A Week In Rust.

Dan Kirby

Mar 28, 2022

Hello,

You might want to settle in with a cup of tea for this one.

This is primarily a newsletter about the Master of Wine journey, so it brings me joy to relive in detail the ups and downs of a week spent with the Institute, the Austrian Weinakademie, some old and new MW’s, stringent Covid-19 protocols, glorious buffet dinners and 47 other students.

But, before that, an update on last week's EU plug adapter debacle and a thank you to Rod Smith MW for doing a super job of lending me this mystical, yet valuable resource. It took me 20 minutes to break it*.

Last week’s note was written just after I’d arrived, settled into my hotel room, and hadn’t really begun to face up to what was coming.

I properly enjoyed not having to think about my day for a week, beyond what was on the schedule. Including not having to choose what was for dinner**.

Days 2, 3 & 4

These three days broadly followed the same format.

08:30 - 12 Wine Blind Tasting
10:45 - Tea Break
11:00 - Group Feedback on the Blind Tasting
13:00 - Pork & Sauce, hide in my hotel room***
14:00 - Masterclass
16:00 - Lecture
18:00 - Wine Tasting and Dinner

Day 2 (D2) blind tasting was the Practical Exam, Paper 1 (P1) flight of 12 unknown white wines. I didn't do too badly here.

D3 was the Stage One Assessment (S1A) Mock Paper, I can’t mention anything about the wines. D4 was the P2 fight of 12 unknown red wines.

We were the biggest most diverse group of MW’s on the Stage 1 study programme in memory, and we had to be split into three groups to make the blind tastings and feedback workable.

It meant that we had a bit more dialogue and conviviality to the sessions, led by a few different MW’s each day, giving us varying perspectives, tips and thoughts.

Feedback, Sleep, Repeat

The biggest thing that I learned on D1, is that you can call all the wines correctly, and still fail the paper. If you can’t communicate, argue or justify your decision, and the reasons well enough, then examiner can’t tell if it’s a ludicrously lucky guess or you saw the answers on Twitter****.

Even if you know that you know the wine, the answer “It just is” simply doesn’t stack up. Imagine a child asking their parents why the sky is blue, and then wondering why the parent’s similar response doesn't wash.

Feedback sessions on the blind tastings where where the old & new MW’s leading each session were the most valuable to me. We spent a couple of hours discussing how we’d done, sharing good and bad answers, incorrect guesses and a few frighteningly accurate assertions

Learning How To Blind Taste

A trait that I get from my mum is thoroughly over-answering any question, assuming I know the answer. It helps to pass the time when you’re hosting a wine tasting, it doesn’t if you’re waffling on for ages about Wine 1 (W1), and then you have to be considerably more succinct about W9,10,11,12.

Too often we regurgitate everything we know to be true about a wine. Gleefully rambling on to our customers about the soft tannin, the crunchy acidity, the subtle winemaking, the French oak, the cool climate, and the outstanding quality. Attempting to bamboozle them into buying our wines.

Being succinct and to the point is something that nearly everybody in the wine trade could probably learn to do better.

Any decent sales person will tell you that what’s actually far more useful, is to quickly sum up the essence of a wine using the most compelling components. The wine is much more likely to end up in someone's glass if they can understand it quickly and simply.

Here’s my penny-drop moment: Reverse engineer all the above.

Pour some wine into a glass and taste the most compelling structural components. Then, use all your knowledge to understand how and why they all got there. That is what will lead you right back to where the wine started.

Clarity didn’t really click until D6, going back through my Mock Paper feedback, re-writing the morning notes on the P3 blind paper*****.

Guest Lectures & Seminars

D2 we tasted some Krug. D3 we learnt about the parents and DNA history of nearly every grape variety on the planet. D4 we learnt just how bad the impact of climate change is across the globe, and how it’s affecting the wine industry.

They were all equally fascinating, I diligently took as many notes as I could. All three ‘Guest Speakers’ are hard to get hold of, absolute leaders in their specific field and had prepared lectures and presentations aimed at MW students.

(See the Further Reading section at the end)

Austrian Wine Tasting(s)

We tasted a lot of Austrian wine. I think I’ve got a pretty fair handle on the wines of Austria now.

There was the D1 evening in the village of Rust, tasting their unique sweet wines, and a walk around tasting of other local vineyards on the evening of D3.

D5 involved an early trip out to some vineyards to have a bash at some pruning that involved a 10am wine tasting, then back to another winery for a 4 hour masterclass.

Followed by an amazing restaurant by the beautiful lake with another walk around tasting from the rest of the regions of Austria that we hadn't already tasted this week.

Home

I might do a more in-depth look at some of the Austrian wines I liked the most, perhaps one from each region if you're interested******?

I think I’ll stop now, I'm home.

Buy me a glass of wine and I’ll tell you the nitty gritty.

dk

* It does still work, half of the plug fell off, but technically serviceable. I used it for the rest of the week, like a wobbly tooth that refused to fall out. Sorry, Rod.

** Some variation on Pork & Sauce, or Fish & Veg. Salad and pickles optional, less Schnitzel than the stereotype would suggest.

*** Not being hugely comfortable with extended social interactions, and trying to make 48 new friends in a day was a struggle. I made sure to make some time each day to hide away by myself. But by day 5 I felt way more comfortable with it all.

**** All of the wines we tasted are thoroughly embargoed, because the ‘blind’ part of ‘blind’ tasting requires quite a degree of integrity. Any suggestions or hints towards the wines, the flights and questions would be giving the game away. It would also makes it harder to learn if you’ve managed to garner the odd nugget of info from me and the students gleefully posting about the wines we’ve just been tested on.

***** Honestly, I nearly missed the Champagne Reception for the final evenings Bring Your Own Bottle dinner because I was rewriting all my notes from earlier in the day to pin down the process as neatly as possible.

****** However, the wines of the well known Weingut Bründlmayer will not be included, because all the other students were busy buzzing at the table like bees around a magnum of Riesling, and I didn't get to try them.