As both of my loyal readers know, when I get busy, I stop blogging. And busy I have been. Forgive; I know y'all must be champing at the bit for my riveting content.
I searched every corner of northern California wine country for a new tasting room gig only to come up short in interview after interview. Many demoralizing months of searching convinced me it was time for a change. I had found a home in the wine business, and fancied myself well-suited to sales and hospitality, but it seemed the universe was nudging me away from tasting rooms (at least for the moment).
I'd become familiar with various professional certifications that are standard across the industry early on in my wine career, but hadn't thought much about them. The Wine and Spirits Education Trust, or "WSET," was the most talked about––some tasting rooms boast that they only hire associates with WSET certifications. Seeking something to break the dam of the interview circuit, achieving such a certification seemed like it could be prudent.
This took me down a certification rabbit hole––if I could take a WSET exam and also garner certifications through other organizations, all the better to open doors for my career, right? And hence I found myself wrapped up in the world of the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS), an organization that is probably the most highly-respected issuer of certifications for beverage hospitality professionals.
Many are familiar with the Court of Master Sommeliers through the popular documentary Somm, which explores the grueling quest toward the pinnacle certification for the organization, Master Sommelier. Achieving the rank of Master Sommelier is a colossal task, one that only 281 professionals in history have managed. Indeed, CMS' Master Sommelier examination has been called the most difficult test in the world.
It was the mystique surrounding the Master Sommelier title that led me to believe for years that I simply didn't have the palate to become a sommelier, despite family and friends insisting I'd thrive in such an environment. And indeed, a Master Sommelier certification is CMS' fourth tier and a long way off for me, should I even attempt it. But after five months of intensive study and work, as well as some 150 bottles of wine, one week ago I achieved the rank of Certified Sommelier, their second tier of certification, and it was one of the most challenging things I've ever done––probably more difficult than my dissertation.
I also took the WSET Level 3 exam last month, but those results take months to arrive. So while I wait for my WSET results, I thought it might be helpful to share a 20/20 hindsight view of the knowledge, successes, and pitfalls on my path to certification.
For those seeking these certifications or considering them, I hope this overview and advice can help in your endeavors. For hobbyists of wine, perhaps this can give you some insight into how to sharpen your wine knowledge so you can deepen your enjoyment of wine; I also know that many of my friends and fam are deeply curious about what this entailed!
Components of wine certification exams
"What all did this involve?" is a question many curious family members, friends, and fellow wine professionals ask about my journey to certification.
Early on, a certification journey is strictly book knowledge––CMS Level 1 and WSET Levels 1 and 2 are entirely tested using multiple choice questions on Scantrons. In wine, they call this book-based knowledge "theory."
The amount of information available to a student of wine is nearly unfathomable, and breadth of knowledge is expected at every tier while the depth of that knowledge obviously increases with each level. But even in early exams, you could get questions about any number of things, including:
Viticulture, botany, and geology––parts of a vine, planting and training strategies, grape growth cycle, climate, soil types, geographical features' effects on growing, etc.
Winemaking––how wine is made and the effects of viticulture and winemaking choices on the flavor, style, and market placement of each resulting wine.
Grape varietals––characteristics, flavors, favored conditions for growing, origins and common growing regions, etc.
Regions––the major wine growing areas of each country well-known for producing wine, the varietals grown there, their individual climates, stylistic considerations, etc.
Wine law––requirements for wine production and classifications in each country, region, sub-region, and even village.
Practical applications––pairing wine with food, serving temperatures and glassware, proper opening and pouring techniques, storing wine, the business of wine, etc.
Any of this is fair game, and the depth to which you need to study increases significantly at higher levels. At the upper levels of WSET, you'll need to be prepared to answer theory questions in long-form, detailed prose in addition to multiple choice. CMS Level 2's theory exam includes multiple choice, matching, and fill-in-the-blank.
But a new component also gets added at higher tiers––blind tasting. For many, if not most, this can be quite challenging. Anywhere from two to six wines are pre-poured in front of you and you have the task of describing them and, in many cases, identifying the varietal, growing location, climate, and even vintage.
Because CMS is focused on the skills of the in-restaurant sommelier, they carry the additional expectation that a Certified Sommelier and higher be able to perform the service tasks of a sommelier on a restaurant floor with fluency, which can include recommending wine pairings, opening sparkling wine, describing cocktails and spirits (and also making these cocktails at higher levels), and even recommending and describing beers.
Preparing for theory
I tend to think that the sheer breadth of material to master is why many wine professionals just don't think certification is worth it. The good news for those who don't really know where to begin is that classes are available, and in many instances required, for candidates, and these classes, if they're available for the exam in question and properly taught, should do more than enough to prepare you to pass the exams.
The Court of Master Sommeliers requires all prospective participants in their programs to pass the Introductory Course and Exam. The course is offered online but is best taken in person as a two-day, all-day affair where you not only observe lectures covering everything you need to know for the exam, but also receive an introduction to CMS' "deductive tasting" method, which will help you become a better blind taster. You also sample some 20 or so wines representing classic examples of some of the world's preeminent wine regions.
The course culminates in a 70-question, multiple choice exam, on which you must score 60% or higher to pass. This exam should be fairly easy for anyone who takes notes and pays attention during the lectures––it has a 94% pass rate. In the class I took in Seattle this fall, every student passed, and joy and bubbles ensued!
WSET, meanwhile, requires coursework through an accredited "school" to take their exams. Levels 1 and 2 can be accomplished entirely online, while Level 3 requires an in-person tasting component of one white wine and one red wine. These courses are taught by hundreds of organizations (of varying degrees of quality) either online or in-person. Importantly, and unlike CMS, you do not have to pass earlier levels to take a course and exam for a higher level. I started at WSET Level 3 after taking a practice exam and finding my knowledge level best suited for that tier.
It's when you get into the higher levels of WSET and CMS that additional independent study becomes necessary, and this is especially true for the Certified Sommelier exam through CMS––for this certification, there is no course. You must study everything in the curriculum guide, a 90+ page document, on your own.
Here's some advice for your theory study, for prospective certifiees or otherwise:
Read, listen, and write. Countless books, websites, and online lectures are available to you, but if you just read and listen, you'll never retain the information. Note-taking requires you to synthesize information and regurgitate it in your own words, which makes much more of an imprint; it also gives you something digestible to revisit.
Reinforce by talking about wine. Even better than note-taking? Talking to people about what you're learning. Help a friend pick out a wine at the store. Educate a family member about the cabernet they're drinking. Chat with someone at a party curious about the differences between Champagne and Prosecco. Pair a wine with your family dinner and describe why. There are countless opportunities to talk about what you're learning, and every opportunity for reinforcement is good!
Use multiple resources. The truth is that while the internet is a killer resource for information, it also has some bad or incomplete information. Moreover, some things in wine are a bit squishy and don't have one concrete answer. The solution is to not rely on one study vehicle. Use several books, multiple online resources, and knowledgable acquaintances in tandem.
Don't forget about Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa. Wine is more than just Europe and California, and you will get questions on some or all of these countries. It's very easy to push them to the side during your studies––don't!
Don't cram. There's just too much information. It requires routine reinforcement and study to master. Unless you get really lucky, cramming will be an unsuccessful strategy.
My resource recommendations for theory study:
Karen MacNeil's The Wine Bible. I probably could have passed the theory portions of my exams just by studying this book. It's comprehensive, but approachable, and delightfully written.
GuildSomm. This is about as comprehensive as you can get. Nearly any topic related to wine and the work of the sommelier is addressed in articles, discussion boards, videos, etc. It's a paid membership, but those who sign up for the CMS Level 1 course get a free month.
The Sommelier's Atlas of Taste. A fantastic book by Jordan Mackay and Rajat Parr that takes a deep and very personal dive into Europe's most treasured wine regions. Through examining each region alongside introducing the reader to the best people making wine there, the book provides not just a profound understanding of each place from the ground, but also an amazing list of benchmark producers. Reading it feels like you are visiting each place with them.
Cork Dork. A miracle app designed by someone who passed the CMS Certified exam––it's explicitly directed toward helping others achieve the same goal. Flash cards are a popular study vehicle for these exams, but most of the flash card decks on sites like Quizlet or Brainscape are mostly useless and/or filled with errors; the Cork Dork series of flashcards is written precisely like a question might be written on a CMS exam, and is designed to over-prepare you. There's a small fee to access the app's full features, but it's well worth it.
Wine Folly, Wine Searcher, Wine Insider, Wine Spectator, etc. Websites like these publish many approachable, extensive guides on wine regions with helpful graphics and lots of bite-sized information easily transferrable to notes. Many such graphics, especially from Wine Folly, made their way into my notes!
Learning to taste wines blind
If I made a colossal misstep during my studying, it was certainly the way I approached blind tasting.
I had not done a lot of blind tasting before I started studying in earnest, and if I'm honest, I didn't do much to add experience with blind tasting during my months of study for these exams, either. Here's why:
My approach to studying these wines was to drink them and not taste them.
As I chipped my way through each region, a bottle with lunch and a bottle with dinner, split between study buddy Mom and myself, was common. But after vaguely bouncing aroma and flavor characters back and forth with Mom for a bit, we weren't tasting these wines. We were drinking them. And there is a difference!
You learn wine by tasting it, not drinking it.
Intensive tasting of wine requires a completely different mindset than casually drinking a glass or two. Think of it like going to a museum––drinking a wine is enjoying an entire painting only from a distance, allowing you to take in the sum of the parts; tasting a wine is starting up close and then zooming out to collect an understanding of the individual components that form the whole.
In general, a good blind tasting system will attempt to collect as much sensory information about the wine as possible in order to describe what's in the glass and, from there, use attributes of the wine to narrow down the possibilities using your theory knowledge (a Master Somm told me in my Seattle class that "blind tasting is 85% theory"). Things to consider include color and intensity of color; aromas and flavors, both fruit and non-fruit; and structural components, like acidity, tannin, and alcohol.
I always tell tasting room guests who are less familiar with wine tasting to paint in broad strokes first––what is the color of the fruit? For a red wine, for example, is the fruit bright and vibrant? It might be red fruit. Jammy and berry-like? Blue fruit, perhaps. Or is it intense, brooding, and maybe overripe? Might be black fruit.
From there you can break it down further. If you detect red fruit, you might subdivide that into tart red fruits, like cranberry or pomegranate; berry fruit, like strawberries or raspberries; or pitted red fruit, most notably the cherry family. Then you can get even more granular. Aromas of cherries could be sour, red, black, candied, or dried. Strawberries could be ripe or underripe. If you detect plums, are those red plums, black plums, stewed plums, or dried plums?
Next is non-fruit notes––is there vanilla or baking spice? Might be a sign of oak aging. Leafy notes, like bell peppers or tomato leaf? Could indicate varietals high in pyrazine, like cabernets Franc and sauvignon.
After smelling, tasting the wine begins with structure. How intense is the acidity? What are the tannins like? Alcohol level? From there, you can confirm, alter, or refine thoughts collected while considering aroma characters and begin to make an educated guess based on all the components combined.
As an example, here's a paraphrase of a thought process I walked through recently when blind tasting a Cultusboni Chianti Classico:
Color: medium ruby, can see through the core of the wine. Slight garnet at the rim of the glass. Tears don't stain the side of the glass when swirled.
Eliminates thick-skinned varietals, like cab, malbec, syrah, etc., which would be dark and possibly even opaque and would stain the glass when swirled.
Garnet at the rim probably indicates a bit of age.
Aromas: red fruits, like bright sour cherry and pomegranate; some indication of dried fruit, like figs, as well as leather; a bit of dustiness and earth, some resinous herbs, violets, and a slight medicinal quality, like aspirin; no obvious signs of new oak aging.
The bright cherry, dust, and herbs are classic notes of Italian sangiovese, and most Italian sangios are aged in big neutral oak barrels, so would not get any new oak notes. Grenache is also an option for red fruit and herbs but tends to show riper berry fruit. Could also be cool climate pinot, but the profile is a bit off––I wouldn't expect much dust or herbs, and in many regions pinot sees new oak which may or may not be detectable.
Dried fruit and leather are tertiary characters which may indicate a bit of age.
Palate: high acidity, medium body, medium alcohol, medium+ tannins.
Probably eliminates grenache, which tends to produce higher alcohol wines and doesn't usually have this much acidity. Pinot also doesn't tend to show this much acidity unless in rather cool climates. The structure, especially acidity, is consistent with sangiovese, and the higher tannin gives this a rustic mouthfeel consistent with my experience with Italian wines.
Conclusion: Sangiovese, Italy, Tuscany, with four to eight years of age (wasn't far off!).
Everyone finds and refines a method of tasting that works for them with practice. And once you've got your blind tasting style pinned down, you're ready for The Maestro's second rule:
Don't be a hero.
When I started tasting blind for this exam, I wanted to be the ultimate overachiever––I thought I could come out of my study armed and ready to taste the difference between Pauillac and Saint-Julien, or Gevrey-Chambertin and Chambolle-Musigny, or Barolo and Barbaresco, with spectacular accuracy.
Patience, young Padawan. Before you figure out where on the Left Bank a cabernet comes from, be able to reliably identify cab! Then, perhaps, get it down to European vs. non-European cab and then country and region before getting into granular, commune-level attributes. Or, if you think getting the distinction between Barolo and Barbaresco is important, perhaps first make sure you're picking up the differences between Italian nebbiolo and sangiovese, a tricky task for many blind tasters, even experienced ones!
There's plenty of time to learn how to parse a Pauillac from a Pessac. Becoming a good blind taster first requires you to think a little bigger, and taste comparatively as often as possible––Australian syrah vs. French syrah, pinot vs. gamay, Sancerre vs. New Zealand sauvignon blanc, etc.
Additionally, while I think it's very important to seek out wines that are emblematic of a varietal or region's style, there's really no need to spend too much per bottle (like I, of course, did).
You don't need to buy DRC to understand what Burgundy tastes like, or Screaming Eagle to know Napa; however, there are some regions, like Burgundy and Napa, that are going to require you dig deeper into the piggy bank to get a proper sense of their styles––one wouldn't want to buy a Trader Joe's Vosne-Romanée to get to know Burgundy with accuracy, for example, and these days, even merely decent Burgundy has a floor of about $50. For most regions, however, there are excellent, benchmark examples of wine available to you for less than $30–40, and often far less.
And remember––at the earlier stages of learning wine, breadth is better than depth, and you should taste as many examples as possible to get your palate used to recognizing the style. That $250 bottle of Puligny-Montrachet could instead buy you five bottles of excellent Burgundian chardonnay to taste and experience, and while the Puligny might be a special treat, it will have one-fifth of the utility for training your palate.
The final big piece of advice is massive:
Don't do this alone.
The best thing you can do for yourself when training for blind tasting is to taste with others as often as possible. Blind tasting alone is like having a conversation with a mirror––because all of our palates are different, as well as our knowledge and experience, tasting in a group is far more educational, as you're exposed to an exponentially higher number of potential observations. More important, you can explore and share more bottles, and it will cost you far less money to taste far more wine!
Best practice is to form a regular tasting group, preferably of fellow wine professionals or enthusiasts––even better if some or all of you are preparing for the same exams. Can't find a tasting group? Taste wine with a buddy whenever possible. I was lucky enough to have my Mama (who I am proud to say can now distinguish Left Bank from a Right Bank Bordeaux with aplomb), but I very much wish I had spent more time in groups doing blind tastings.
The Dreaded Service Exam
If you're going for CMS Level 2 or higher, you'll need to demonstrate your sommelier skills in a mock service. And friends, it's no joke.
The longest sixteen minutes of your life will involve serving a Master Sommelier, performing various tableside tasks with pristine attention to detail, getting grilled on cocktails, beers, pairing recommendations, and the exploring the deepest recesses of your theory knowledge.
I am a performer and have been most of my life. I have been on hundreds of stages in front of all manner of audiences. I've led 70-piece professional orchestras and choirs three times that size in rehearsals and concerts. And I had never been so nervous as I was that morning. I was visibly shaking––who am I!?––and immediately forgot much of what I knew while being questioned. And the Master Somms have a knack for disarming you right off the bat!
And yet, despite having no restaurant experience at all and not practicing nearly as much as I wanted, I got "Excellent" rankings in every category of my service exam.
This is to say that while it's quite tough, certainly intimidating, and you need to be exceptionally well-prepared, it's really not that bad––the Master Sommeliers want you to succeed, and while they will be tough, they aren't trying to make you fail, but instead observe how you recover. I was asked several questions that I couldn't recall in the moment or just didn't know, and a simple smile and "I'm not sure; I'd have to check on that for you" was a perfectly acceptable answer.
The toughest thing for me about the service exam is it's the only thing that tests your manual dexterity. I tried to interrogate one of the Master Sommeliers responsible for the lecture content in my Introductory Course and Exam about what I might expect and/or prepare for in my service exam. As cagey as she was with details, she dug into one element in particular after learning that I had no formal restaurant experience––“Can you carry a tray?”
I hadn’t even thought about my tray skills being scrutinized. While I’d carried a tray to some extent in my tasting room work, nothing about the performance of carrying the tray was customer-facing; that is, my work with a tray mostly involved carrying battalions of glassware between the dishwasher and the tasting room, and always with two hands. Heeding the advice of this Master Sommelier, I purchased a pizza pan, serviette, and four champagne glasses at Walmart (on Black Friday, incidentally––never again) and walked around my hotel room carrying the tray, but with far too irregular a frequency to be any good at it.
And, indeed, a tray was a key component of my service exam––I was asked to set six Champagne flutes and later asked to clear them (while they were full). As I was picking up the tray, shaking mercilessly, armed with six flutes, I heard another candidate’s glassware tumble and shatter. I’m amazed I didn’t follow suit right then, but somehow I managed to get all six placed with at least a veneer of poise. The trip back to my side station with the full glasses felt nearly catastrophic, with glasses clattering against each other from my trembling.
The point being, do not neglect to physically practice the mechanics of service. Download the CMS’ rubric for service standards, and do not overlook the manual dexterity, balance, and poise required to perform these tasks effectively––you actually have to practice them.
That includes expertise opening a bottle of sparkling wine. This isn’t a small deal, and I learned that I’d been doing it wrong for years! With six atmospheres of pressure in every bottle of traditional method bubbly, CMS rightly treats the opening of a bottle of sparkling wine first as a safety issue––yes, people have died from poor sparkling wine opening execution. Make sure you know the steps precisely and that you've practiced––and remember, an easy way to fail this exam is to point a bottle of bubbly at literally anyone.
Don’t forget that while you are performing these tasks you’re also going to be interrogated by the Master Sommelier at your table. The best way to prepare for this is to practice with a homie––while you’re opening bubbly for your buddy, ask them to offer mock service inquiries the likes of which you might encounter in your exam, like what you'd recommend with the scallop dish, or what the ingredients are in a mai tai.
Above all, my best advice is that you will probably not walk away from the service portion of a CMS exam feeling confident that you nailed it. But that’s okay––you should expect the Master Sommeliers to push you until you break, and the critical element is how you recover. Service is a performance, and while it’s always a bad idea to fake it in front of a Master Sommelier (they know more than you do in almost every instance), don’t be afraid to just offer a sincere grin and something like “I’m not quite sure about that, but I’d be happy to check for you” when they eventually, and inevitably, stump you.
Those considering a career in wine or looking to level up their wine game, in their career or as a hobby, can benefit from the knowledge gleaned through and doors opened by the process of studying for and taking certification exams, and hopefully something in this little online tome provides help to fellow certification seekers, or at least satisfies some curiosities.
Had I to do it all over again, my biggest blind spot was blind tasting. I drank wine instead of tasting it, I tried to be a hero, and I only tasted with a group twice during my study. In fact, the blind tasting I did with a group of industry friends in Napa just days before the exam gave me a pretty sobering look into just how unprepared I was. Indeed, by far my weakest score on the exam, despite feeling confident that I aced it, ended up being tasting. My service scores were stellar compared to what apparently was a big miss on one of the blind tasting wines, as well as tasting notes that the Master Somms said needed more refinement, depth, and precision.
But, I passed, and was one of three in the group of seven examined that day to be able to celebrate success. The bottle of vintage Bollinger rosé, as well as a hot tub and cigar, completed a worthy celebration beneath the big skies of Montana.
Perhaps soon I will begin to consider advancing to CMS Level 3 or WSET Level 4 (called "Diploma"), but for now, I am happy to rejoice in my hard work and success and drink something besides wine for a change, perhaps a Santa pants mug full of hot buttered rum.
I have several cool things to share that built up while I was focused on studying, as well as the 2024 edition of the completely useless and meaningless Big Drunk Gay Awards, so stay tuned for those, and Happy Holidays to all who manage to make it through the drivel I put out on here. <3
