I went to London this week to take an exam as part of my efforts to obtain the WSET Diploma. There are six sections, D1–D6, that must be passed, typically over a 2-to-3-year period, and this exam was the test for D2, The Business of Wine. I started the program in the USA in 2023 at a great school in Portland, Oregon, called The Wine and Spirit Archive, run by a wonderful wine educator there named Mimi Martin. I managed to pass D1, Wine Production, and to write my Independent Research Assignment (D6), but I had failed my first attempt at D2 in 2023. After I failed D2, I was disheartened and my focus was waning. I had just been through the WSET Level 3 program and for nearly eight years before that I had studied and passed a different series of exams through an organization called the Wine Scholar Guild. There I had achieved the French, Italian, and Spanish Wine Scholar certifications with highest honors from 2015–2020. So, I decided to stop, and my attention turned to what I needed to do to retire and to start this journey we are on now, traveling and relocating to France. But once we settled in Nice, not finishing was nagging me, so I picked up where I left off at the London School, which is the original school and location for the now international program. I have a problem not finishing anything I start, even if I hate it, like some books, for example, I will finish it once I begin, regardless. Of course, there is nothing about the subject of wine I hate, even if it has become much more academic and challenging in my life these days.

You can take the WSET Diploma sections in any order you want, but a typical path might be D1, D2, D6, D4, D5, and D3 last because D3 is half the value of the entire program and it takes almost a year to get through. Everyone calls it “the beast.” The other thing to know is that the tests are a combination of extremely time compressed short written essays and if there are tasting components, then there are blind tastings on the wines or regions being covered. In total, students blind taste twelve wines. To put that in perspective, the next and final level of study is the Master of Wine (MW) and there are 36 wines to blind taste in that two-day exam. Today, there are 418 MWs based in 29 countries, and about 10,000 people have achieved the WSET Diploma since 1969.

Anyway, back to the test. As I mentioned, when I failed D2 in 2023, I was really thrown. It takes weeks to get your results because somebody has to read your exam and then parse points out based on how well you are able to weave together disparate pieces of information relative to the famously vague questions. A typical question might read, “Outline the advantages and disadvantages of selling wine in a mature market rather than an emerging market.” If you haven’t really prepared thoroughly, you will fail—the pass rate is around 60%. So, one is left waiting anxiously for the results and perhaps already doing coursework in the next section when the news of your results finally come. I had a bad feeling when I left the test the first time. I think I was over-confident prior to the test and so when I was finally presented with the questions, I got smacked. And then I waited six weeks for the inevitable bad news.

Since May of this year, I have been ultra-focused for my re-take. Obviously, being retired from work has given me all the time I could ever need to prepare. But I have taken it very seriously, regardless. I put many hours per week in reading the given text but also chasing down tangents on wine business subjects that might be related and that could give me a much fuller understanding of the interdependent workings of the machine that is making and selling wine.

Moreover, when Chien-hui left to go back to Taiwan for the month prior to my October 21 exam, I was all alone with nothing to do except study. And that’s exactly what I did, driven by the fear that I would fail it again. I’m the guy who is supposed to know wine, and it challenged my own personal self-perception that I had slipped on the climb up the mountain.

As the test day approached, I began the psychological countdown. Four weeks, three, two, one, and then counting the days before I needed to board the plane. Once I was in London, I went straight to my hotel and locked the door and began spoon feeding all of the test day notes I had prepared over the past few months. I read them. I read them again. I took a stack with me to dinner and read them while I ate steak and ale pie and mash (so good, why does British food have such a bad rep?) and drank a Guinness, because that just sounded better than wine at that moment. Then I went back to my room and started the process all over again, stuffing it all down as compact as I could into my head. It seemed none of it was sticking. I had read this material ad nauseam for months and it felt like I was reading it for the first time. My eyes crossed. I fell asleep.

I woke up suddenly at 5:00 a.m., brushed my teeth, and immediately sat down at the small desk in my hotel room and began reading it all again. Check in for the test, which was only a quick five-minute walk from the hotel, was at 10:00 a.m., so I had five hours. After two hours of studying I ran downstairs and grabbed a coffee and a pastry and then went right back to my room. Two more hours of studying the parts of the text that I felt were most likely to appear on the exam, but I had no way of really knowing. Ninety minutes, one hour, 30 minutes. My inner dialogue: “Do I shower first? No, that’s thirty more minutes I can use and I might read something that actually is on the test. I probably look pretty rough and hopefully I don’t smell too bad. You’re a dude. Whatever.”

I walk into the test site, which is at a university hall in Greenwich, London. I register and get my test ID card, which has my student testing number on it. There are dozens of people sitting around with their heads buried in their phones, their laptops, printed material, flash cards, whatever technique was working for them. Most of the people are a lot younger than me, maybe in their early 30s, but I am getting used to that by now. It makes sense as they are credentialing for bigger and better careers in the hospitality trade or in the wine business, whereas I am only an enthusiast, somebody who is stupid enough to do this for “fun.” Over the next hour, the room fills up as people sit on stairs or against walls, anywhere they can get in a last few minutes of reading. My rubber band is twisted so tight that I decide I need some fresh air, so I step back outside where there another thirty or forty people standing around in groups, chatting. I take a deep breath. I look round and think to myself, “Look where you are. You’re in London, England, about to take a test on a subject that you care deeply about. Take it in. You’re alive.” And with that, I turn and walk back inside with a sense of calm and a confidence. This time I know I’ve earned it.

At 10:50 a.m. they tell us to leave everything we brought with us somewhere in the room where we have been waiting. This includes our phones, watches, backpacks, jackets, etc. Somebody will be in there watching our stuff with the doors locked. We are only allowed to bring out two pens. We follow a couple of serious looking people back to the building’s lobby and then begin a climb up a central staircase (stairs? of course there are), the sound of hundreds of footsteps are all I can hear. On the third floor, we enter a huge room with twenty rows of ten single desks all in military formation, each with a menacing craft paper envelope centered on the desktop. The desks face a giant screen with a massive clock projected onto it. It reads 10:53 am.

Once everyone is seated, I look around and by quick count I think there are about 125 people taking this test. I wonder what they are all thinking. Everyone has a stone-faced mask on. The proctors instruct us to write our names and test ID codes in the spaces provided on the envelopes and inform us that we must do the same on the sheets inside the envelope that we will use to answer the questions or they won’t be read. 10:58…10:59…

At precisely 11:00 a.m., the test finally begins, but I delay opening the envelope and instead begin writing keywords I don’t want to forget to address and use in my answers on the provided scratch paper. I use five precious minutes to list about 30 of them. Then I tear open the envelope, and I flip over the question sheet. My eyes scan them; I know them all.

I begin writing furiously. It all comes pouring out. I can’t get it out fast enough. There are many angles to my answers, and I want to be sure that I cover them all or at least mention them for points. And then I hear the proctor say, “Fifteen minutes have passed, nobody is allowed in or out of the room.” Apparently, if you know you’re going to tank the exam you can get up and leave in the beginning, but after 15 minutes, everyone is locked in. And then, it seems within just a few minutes more, I hear them say, “You have five minutes remaining.” What? My hand is on fire and cramping up. I push through until the very… last… second. 12:00 noon. And just like that, it’s over.

I can’t explain the feeling I had at that moment, but it was like a heavyweight vest filled with ball bearings just floated up and off me. And it felt good. I felt free.

While others were chatting away back down in the waiting room, I grabbed my things and immediately headed outside into the sunshine. Strangely, the first thing I decided to do was to stop across the street into an Aldi and then a Sainsbury’s. The first is a deep-discounter (like Trader Joe’s) and the latter a grocery store, and I stood looking at their wine sections. I had never been in either store since they are both EU-based, but there were both big parts of my course information, and I had been studying their business models for months. I was unimpressed. Cheap, shitty, corporate bulk wines. But there is no denying that most British people buy their wines there and they are wildly successful enterprises. At least now I have seen them with my own eyes.

I caught a cab into central London straight to a wine restaurant, called Noble Rot, in Mayfair, a very upscale area. I have known about them for years because of this very Pop Art style wine magazine they produce, and today was the day I was going to reward myself with a nice lunch for making it through the exam. It’s wine geek heaven. Super upscale, everyone in the place is dressed in business attire, I see nice bottles on every table, everyone is drinking fine wine, and the food looks incredible. The servers are really all sommeliers and they love geeking-out on the wines they have to offer as much as I do. My server, Matt, starts me off with a glass of Limniona, a Greek wine I have never even heard of. It’s delicious. It pairs with the pumpkin agnolotti pasta that I start with. I follow that up with Aynhoe Park Venison, Pumpkin, Pickled Quince & Chestnut. I pair it with a José Gil “San Vicente de la Sonsierra” Rioja Alta that doesn’t taste like any Rioja I’ve ever had, its Burgundian-like flavors and colors show off light and fine tannins from old vines.

Aynhoe Park Venison, Pumpkin, Pickled Quince & Chestnut at Noble Rot, Mayfair

I eavesdrop on a table across from me where an older British gentleman is holding court. He has several bottles of very expensive Burgundy open at his table and he is schooling a man in his 40s on the quality of the wines. I put together that this man is a judge and the man he is dining with is some kind of lawyer (barrister) seeking his advice. They are discussing the merits of a case in between their discussions of the wines in front of them. I cringe with jealousy. I want to get up and go sit with them so badly. The older man is sooo British. Imagine John Cleese doing his best posh-Brit impersonation from an old Monty Python while discussing whether the 1989 or the 1993 Chambertin was better. It’s out of a movie. Meanwhile I am eating my 24-month Comté cheese for dessert along with an Oloroso sherry to wash it down. Am I really any different? No, just poorer.

I finish lunch and head to Heathrow, where in just an hour or so, Chien-hui will be touching down from Taipei. She will emerge from international customs pushing two enormous suitcases, and our eyes will meet, and they will tell stories of relief, and joy, that we can be together again.

WSET Test in London and she returns

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WSET Test in London and she returns

Escape to Bandol, quintessential Provence

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