Passing the first test

There are all sorts of areas of the wine business that people can pursue. If you like sales then perhaps you want to work for a distributor and sell wine wholesale, or work in a tasting room. Working for my family’s winery where everyone does a number of different jobs there is a vast array of education needed.

I had the extreme pleasure of meeting seven Master Sommeliers, there are only 90 in the US, and let me tell you, these guys wowed me! The amount and extent of knowledge that they posses is just mind blowing. In order to become a Master, which in my opinion is basically equivalent to being a doctor of wine, you have know a massive amount of information from wine regions, to production of different wines to macro and micro climates of countries and appellations all over the world.

During the course we did a series of blind tastings, these I thought were the most fun part. I have had experience with blind tastings but very little with wines all over the world. Most of the wines we tasted were fairly specific to the appellations they were from they included a Nebbiolo from Italy, Gruener Veltliner from Austria, Zinfandel from Lodi and Riesling from Germany (of course there were more but those are just a few off the top of my head.)  Although the blind tasting part was my favorite it was the most nerve racking…. one by one we had to stand up in the middle of the class and talk about the wine (varietal, region etc).

Overall I might some amazing people during the course and learned SO much information about wines from all over the world. Right after the test I wanted to go to Bottle Barn and look at all the wine labels!!

AND I PASSED MY TEST! *which is the best news of the experiance.