It’s been a significant week for me, having finally received my final WSET Diploma results after a long, 3 month waiting period. Even though I studied hard and applied myself well during the exam, there’s always a sense of trepidation when opening exam results: what if I’ve failed? Was I that far off the mark? Do I really have to study for this exam again? Fortunately I was worrying about nothing as both results came as “Passed with Merit”, which is a very solid result indeed. Together with my results from the other 5 units, that’s enough to have passed the entire of the WSET Diploma with merit. Needless to say, as soon as I have a day without work/obligations of some sort, there shall be celebrations!
The release date of this post is also significant, in its own way. It marks 3 years exactly since I started my wine education and launched myself down a very different career path. A few weeks before that, I was working as a manager in a call-center in Barcelona which, whilst not particularly glamorous, was stable and well paid (for Barcelona at least). I’d been to a couple of wine tastings, even going as far to co-organise one or two myself but I couldn’t have told you the basics of anything wine related. Not how it was made, why it tasted the way it does, or even anything outside of 1-2 well known appellations in Spain. What on earth happened? Well, like so many people in this industry, I was bitten by the ‘wine bug’.
To anyone in my family, this didn’t come as a huge surprise. As a child I was obsessive and single-minded about my interests; the difference being that these interests typically lasted 1-3 months before being replaced with something else. Dinosaurs, medieval history, money (yes, really, as a 3 year old, I would steal coins and squirrel them away in all sorts of places. I used to drop them through the floorboards of our house, with the intention of making the house explode, an idea I got from the animated cartoon from the 1940’s, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’). That I suddenly had a new interest and wanted to pursue it with every fibre in my being was quite predictable by the time I was 26. It probably would have been more convenient to have fallen in love with the law, investment banking, off-shore drilling or anything financially lucrative, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.
After almost 3 years of employment at Sellbytel, there was to be a project reorganisation. Our client, HP, was essentially moving resources around their various projects here and I had the opportunity for a slightly unwarranted promotion. Instead, I handed in my notice, booked the intensive, week-long option for the WSET Advanced Course in London, plane tickets and a weeks worth of bed space in a local hostel (not ideal, but London hotels/Air BnBs are criminally priced). Sellbytel were surprised but very gracious, and I left their employment on Friday 10th April, 2015. The next day I was on a plane to London and in class by Monday. Aside from my initial decision to leave the UK in the first place and live elsewhere, this is probably the most important decision I’ve ever made. Sometimes you just have to jump off and hope for the best.
That week in London and the influx of information in such a short space of time was thrilling. It was as though someone had triggered something inside my brain. I woke up early to study before classes, was always the first to return from lunch and spent my nights in a bar reading and re-reading the material. I passed with merit and came back to Barcelona knowing with certainty that I wanted to work with wine. The problem? Jobs of any sort are thin on the ground in Spain at the moment, let alone interesting jobs in the world of wine. As a result, I declared myself self-employed and started to organise private tastings, doing some writing work for companies, working as a tour guide and generally picking up odds and ends wherever I could. I worked a harvest with Raventos d’Alella for some practical experience, although as an ‘intern’ that came to barely €300 a month. The WSET Diploma in particular took up a huge amount of time, energy and money, flying to London for 4 weeks of total lessons split into one-week blocks, and then returning on 4 separate occasions to sit exams. Add to that becoming a father and, well, it’s easy to see how time has flown!
This is more or less how I’ve lived for the past few years, using practically all my disposable income to spend on wine, wine trips, wine books, trips to London to study with the WSET and of course, the substantial course costs themselves. It’s raised a few eyebrows amongst people I know, but I didn’t see an alternative and what an interesting few years its been! I’ve met more interesting people than I can possibly name here, learnt a huge amount about every facet of the wine industry, pushed myself professionally in areas I’d never considered before and tasted thousands of wines. This blog started a little later in the journey but I now have over 100 posts and I’ve organised hundreds of wine-tastings, both for people living in Barcelona and also for visitors. Maestrazgo Wine Club is a particular source of pride, as I’ve still managed to keep it going in the face of some obvious economic shortcomings and, with all false modesty aside, they’re really very interesting tastings.
So, I suppose the big question is very simply, what next? The answer is much of the same, for now. I’m currently searching for an appropriate job in the wine industry and have had a few promising leads so far, but I’ll continue to organise tastings where-ever possible. I’ll still spend all my time and money learning about wine and I’ll still bore anyone to tears who’s foolish enough to engage me in conversation about it. The big goal from an education point of view is, and always has been, to complete the gruelling Master of Wine course. There’ll be another, more detailed post, about this in the future as the major obstacle for me there is financial and I think it’s worth documenting it from the very beginning.
The immediate future sees me heading back to London in a few days to judge with the IWC, which is very much the sort of thing I’d like to do a lot more of. However, I’d like to sign off by saying thank you to anyone who’s ever attended a tasting, a tour, shared a bottle of wine with me, read my blog or interacted with me about wine on social media. It’s all been a part of my continued education in the world of wine and I’ve loved meeting other wine lovers more than any other part of the experience. It’s been an intense, crazy few years but it’s only just beginning. Exciting times are ahead so cheers, salud and thanks again for everything!