Grape & Grain | Master of Wine student on the power of group study and breaking down blind tasting
An ecstatic Sarah Heller passes her MW exam and although it seems the worst is over, it is still a stage she is going through
An ecstatic Sarah Heller passes her MW exam and although it seems the worst is over, it is still a stage she is going through
If I said that the days leading up to doomsday (or the day I got the results of my Master of Wine exam) weren’t filled with blistering anxiety about this column, it would be one of the larger untruths I’ve attempted. As the day approached, my ego amused itself with fantasies of writing my column on another subject entirely (rootstocks or something), slipping “oh, and I didn’t pass” into the last sentence and hoping nobody noticed.
One of the risks of the increased access to our lives we are all somehow willing to afford each other is that when we suddenly decline to share, our silence rings painfully loud. To relieve the crushing suspense, I passed (although I suspect that since many of my readers are also my Facebook friends, you probably already know).
Fortunately, while I was agonising over how to infuse my own Facebook announcement with the appropriate levels of humility and gratitude, my pal Debra Meiburg sent out the message to her gajillion followers and so it became a moot point. Phew. Double fortunately, I’m feeling almost irrepressibly chirpy, with an elation largely unmarred by the fact that I’m not quite an MW yet and that the only real status change is that instead of a “Stage 2” student, I’m now “Stage 3”. As many people anywhere along the MW path will concur, the worst is past.
The question I’ve been fielding from people familiar with the exam and its brutality is what I think was different this year. Although two is obviously a pretty poor sample size for any sort of scientific inquiry, I feel strongly that it boils down to a few factors:
I’m still kicking myself for not acknowledging earlier the powers of group study. I had passed my entire academic existence prior to this year believing study groups were just something that happened to other people. My need/tolerance for human contact is illustrated by the fact that I spend much of my working day alone in a sealed room with only occasional visits from our dog, Kevin. Yet somehow, to my lasting amazement, the pressure and support of regular practice tastings with a group of four to eight like-minded people did me immeasurable good. Who knew?