the style and commercial position. (3 x 11 marks)

b). Comment on the method of production. (3 x 6 marks)

c). Identify the grape variety and origin as closely as possible (3 x 8 marks)  

Wine 3 is very pale, so I decide to start here.  It's a soft little red fruit wine, very delicate, and sort of natural wine leaning.  What the fuck is this?  It's not pinot noir.  Not enough acid to be nebbiolo.  It's thin skinned, so grenache maybe?  This is like that Gredos style everyone is losing their shit over.  I don't know what this is so I slide over to the light colored Wine 1.  This tastes like red fruit, smells earthy/forest floor, is lighter bodied and has a really gorgeous fruit purity.  It feels like pinot noir to me, but it's not aromatically like Burgundy.  I'm not getting Marlboro foil or a violet tinge, so cabernet franc is out.  It's a pretty clean wine.  New World pinot maybe?  I dunno.  I check out Wine 2.  This is a fruit forward "wine".  It's not standing out to me in any real way.  I'm getting nothing except it seems technically correct and clean.  Shit.  I decide to write up the style and commercial position + production method without having any idea of what these are.  I'll get back to question c later I guess.  Clock is ticking.  I keep moving.   I already spent too much time here without having a solid ID on these wines.  

Question 2

Wines 4-6 are from three different countries.

For each wine:

a) Identify the grape variety(ies) and origin as closely as possible. (3 x 10 marks)

b) Comment on the method of production. (3 x 5 marks)

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

This question is sorta tricky.  It's pointed out that they are from 3 different countries, but they've been grouped together for some kind of reason.  I'm thinking it's the same grape or variation thereof.  I nose the wines and they are big ass high alcohol reds.  The last one is an oaked cabernet for sure.  The second one is big and fruity, from somewhere hot.  That first one is baked and sorta raisined fruit.  All three wines have big alcohol, 14.5%+ with the last one feeling a little restrained in comparison.  The last one is the best wine here, clean and precise.  Maybe that's an Australian cabernet like McLaren Vale or something.  That could put the one in the middle in Napa as it is so friggen clean and juicy.  What about that first one?  South Africa maybe?  My headspace now is totally on pigeonholing these three wines as cabernet sauvignon based wines from three different countries.  As I have decided that wine 6 is cabernet without a doubt, now I have to figure out who makes cabernet sauvignon that matches up with these climates.  Now what I should have done right here is taken a second, slowed down, and really looked at this question as a grab bag type question.  Really, what they are saying is "Here are three wines.  Tell me what they are, but your only clue is they are all from different countries".  The method of production is also a clue saying "these are made differently or we would not have asked!".  Had I thought about it that way, suddenly I'm thinking raisins mean dried grapes which means amarone.  Big juicy soft high alcohol fruit is Barossa shiraz.  Now place the cabernet sauvignon last.  That's not what I did though.  This is super painful to type out as a confession of my fuck up.  I waited a year for this exam to make a stupid mistake due to not properly considering the question.  I was trying to move too fast and needed to slow down.  Allow my mistakes to guide your future success to any other Stage 2 student reading this.

My calls:

W4 some funky ass South African cabernet sauvignon $50

W5  big old fruity Napa cabernet sauvignon $60

W6. a more restrained wine than the other two, a Hawke's Bay cabernet $100 

The actual wines:

4. Amarone della Valpolicella Riserva Vigna Garzon, Pieropan, 2019. Veneto, Italy. (16%)

5. Shiraz The Factor, Torbreck, 2019. Barossa Valley, Australia. (15%)

6. Cabernet Sauvignon TD-9, Shafer, 2021. Napa Valley, California, USA. (15.3%)

At this point in the exam, I'm basically done but I don't know it.  I also spent some time here with some very tannic wines which has coated my mouth with some (ahem) "structural" tannins.  Everything at this point now tastes tannic and I'm having to fall back on secondary flavors and acid.  I have to keep moving.

Question 3

Wines 7-8, 9-10, and 11-12 form three pairs. Within each pair, the wines are from the same

country and region. Each pair is from a different country.

For each pair:

a) Identify the origin as closely as possible. (3 x 20 marks)

b) Compare the style and quality in the context of the region of origin. (3 x 20 marks)

c) Compare the maturity of the two wines, considering the likely vintage. (3 x 10 marks)

This should be a question to identify classic regions and likely asking me to figure out which wine is the ageworthy one next to a cheaper immediate consumption example.  It could also be a Right Bank/Left Bank Bordeaux, Tuscany, Rhone village thing.  I need to focus classic regions here.  These are 40 points per region.  If you miss the region, you're dead.   

Wine 7 smells like Reserva Rioja.  It's vanilla, coconut and cherries.  Wine 7 HAS to be Rioja.  The next one is a youthful cherry thing, not super exciting but definitely Spain.  Wine 7 is the first wine I am absolutely sure of what it is, and that's not a great place to be two thirds into the exam.  I write up answers about a pretty good Reserva that's probably a 2018 or something and some younger fresher style of Rioja a couple years old.     

I had given wine 9 a sniff due to the pale ruby color when the exam started to decide if that was a good place to start.  It smelled like Italy.  I decided I didn't want to blow my palate out with some tannic bomb early and left it for later.  Later has come.  Now I'm not getting anything off the nose.  Wine 10 is darker than wine 9 which shows some bricking on the edge.  They are both fairly tannic and the acid is medium.  Shit.  I was hoping I'd try wine 9 and I would immediately think "Sangiovese", but now I can't rule out Bordeaux.  It's not a great wine, just sort of red primary fruit and some grippy tannin.  It's like $15.  I move over to the second one which is much better quality, plush primary fruit with some darker berries, almost plummy.  There has to be merlot here.  There is also oak.  So, which is more likely... Is this a cheap Bordeaux AC wine next to a Grand Cru Classe St Emilion or is this a Chianti sitting next to a Bolgheri Bordeaux blend wine?  As the question is focused on comparing style and quality in context of region, it seems more logical to have a couple Bordeaux as if this was Italy it would be comparing an apple and an orange.  But the problem is I'm not sold on this being a Bordeaux because when I get a Bordeaux I IMMEDIATELY know it's Bordeaux thanks to my drinking an ocean of it in the early 2000s.  The clock is ticking and I'm behind.  I have to make a decision.  I decide to funnel Bordeaux and Tuscany like crazy and land on Bordeaux despite not being convinced myself.  This is when I first realize I'm flaming out on this thing.

I had spent too much time trying to figure out wines 9/10 and now the palate is sorta fried.  I have "over tasted".  Shit.  I still have to write answers for wines 1-3 which I haven't landed on the grapes much less a region.  I'm looking at wines 11/12 and they are really dark purple numbers.  They look like malbec or syrah.  There's a violet tinge on them.  They don't smell like syrah though as normally I'd get hit with a meaty possibly bretty whiff.  These are going to be tannic.  I am going to have to come back to these and land on my origin calls for wines 1-3.  I flip the pages of the exam back to the start.  There's about 25 minutes left on the clock.  I'm in the weeds.  

My calls:

Wine 7 Rioja Reserva 2018

Wine 8. Rioja fresh youthful style, artisan 2021

Wine 9. Bordeaux AC

Wine 10. St Emilion Grand cru Classe 2016   

The actual wines:

7. Rioja Reserva Viña Ardanza, La Rioja Alta, 2019. Rioja, Spain. (14.5%)

8. Rioja Paso Las Mañas, Artuke, 2021. Paraje el Chorro, Spain. (14%)

9. Chianti Classico I Sassi, Melini, 2021. Tuscany, Italy. (14%)

10. Chianti Classico Gran Selezione San Lorenzo, Castello di Ama, 2021. Tuscany, Italy.

So now I go back to wine 3, that super pale one.  It smells bretty now.  To me, that means it's either France or some low intervention hipster bullshit from the New World.  All three wines are single grape.  This isn't pinot noir.  What the fuck is this?  It could be gamay, pais, or grenache.  I had told myself not to play hero ball on these exams and land on a classic grape on any tie breaker situations, so I'm going grenache.  That makes me think it's got to be Spain, Australia, or USA.  That first wine is all red fruit and soft tannin, so I am going pinot noir on it.  That eliminates Spain.  Now I am in Australia or USA.  Shit, that could be Burgundy though which puts France back in play.  Wine 2 is a fruity thing.  It feels technical to me.  Compared to the last wines I was analyzing, these have almost no tannins.  So am I underestimating the level of tannins because I am comparing them to wines which were 8 on the tannin scale, or do these actually have 1/2 level tannins?  Fuck.  OK, the first two wines seem super clean, technical and steel tank heavy.  I can make an argument for a Yarra pinot/some cheap Aussie Shiraz/Adelaide low intervention grenache.  I can also make an argument for a Beaune pinot/Cotes du Rhone/Bojo, but that last wine is so friggen pale I can't believe it's gamay.  There isn't enough fruit here for this to be California.  OK, I gotta start writing.  Those first two are really fruity and pure.  Australia it is.

My calls:

W1 Yarra pinot noir

W2 Cheap shiraz

W3. Artisan grenache 

The actual wines:

1. Saumur Les Plantagenêts, Cave de Saumur, 2024. Loire Valley, France. (12%)

2. Régnié, Domaine de la Margot, 2024. Beaujolais, France. (12.7%)

3. Trousseau Singulier, Bénédicte et Stéphane Tissot, 2023. Arbois, France. (13.5%)

I look up at the clock.  It says 8:24 left.  I haven't even tasted wines 11/12 yet much less started writing.  In theory I need 22 minutes.  I've got 8.  I'm fucking fucked now.  Let me take you through my analysis of wines 11 and 12.  Pick up wine 11.  Quick sniff.  Sip.  Put it down.  Pick up wine 12.  Sniff.  Gulp.  Put it down.  I swear to God I spent 15 seconds on "analysis".  These feel like a Bordeaux variety.  They are purple as shit.  Malbec?  It ain't syrah.  I gotta start writing something down to at least get some points.  I'd love to see what I wrote because I can't remember.  It was just gibberish I'll bet.  I think I wrote some stupid funnel saying "well, it's either syrah or malbec because it smells like blackberries and looks violet, but there's a bunch of oak so I'm thinking two Mendoza malbec".  Now, as I am writing this bullshit down I notice that there is a bunch of particulates floating around in W12.  There is no fucking way a premium malbec is going out to market without that being filtered out.  As I think about it, why would they put two malbec down for a classic region question?  This is all going wrong.  There are two minutes left and I am watching myself write down two wrong answers, knowing they are wrong, but still doing it as some crazy out-of-body experience.  There are 30 points there for quality and style, so I write that part as "high alcohol tannic premium wines" to try and max that out.  Of course, by not having a hierarchy call like "classified growth" or "Cote Rotie" or whatever, I've got a limited ceiling here.  

My nonsensical call:

W11. Mendoza malbec, $50

W12 Mendoza Malbec $75  

Actual wines:

11. Château Giscours, 2017. Margaux, France. (13%)

12. Château Rauzan-Ségla 2016. Margaux, France. (13.5%)

I'm assuming that most people reading this didn't sit the exam, so it's hard to convey that something that looks incredibly stupid now made perfect sense under the time pressure of the circumstance.  If I had a couple hours to sit there and focus on nothing but the identity of the wines and not worry about all the lengthy written answers, I'm still probably only getting 8 of 12 correct.  I've really been hard on myself for this poor performance on this exam as I tend to focus on the negatives.  That first set of three, I don't know how I missed France.  The key to that flight was W3, the pale weird one.  There are only so many places that can make that kind of wine.  Trousseau makes total sense, but nowhere in my mind did I think they'd pull out a weird ass red wine grape from Jura for an exam.  If I would have focused on W2 and had Beaujolais been my "banker", that's the gateway to getting France.  I could have still called W1 pinot and called Jura on W3 and been OK.  Fucking trousseau.  I didn't see that coming.  

That last flight of pairs, I should have trusted my initial thought on Italy for W9.  I could smell the VA on it and that means Italy.  If I place wines 9/10 in Italy, that leaves Bordeaux on the table for consideration on wines 11/12.  To be fair, wine 10 had 13% merlot with 7% "malvasia nera" (whatever the fuck that is), so that smushy merlot vibe I got was on target.  I probably then write a shitty answer putting those two two wines on the exam in the Right Bank which makes a lot of sense for two oaky black fruit driven savory finish wines.  Those little decisions are the margin between being in the game or going down in flames, and I made the wrong turn.  I'm just not good enough consistently on red wines at the moment.  I've got to get better.  I also need to stay in my shoes and remember "it's just wine".

When we finish the exam, it's pretty quiet in that room.  There was more confidence in the vibe of the room yesterday, that's for sure.  Yoann and I discuss what we thought the wines were as we walk outside, and he was closer than I was, that's for sure.  We both had a similar take on the character of the wines but reached different conclusions, so at least that's something.  I'm not totally misreading the wines, just missing some nuance.  I'm also not opening my mind enough to possibilities as I'm making decisions on origin.  I can't tell you how much harder you make it on yourself when you get an initial idea on a wine like "I bet that's Burgundy".  At that point my brain has locked in "Burgundy" and now I will need glaring evidence to the contrary to prevent me from going with my initial vibe.  The exam is such a mind game.  It really is like golf, where you are competing against yourself.

I know goddamn well I didn't pass that exam as I walk down the sidewalk to my rental car.  I decide to go get a sandwich.  I've got an hour before considering how to write an essay response to questions like "How can temperature control be used in the winery to influence wine style during winemaking and maturation?".  The exam rolls on.  Tomorrow is "mixed bag" of Paper 3.  Keep moving those feet.