WSET Diploma: 1st week

Hi everybody,

You might be wondering what is the Wine and Spirits Education Trust, well it simply is one of the biggest wine education providers in the world. Its awards and diploma are recognized world wide as one of the highest standards in the industry.

That is why I decided to go on with this path after getting my WSET Level 2; of course I want to learn more about wine and everything that revolves around it to feed my passion, but getting a Diploma that is valued world wide while doing it isn't bad either right?

When I officially decided to enroll in the Level 4 Diploma, in February 2022, I had a few choices: Germany, Austria, France, UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Greece. My first choice was London, the country where the trust was founded and the city where it holds its flagship school (fancy!). But of course being so far away from home I couldn't attend weekly or weekend lessons so my only option was the block release. Basically the lessons are all concentrated in a week or so at a time and spread out through several months, at the end of each block you can sit your exam, for which you will have prepared for at home.

In London the block release started in January 2023, I couldn't be bothered waiting that long, I wanted to get through this as quickly as possible, I was too excited! So I went ahead and looked at France, there are three APPs there, Paris, Macon and Bordeaux, one sounding more glamorous than the other. Sadly the prices where crazy so I had to desist.

Following the advice of the Italian Wine Academy (where I did my Level 3) I went ahead and took a look at the Austrian Wine Academy in Rust, Austria. Very small town on the shores of the Neusiedlersee; a place very very famous for their botrytised sweet wines; it is fairly close to home and they did a block release of the course.

So the choice was made, I enrolled in their WSET Level 4 Diploma course - Central Europe; this course focuses its events and tasting on the wines from Central Europe. I boarded a plane the 17th of May headed towards Vienna and the next day I had my first lessons; i was stoked!

The entrance of the Austrian Wine Academy

This first block was about the D1 and D2 exams of the Level 4, vineyard management, winemaking and wine marketing; this time the only exam date available was for D1 (vineyard management and winemaking) and not D2 (wine marketing) which will be in October. 

We started off strong the first day, after an introduction by Dr. Joseph "Pepi" Schuller MW, the managing director of the school and all-round wine guru, we went straight into tasting training of two whites and three reds. 

The training was in exam conditions: the tasting is blind (of course) and you have to go ahead with the SAT description of the wine, then you have to say what grape variety its made from and from what region it comes; it's not a game of guessing, you have to make your argument for your choice (and even if the guess is wrong but the argument is valid you would still score some points in the exam). Boy is it hard to do!

The wines were pretty simple to guess (or so I was told by my classmates, who apparently are much better at blind tasting than I am!), we had a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, a California Chardonnay, a Crozes Hermitage, an Australian Shiraz and a South African Shiraz; of course I only guessed the Sauvignon Blanc right...

After lunch we went ahead with a D1 mock exam to assess how well we prepared at home and I am happy to say that I felt quite confident, even though some of my class mates were not! 

After the lessons ended we had a special wine event set up by the school just for us in the garden of the Academy; they brought in 22 producers from all of Austria in a "Best of Austria Tasting", it was a blast.

Best in Austria Tasting

There were big famous producers such as Domäne Wachau, Esterházy, Stadt Krems, Markus Altenburger and many others. For me it was an occasion to try so many new wines, of course the Grüner Veltliner was omnipresent being the flagship white variety in Austria; but there were also Neuburger, Roter Veltliner, Rotgipfler and many others which I never heard of and that were, honestly, amazing.

One of the things that most impressed me was the Gemischter Satz, this wine can be done only from vineyards in the city of Vienna which are planted with many different white varieties (which is something that was common in the past) and the grapes are all harvested at the same time (so with varying degrees of ripeness) and vinified all together. This type of wine had a revival in the last few years and high quality examples are common now and the best part is that they are fairly cheap! 

After the tasting we had a get together at a typical Heuriger, which is a sort of pub owned by a winery which sells its own wine and can only serve cold food, like cold cuts and cheese.

The charcuterie was great and the wines were also fantastic, we had Chardonnay, Grüner Veltliner, Furmint, Blaufränkisch, Saint Laurent and Cabernet Franc; one better than the other (my favourite was the Furmint). I must confess that we had a bit too much to drink (understandable) so the lessons the day after were a bit hard.

On the second day, after doing a morning lesson on wine business in Central Europe, we headed to Schloss Esterházy in Eisenstadt for the presentation of "the great sites of the Burgenland wine region" as guests. The Esterházy castle belongs to the homonymus family, an ancient noble family of Austria-Hungary, who are also winemakers. The palace was incredible, luxurious and huge; getting to taste wine from big name producers in the halls and rooms of this castle was great, and I felt quite fancy!

Esterázy Castle

Here as well there were some big names of Austrian Wine, my favourite was Umathum; a certified organic winery that works under biodynamic principles. Their focus is on red wine production (about 85% of their vineyards are black grape varieties) but they brought some whites with them as well.

We started off with the Königlicher Wein 2019 made from a rare variety in Austria: Lindenblättriger which is the Hungarian grape variety Hárslevelű, one of the varieties used to make Tokaji sweet wines.

This wine ages one year on its lees making it full bodied and creamy while keeping its very citrusy distinctive character - a very good glass of wine. We went on to try their 2020 Pinot Gris Reserve, the 2018 Haideboden, which is a great value for money Zweigelt, Blaufränkisch and Cabernet Sauvignon blend. The best wine, in my opinion, was the 2018 Kirschgarten; this wine is made only from the best Blaufränkisch grapes of the vintage. The wine was dense, it started off with cherries, blueberries and blackberries all surrounded by sweet spice like cinnamon and vanilla with some hints of oak and toast. A full body and well balanced palate, with perfectly handled tannins and a spicy touch with a long red fruit finish. A top red!

Inside one of the rooms of Esterházy castle

That afternoon in the Orangerie of the castle there was the Karakterre Salon: Central and Eastern Europe's leading salon of organic, biodynamic and natural wine producers. The mood here was much more relaxed and easygoing, the exhibitors were mostly young people, high volume music was pumping and we got quickly overtaken by the mood.

We took off our jackets, pulled up our sleeves and dove into it. We tried a lot of different wines and I have to say that some of them were very much reductive (a fault) but a lot of them were actually great wines!

I also got to try wine from Poland, which was a first for me. These guys, Dom Bliskowice, make a great Riesling that is different from what you usually expect: the nose is dominate by apricot and olives and the palate is all about minerality and salinity.

One of the best producers I tried at Karakterre has to be Goyo Garcia Viadero, one of the founding families of the Ribera del Duero DO; they are all about making spanish wines in an old school style: no new wood or 200% new barriques, old big oak casks, spontaneous fermentations and great work in the vineyard.

Goyo Garcia Viadero's Beatum wine

The wines were awesome, with very complex aromas and flavours, exceptional quality and low prices.

We started off with their 2020 Beautum, a white wine made from Palomino (one of the grapes used in the production of Sherry) from 100 years old vines! This wine is made with skin contact, increasing its body and also extracting tannins; the bouquet is initially shy, but as soon as some oxygen gets into the glass it opens up into orange, mandarine, lemon and grapefruit then evolving into sweet peaches, nutmeg and almonds - the layering is incredibly complex. On the palate the wine is strong, full bodied with a high sharp acidity, ending on some tangy and bitter notes and a lovely salinity. 

We then went on with their reds made from Tempranillo, all made with only old oak to not overcome the beutiful fruit character of this grape; a very good one (and a bit of a play on words) was a "Joven" from old vines (Jove is a Spanish legal term meaning a wine has not been aged and released onto the market as soon as possible, usually the wines are fresh and fruity) - the fruit concentration was crazy and something I never experienced before.

My absolute favourite was the 2019 Graciano "Finca Guijarrales", this wine is made with 3 months skin maceration and one year in old french barriques (eight to ten years old); it presents itself with a dark ruby colour and a purple rim, the nose begins on blackberries, slate and pepper but as time passes the fruit becomes redder giving notes of strawberry and raspberry. On the palate it goes hard, very high acidity and tannins which are very soft and velvety, a distinct red fruit character is predominant, a very long and elegant finish - all this for 22 Euros a bottle ex-cellar, I'm still speechless.

The next days we had lessons on vinication with Geisenheim University's professor Ludwig Pasch, which went into great detail about the chemistry side of vinification (maybe too much into detail); we also had vineyard management lessons with Professor Dr Manfred Stoll, from Geisenheim University as well. With Professor Stoll we had a part of the lesson in the vineyard which was extremely helpful to understand training, pruning, flowering, vineyard pests and diseases and so much more.

Professor Stoll explaining how to recognize shoots coming from the rootstock or the grafted vine

After these days of lessons the most exciting part of the week came, the VieVinum in Vienna: the international wine festival of Austria; its sort of like Vinitaly for Italy or Prowein for Germany. The fair was held in the Hofburg (Imperial Palace) in Vienna and the school got us VIP passes!

This year there were more than 500 exhibitors between producers, importers and distributors; there were also masterclasses being hosted on a variety of wine topics.

I attended the noble rot sweet wines masterclass titled "World Champion Sweet Wines A Question of Origin" hosted by Dr Joseph Schuller MW (our school's managing director). This masterclass discussed and compared the noble rot sweet wines made in Austria in the Neusidlersee DAC and Ruster Ausbruch DAC, both wines made on the coast of the Neusidlersee lake with the Ruster Ausbruch being made on the western coast, only in the town of Rust (where I was attending the Diploma) and Neusidlersee being made on the eastern coast.

We had 10 wines from different producers starting from Spätlese going up to Trockenbeerenauslese and Ruster Ausbruch; these wines are made from a range of different grape varieties so there is a lot of different styles being made. 

First flight of sweet wines, layed down to compare the difference in colour

The wines made from Beerenauslese level and up are made with grapes affected by noble rot. The fungus Botrytis Cinerea (which is also responsabile for grey rot) attacks fully ripe grapes in humid misty mornings, its filaments poke holes in the grape's skin; then sunny and windy afternoons dry out the air in the vineyard, soling down the spread of the rot and allowing water to evaporate from the berry, this concentrates the sugars and acids in the grapes. Noble rot also imparts its own distinctive flavours to the wine like honey, candied lemon and orange zest and many more.

The day at VieVinum passed quickly as we tasted an enormous amount of wines from all different parts of Austria, allowing me to discover new styles of wines like the Steiermark Sauvignon Blancs which are extremely elegant and full bodied; or more classic wines like Rieslings.

We actually had the chance to do a vertical tasting of Rieslings with Austrian producer Salomon Undhof, the wine was a single vineyard old vine Riesling: Ried Steiner Kögl Alte Reben in the following vintages 2020, 2019, 2011, 2000 and 1979. Vertical tastings are a great way to see how a wine ages and evolves. We started with the 2020 and went "back in time", the wine started with fragrant white flowers and fresh stone fruit with just hints of flint and petroleum and the more we went onto older vintages the more the petroleum note became pronounced, the fruit became riper and riper, turning into tropical fruit. Sadly the 1979 vintage was faulted, the wine was oxidized and tasted like Marsala, but still it was a great experience.

One of the VieVinum halls with the producers from Steiermark

We ended our day at the Sekt bar in one of the halls of VieVinum, it was a counter just like in a bar and the yonly served Sekt (36 different ones). Sekt wines are German or Austrian sparkling wines made from many different grape varieties; at this point we were very tired and we didn't spit out the wines anymore and we enjoyed more than a few glasses of bubbles.

On Tuesday morning we had our D1 exam on vineyard management and winemaking, the tension was palpable and we were all very stressed. This exam was structured in three questions with different weighting for each one, the third question was worth 50% of the points available meanwhile the first and second were 20% and 30% of the available points respectively with 90 minutes to complete the exam. Because of WSET policy I am not allowed to tell you the questions we had in the exam but I am fairly confident that I passed - we will get our results in 10 weeks so fingers crossed!

That night, being also our last night in Rust, we all went out for dinner together in this lovely restaurant on the lake shore. We had too much to drink, of course, and went to bed quite late, ready for our morning winery visit before departing.

We visited Pfaffl winery in Weinviertel, this winery started out when the father, Herr Pfaffl, owned a restaurant and decided to make his own wine to serve to his clients. Now the winery is run by his son Roman and daughter Heidi and produces around 5 million bottles of wine every year, quite a jump!

After the winery visit we had a tasting organized with the Pfaffl wines and four other producers from Weinviertel: Dürnberg, Frank, RM Roland Minkowitsch and Taubenschuss. The protagonist of the tasting was of course the Grüner Veltliner, flagship variety of Weinviertel, but there were also many others between white and black varieties. I wish I could tell you more but the wine I had the night before really took its toll on me so I was not really in shape to make a proper tasting. Nonetheless I can tell that Gruner Veltliner is not just a fruity, white pepper fresh wine with little character, it can be made in many different ways and the quality is extremely high while the prices are not, making it a great bang for your buck.

Group picture outside the Pfaffl winery

After this we had a quick lunch and headed to the airport where we said our goodbyes and parted ways. Honestly it was really hard to leave this place, Rust and the people I met there really left something in me, I had the time of my life, learning about something I love, getting to try so many new wines and meeting great people from all over the world.

I can't wait to be back the 29th of August to go on with this magnificent journey that we started together.

In the meantime I will be studying hard for my D3 Exam (Wines of the World) and tasting many many wines to get better at recognizing different styles.

Thank you.

Dino