Master of Wine MYC Course Day

Wow.

I have a lot of work to do.

I’m grateful to have the opportunity to attend the NYC course day as it re-motivated me in my studies. While collaboration with other students and mentors are essential to getting through the program, the Master of Wine journey is largely a solo effort. And a chance for feedback while I’m still in the beginning stages of my journey has been really eye-opening.

The morning was spent tasting and really understanding how to make sure every observation you make about a wine actually concludes something that adds to your argument. Benjamin Lewin and Christy Canterbury totally made sense as the words came out, but my immediate execution was terrible.

We did a mock exam of nine wines. I added “hang myself” to my growing to do list. In fact, my tasting skills are so poor that instead of the dreaded running out of time, I finished early since I had nothing else to say. My book wine knowledge (especially when you leave France) is really weak (for example…ok, this Pinot Noir is probably from New Zealand...but not ripe enough for Central Otago…so…shoot, remind me where else they make Pinot down there?) Seriously.

The good news is I largely already have this information from my Diploma Unit 3 days. I just have to actually...ya know...learn it.

And practice. Writing for any length of time over three minutes hurts. And the tasting portion is writing for over two hours. And focus. Feeding the jukebox at Coyote Ugly until 2am the night before is probably not something I would do on exam day. That didn't help my focus.

Anyway, we then spent the afternoon on theory, and I felt better about that. We individually made outlines on a few questions and then discussed. Benjamin and Christy also pulled out a few past exam questions to illustrate how many questions appear again and again, and asked us to think about how we might change our outline in each scenario. Brilliant.

Overall, amazingly helpful, and I’m glad I can focus my studies with a little more precision and a lot more motivation before attending the residency in Napa. And harakiri thoughts aside, I really am excited to be in the program.