A Week at the Odney Country Club - Part 1
Odney is a nice place, close enough to Maidenhead to be considered lovely, and still being just far enough away from Slough.
Hello.
I’ve decided this is a 2-part newsletter, because I wrote far too much, so instead of cutting it down, I’m going to spread it over to next week. Also, because all the seminars are now done I can talk about the wines a bit more.
Why was I at the Odney Country Club? Let me tell you. It was, another round of the MW seminar week. Yep, I’m still at it, let me have another crack at four days of blind tastings followed by feedback and then more tastings and seminars in the afternoon.
Odney, if you didn’t see my video on Instagram, is actually in Cookham, yes, yes, Something about Stanley Spencer, and for one week every year the country club gets taken over by MWs and MW students.
I’m just going to run you through each day, with the requisite complexity that makes people who aren’t in the programme roll their woes at how hard it is, while giving people who might be thinking about it, just the faintest glimmer that it might truely be for them too.
Sunday Evening Arrival
There is literally nothing on site, or within a walk away to do in Cookham or at the Odney club, after 6pm on a Sunday. I strongly suggest that you don’t arrive around 8pm.
That is all I have to say about that.
Monday Morning
Found my bearings at the lovely big country club. Went for a muddy, slightly unanticipatedly long walk, had to wash my shoes with the shower when I got back to my hotel room.
Registration wasn’t until about 1pm, so I had time to find a shop (a drive away) for some seminar supplies for the week, and for a daylight stroll around Cookham. No, not Stanley Spencer.
Registration and our first session was a quick hello, followed by being thrown into our first timed blind tasting of the week. A ‘Calibration’ tasting, which, would on assumption, be there to ‘calibrate’ us all, with some fairly straightforward wines.
I diligently got all the calibration wines wrong, and went into our immediate one-to-one with Emma Symmington. Emma is brilliant and is also one of the Research Paper advisors, who did her MW research paper (RP) on Independent Wine Merchants.
I’m thinking of doing something similar for my RP, so a mostly ignored the disappointing first blind tasting, and chatted to Emma about the research paper. Much more useful.
Tuesday, Blind Mock Exam
Up for breakfast, prep my table and glasses and then ready for 12 wines blind in 2hrs 15 mins.
A side note here, but I’ve mentioned before about getting everything at your blind tasting table ‘just right’ every time, same spittoon, pens, timer etc etc. I went into this without my spittoon, had to use their stupid paper cups that are far too easy to knock over. I also lost a battery to my timer, so had to use the stopwatch on my phone. Balls.
The Mock paper is usually a bit of a mixed bag paper, and then you submit your paper for marking by an MW, with more 1-1 feedback.
I did OK on the paper. By that I mean;
Flight 1 - 4 x Whites Same grape. Got the grape.✅
Flight 2 - 4 x Red Blends. Got that they were all blends ❌
Flight 3 - 4 x Sweet Wines. Not a disaster. ⁉️
I had my feedback on this paper, and turns out I only nailed 1 or 2 (yes, one) of the wines precisely correct. BUT - I was still within a whisker of getting a pass. Weird.
I had my feedback with Ulf Sjodin MW, one of the Examiners, and he said that everything was pretty much completely on-point, except figuring out what the wines were. I got nearly all the marks available for Quality, Style, Winemaking, Commercial and such.
Weirdly, he was quite positive, saying “if you’d have got 3 more wines correctly identified, you’d have passed. To be able to pass with just 4 or 5 wines correct means you’re doing a lot of things very well.”
This is because I wasn’t wildly off when I say I didn't get them correct.
Putting Alsace and Austria the wrong way round for example.
The four reds is a good example. What are the options;
Four different Countries
Four different blends.
Probably going to be; Bordeaux (Blend), a GSM/Chateauneuf, a ‘supertuscan’ or modern blend from Tuscany, a red wine from the Douro with native varieties.
There’s obviously loads of blends around the world, but these are the ‘classics’, along with maybe Rioja.
That assumption was 75% correct, there was something from South Africa in there that confused me a little. I got that the Bordeaux was the Bordeaux, the Tuscan blend I was in Hawkes Bay, the Douro, I was in Tuscany.
The South African, was the biggest cockup. I was miles off as I said a Chateauneuf du Pape, when the bloody question said ‘four different countries’, I already had the Bordeaux safely in France.
Still, on these 4, even with poor Identification I still got 60% of the total available marks for the other 3 wines. Ulf seemed pretty happy I can pass the wines.
Honestly, it’s much easier to pass if you can figure out what the wines are.
If you have a solid foundation in answering the question, that is much better than identifying precisely all 12 wines and still not passing due to poorly argued answers.
Wednesday, Blind Paper 1
Paper 1 is the white wine paper, and one that I quite like, even though I didn’t do particularly well in the exam last year.
I do a lot of analysing the questions before tasting and such. It’s part of the process.
Someone at the seminar mentioned a reference to this:
“When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.”
This maxim coined by Dr Theodore Woodward in the 1940s is a useful reminder that we should diagnose the common causes rather than search, at exorbitant length (and cost), for low probability causes.
Paper 1 had two wines in Q1 and then four in Question 2. Both questions could feasibly and most likely lead you to thinking they were going to be Chardonnay. But they wouldn’t put two separate flights of Chardonnay into the first two questions. Would they?
Wine 1 smelled like Chardonnay ✅. Wine 3 & 4 also smelled like Chardonnay.
Obviously I deduced that wines 1 & 2 couldn’t possibly be Chardonnay as well. ❌
Ended up with the same rough approach as yesterday, pretty tidy on quality, style, winemaking and all that, but less accurate getting them in the right place.
Then, right get this. Wines 7/8/9 were ‘Same Grape’, BUT, nobody is going to anticipate those being the same ‘same grape’ grape from yesterday’s mock are they? ❌
Yep, four Riesling on the mock, and three more on the Paper 1 exam. Good for me I got Riesling both times ✅. Riesling is a fairly easy spot for me.
Then to finish with 10/11/12. Before you check the answer below think about your options here:
“Wines 10 - 12 are made from the same principle grape variety, from three different countries. Two countries from Europe and one from the New World.”
What are your options? Answer in the Footnotes >1
More Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc? More Riesling? Maaaaaaaaaybe Chenin, Pinot Gris…? I dunno.
Not a chance once you know. Barely any students I chatted to after the mock figured it out either. A devil of a question and good that they put them in the mock exams to get you thinking.
Seminar Sessions
The Tuesday afternoon was a tasing of alternative formats and their technical considerations, sustainability and such. It was with Ray O’Connor MW and Barry Dick MW, both know their stuff in this area.
Luckily, so do I. I’m super comfy with cans, and small formats, OTR rates, bag-in-box, thanks a fair bit to one of the many Alex Taylors of the UK wine business, as well as launching a wine in a can this year.
The Wednesday seminar was a joy, a run through the wines of Ducru-Beaucaillou in St Julien. I visited Ducru for the 2019 en-primeur, and the place is bonkers, geared up for the Asian markets. The wines are good though. We were treated to a wine from each of the last four decades (2021, 2017, 2006, 1995), as well as their 2nd wines and other estates in their ownership. The La Croix was my favourite, has been since I sold the 2010 in the shop a few years ago.
Until Next Time.
The evenings of Tuesday & Wednesday we’re supported by MW supporters, like Wines of Chile, or Wines of Australia, or thoroughly lovely MW’s who want to show off some cool wines, and shoehorn in some extra-curricular activities over dinner.
The Italian evening was a highlight on Tuesday for sure.
Alright, that’s enough for one newsletter. I’l finish up with Thursday & Fridays Red wines and ‘anything goes’ paper and some final thoughts next week I think.
Dan
ALBARIÑO !! WHAT>@>!>