May, 2021
I have liked wine for a long time, built a decent wine cellar and have been to a lot of wineries over the years. Parallel to this my interest around everything in wine grew, I read a lot of books (back then the only way to go) and ultimately learned about the possibility to dig deeper and going to tastings and classes about wine. Consequently I joined Académie du Vin in Zurich with their program based on WSET’s 4 Level System and syllabus. Following that path I finished Level 1 in 2002 and Level 2 in 2006. With Level 3 Students get into higher and more ambitious levels with full blind tasting while learning and using the “WSET Systematic Approach To Tasting Wine®”. At this level almost all the students have a professional background in wine and/or the service industry. I was the only student with sole private interest in wine and was able to attend the classes and pass the exams in 2013.
Having achieved that I never in my wildest dreams thought I would go on to Diploma Level 4. Yet in 2021 during Corona time I had the urge to get myself motivated to something additional. What made my decision easier was the fact that in the meantime WSET was offering the Diploma Program also for wine only, without the spirit part, which I was less interested in. On top of that I learnt that the Austrian Wine Academy was offering the program in English with an international approach with students from all over the world and cool block sessions in Italy.
We were just coming out of the second corona measures when the seminar started. And the Austrians were still in partial lock-down but the seminar luckily was able to start.
Our class of 20 is a cool international mixture of everything, notably female dominated and aged around the thirties with a few exceptions like me.
It was an interesting and demanding time as we had class everyday usually from 8 – 18 with mostly MW’s and Wineakademikers going through the theory of viniculture and viticulture as well as covering the major wine regions which are part of the syllabus. And of course tasting training at the same time practicing systematically analyzing the wines from the regions covered. By the time is was evening we were mostly mentally tired.
Yet after a few days we got to know each other and learnt how to deal with the long days and what to do about it. That meant spending time together eating, drinking and just having fun times. Needless to say that the hotels did not always like that and quickly we became “famous” at the academy and around this tiny town.
