2026 Master of Wine Exam Paper 3

 

I can't tell you how happy I am to wake up on Day 3 of this exam knowing that viticulture and winemaking theory papers are behind me.  There are so many things that can go wrong for me in that minefield.  It seems like about a third of the MW program participants are winemakers.  These people cannot understand why everyone doesn't know that tartrate crystals can nucleate on microscopic scratches inside tanks.  Meanwhile, I don't know what the word "nucleate" means.  There's a guy named Tim Wildman that runs a course to help students pass these exams who has a well known statement that for most key subjects you need "Wikipedia level depth" of knowledge.  That isn't really true when it comes to (typically male) winemakers who will, without fail, offer a counter method to whatever is being discussed.  "Well, I interned at Mollydooker, and what we used to do was ..."  Time to buckle up.  You're in for a long ride.  

There is some truth to the wikipedia knowledge concept though.  Imagine if you have 50 minutes to write six paragraphs about how to bake cookies.  These exams can be like having some French master baker grade your chocolate chip cookie recipe and he'll rip you to shreds because you didn't mention how you need to adjust for altitude.  "Yes, zee cookies must bake at 180C, but what about if you need to make zees cookies in zee Alps?  Hmmmm?"  Hey man, I'm not a baker and I've only got six paragraphs.  1. get the shit together 2. flour 3.  Butter and eggs 4. mix it up. 5.  add the chips and mix. 6.  bake it.  Where am I going to get into altitude impact and how many people are baking in the fucking mountains anyway?  Cut me some slack man.  Yesterday I answered the question, "Consider how winemakers in warmer winegrowing regions can achieve freshness and balance in their wines".  I can participate in that question.  I wouldn't put me in charge of a winery in Puglia though.  Well, unless you don't mind burned cookies if you get my drift. 

So now I'm rolling into Day 3 for the typically most fucked up of the three exams, the "mixed bag".  This is where you get the sparkling, rose and all the geeky sweet and fortified wines that NOBODY drinks.  Because of wine education I'll bet I have drunk more different kinds of sherry than almost anyone in Ohio unless there's some 87 year old English woman living in Cincinnati that I don't know about.  I have personally increased madeira sales in Ohio 25% in 2025 when I purchased four bottles at the great Fisher's Culling sales event last Fall.  These are the wines that the super geeks get fired up about, so you can count on a lot of "how do they make that?" questions.  I'm ready though.  You want to talk about marsala production?  How about lambrusco?  Maybe maceration times in Tavel vs Alpes-de-Haute-Provence?  Let's go.  

As we prep our rigs (my slang for my glasses and dump cup), we are instructed that we need to start pouring the wines from W7.  That means we are about to get 6 sparkling wines.  This is very, very bad news for some people.  I, as someone that drinks a great deal of fizzy wine, look to this as a potentially fortunate turn of events.  My worst case scenario is a whole bunch of sweet white wines where I am trying to figure out if it has 90g/l or 150g/l of sugar and if there is any botrytis.  Sparkling can be a very fair exam.  If it's a tank method wine, it's probably prosecco.  Medium+ acid with some funk is usually cava.  Fraciacorta and Cali is too ripe to be Champagne.  Scorching acid with balanced finesse is champagne.  You gotta keep your head on a swivel for a super high end English one.  The English background heavy education people absolutely LOVE to put a big money high quality English sparkling next to a run-of-the-mill NV champagne in a "See!  We make great wine too!  Look!  It's better than Champagne!  It's better!!!  Look at us!  LOOK AT US!!!".  I mean, we could get into the high volume of great quality champagne v miniscule great quality English sparkling, but I would never EVER do so with someone in the English wine trade for fear of being run through with their headmaster's sword.  Sparkling is a minefield as it can get intentionally misdirectional.  There's a bunch of other midlevel shit being sold out there, but you've got to think classics first.

We wait FOREVER outside the exam room as the sparkling is poured.  People are more loose than yesterday.  I know I am.  I know at this point I am not passing the tasting exam so I'm going to go in there and have some fun.  I like sparkling, and it looks like a couple port and two sauternes/tokaji are on the table.  The clear ones at the end?  I'm hoping for riesling as I drink plenty of those too.  Let's get this thing started.  

Question 1

Wines 1-4 are sparkling wines and come from four different countries.

For each wine:

a) Identify the origin as closely as possible. (4 x 10 marks)

b) Comment on the quality within the context of the region of origin. (4 x 8 marks)

c) Identify the key winemaking decisions that have affected the wine’s style. (4 x 7 marks)  

Wine 1 is a fizzy ass rose almost pale ruby wine.  That's gotta be lambrusco.  I'll go back to that later as it could be tannic.  With these I'm looking for the mousse first.  Is it tight little bubbles and persistent pointing to traditional method?  This is where my shitty nose can betray me as unless it's reeking of autolysis I can miss a bready note.  I usually pick that up in the body though, so I'm not too concerned.  Wine 2 is high acid and there's some autolysis here.  The acid is really ripping here.  Sekt maybe?  It's probably 18 months on lees.  This is pretty good quality but really austere.  Is this Cap Classique?  Wine 3 sorta sucks.  This might be tank as the bubbles are disappearing.  It feels Old World but riper than a classic area.  The body is rounded and a little smushy.  It tastes like old Golden Delicious apples.  What the hell is this?  I'll go back.  I might call something crazy here.  There's something stanky on it.  It's nowhere near as good as W2 or W4.  Wine 4 is searing acid but balanced with a nice light finesse.  This is the best wine of the group.  It's really lemony.  This feels like champagne to me, maybe a brut nature?  The margins on calling these sparkling are very thin.  Each wine is 25 points, but 18 of them are tied to quality.  For example, a $40 mid-level quality champagne would be considered generally an excellent quality cava, so a miss here can really light you up.  I taste wine 1, and that's lambrusco.  Fizzy, fun, and tasty medium quality lambrusco.  Teenage girls would love this.  That's a great shelf talker BTW.  

My calls:

Wine 1:  Lambrusco, Emilia Romagna IT $18

Wine 2:  Sekt, Pfalz Germany $30      

Wine 3:  Savatiano from the Aegean Islands, Greece $20 (Crazy, I know but one of these in the exam is a unicorn and this says "I hate this but with all due respect")

Wine 4:  Champagne, Blanc de Blanc $60

Actual wines:

1. Lambrusco del Fondatore, Cleto Chiarli, 2024. Emilia-Romagna, Italy. (11.5%)

2. Cava Reserva Expression, Dominio de la Vega, 2022. Utiel-Requena, Spain. (12%)

3. Vouvray Brut, Château Moncontour, NV. Loire Valley, France. (12.5%)

4. Blanc de Blancs, Harrow & Hope, 2020. Thames & Chilterns, England. (12%)     

Question 2

Wines 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, and 11-12 are pairs. Within each pair, the wines are from the same country and region.

For each pair:

a) Identify the origin as closely as possible. (4 x 8 marks)

b) Comment on the methods of production. (4 x 14 marks)

c) Compare the quality in the context of the region of origin. (4 x 16 marks)

For each wine:

a) State the alcohol level. (8 x 3 marks)

b) State the level of residual sugar. (8 x 3 marks)

There are 4 pair of wines here, so I might jump around in the order.  Wines 5/6 are sparkling, so they're first.  Wine 5 is a totally underwhelming traditional sparkler.  Medium+ acid?  There's a harshness on the finish and a real lack of primary fruit quality.  Maybe this is the crappy NV champagne to put next to the premium champagne to illustrate the difference in quality.  Wine 6 seems much higher quality than the previous wine with more generous fruit purity and balance hiding the imperfections of the wine.  The acid isn't killing me though so I compare it to W4 of the previous flight.  These are definitely a tick below what I know is high acid.  Could this be an entry level cava and a Gran Reserva cava next to it?  If the wines had more acid I'd go champagne, but I gotta go with my notes.  Cava it is but I feel like this is a risky call.

My call:

Wine 5. Entry level cava $15

Wine 6. Gran Reserva Cava $45

Actual Wines:

5. Blanc de Chardonnay Brut Nature, Chavost, NV. Champagne, France. (12.5%)

6. Brut, Delacourt, NV. Champagne, France. 12.5%    

I go to the two pale white wines at the end.  Those look like riesling.  They smell like riesling.  They taste like riesling.  First one has less sugar than the second.  They're both pretty light bodied.  I'm going classic Mosel on these.  Wine 11 is a kabinett.  Wine 12 is probably technically an auslese but it would never sell on the shelf that way so it's labeled a spatlese.  I feel good about these.

My call:

Wine 11 Kabinett Riesling, Mosel Germany

Wine 12 Spatlese riesling, Mosel Germany 

Actual wines:

11. Riesling Trocken Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle, Jakob Schneider, 2023. Nahe, Germany.

(12.5%)

12. Riesling Spätlese Norheimer Kirschheck, Jakob Schneider, 2022. Nahe, Germany. (8%)

I move over to the two other white wines.  One is a deep gold.  I'm guessing botrytis as that leads to rapid browning.  I've got to be careful not to get in my head on narrowing down what the wine is before I even taste it.  This could be all kinds of weird ass shit.  Wine 9 is full bodied, marmalade, honey, sweet and delicious.  OK... This is Sauternes or Tokaji.  Wine 10 has less body but more acidic lift.  I sort of like it more than the other one but wine 9 is technically the "better" wine.  So... Is this a 6 and 5 puttonyos tokaji?  Or is this two different quality Sauternes?  The alcohol seems about 13-13.5% so that's no help.  The acid is medium so that is a vote for Sauternes.  What about the oak?  Is there oak here?  I think so.  Wait.  Yes, that is new French oak.  OK, this must be Sauternes.  I have never in my life called it correctly when I have to decide between Sauternes and Tokaji.  It's actually statistically impossible how often I flipped the coin "heads" and it's come up "tails" on this.  I hope I got it this time.

My call:

Wine 9 Sauternes, excellent quality 

Wine 10 Sauternes, very good quality

Actual wines:

9. Château Coutet, 2022. Barsac, France. (13.5%)

10. Château Delmond, 2023. Sauternes, France. (13.5%)   

Now I move over to the only red wines, what looks like a tawny and a ruby style port.  Wine 7, the tawny, is really good.  I drink a fair amount of 20 year tawny.  It's cold here 8 months a year so that's what you do.  This is a 20 year tawny.  It's almost got enough bricking to call 30, but a 30 year tawny would be more rancio and have less primary fruit.  I know that this is a 20-year tawny.  The full bodied ruby style wine is rich, boozy and fruity.  It's not tannic enough to be a vintage port.  It's also not good enough.  This is either an LBV or a Special Ruby or whatever they decided to call it.  It's really soft.  I'm going "Special Ruby Reserve" on this wine at about $20.  The trouble with these port styles in the Reserve Ruby/LBV range is one producer's LBV is another producer's Reserve Ruby quality level.  It also depends on what their house style is overall.  If they are fruit forward, the LBV is like jam.  If it's a more structured house, it can be like the fruit forward style house's single quinta in a dodgy vintage.  Personally I feel like the test should only focus on Ruby/LBV/Vintage as that points to strict style variation, but that's not the way it has gone historically.

My call:

Wine 7. 20 year tawny, excellent quality $50

Wine 8. Special Ruby Reserve, very good quality $20  

Actual wines:

7. 20-Year-Old Tawny Port, Kopke, NV. Douro, Portugal. (20%)

8. Late Bottled Vintage Port, Taylor’s, 2020. Douro, Portugal. (19%)     

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This was a pretty fair exam all things considered.  Those two champagnes sorta sucked.  The Chavost is a fairly natty grower style and not very typical unless you are swimming in the deep geeky end of the pool (which I admittedly am).  I could have written a note on a grower embracing an artisan style, but the way that question is worded is "quality in context of origin".  Some people think grower champagnes are the bomb.  Others think many of them are the Emperor's New Clothes.  Again, it's fair in the sense that candidates need to be aware of styles from the region, but the context of that question is leading to a discussion of quality between two apples, not an apple and an orange.  I was sitting in a Paris wine bar this Spring and came thiiiiissss close to buying one of those Chavost to take home (pretty much because I liked the label), but ironically enough some lukewarm online reviews made me pass on it.

I sort of mangled up the first four sparkling wines.  I fell for the "Really good English sparkling" trick yet again.  While England makes better quality sparkling than 10 years ago, it's still expensive QPR and has very limited distribution outside the UK as a result.  For example, I could not find the Harrow & Hope available for sale anywhere in the United States.  Actually, I also could not find the Dominio de la Vega cava or 5 of the 12 wines in the P2 exam anywhere in the USA either.  Is a wine testable if it's not sold in the largest and most important market in the world?  Discuss.  (I think it is if representational of a widely known style.).   

What really sucked was that I missed that Moncontour and I sell it.   I open that wine all the time.  I really like that wine in context, but that morning, in that room, it fucking sucked.  I'd love to try both the English sparkler and the Cava again to see why I missed those.  I rarely miss a cava, so that is a tough miss for me not only on wine 2 but calling wines 5/6 (the champagnes) cavas.  It shows how mistakes can domino.  If I call the English sparkler correctly in flight one, that means wines 5/6 must be Champagne.  Since I already used champagne and haven't called cava, that makes wine 5/6 a strong consideration for cava, especially since i underestimated the acidity (I think).  If I don't keel over from a heart attack in the next few months, I'll try to buy those in Europe and open 'em together.    

Overall, a pretty good showing in P3.  Seven correct calls and three "pretty close" with only two big misses is a decent exam result.  Candidates need to have 2/3rds of the points to pass, so I probably have a shot depending on how draconian the grading scale goes.