This is a guide as to why and how to study the WSET Diploma in London

I often get asked questions by people looking to start the WSET Diploma, and one that occurs frequently is whether to study online or whether to make the trip to London to study there instead. These questions usually come from people who were in a similar situation to myself; living somewhere in Europe, often in locations that couldn’t offer high levels of wine education, yet perturbed by the potential costs of studying in London. I would say that it comes down to this:

If having the WSET Diploma certification is the most important reason for doing the course, you can do it online. The exams are difficult but not rocket science and plenty of people pass every single year without ever attending a structured classroom course. If money is really very tight or you simply don’t enjoy learning in a classroom environment, this one is for you.

However, taking this option means no direct teaching from experienced, highly qualified members of the wine industry. Whilst there are two tasting tutorials included in the online course, in the classroom you’ll be tasting 20-30 wines a day, every day, with lots of palates to calibrate with. You’ll practice blind tasting 4-6 times before your final exam, in exam conditions. You’ll get to meet wine professionals, enthusiasts and some lovely people from every corner of the world. In my course were professionals from across Europe, Singapore, New Zealand, Turkey… it was quite the mix! So, what’s the difference in cost?

WSET Online Diploma Course – £1235 per semester

WSET Diploma Block Release Course – £1840 per semester

A £605 difference, between the two choices. For me, it’s not even a discussion when you look at it like this – 9 days of 8 hour classes, over 170 wines and spirits tasted, all under the tutelage of a variety of teachers, from Masters of Wine to Master Distillers, marketing experts and even, in my case, a flying wine-maker who popped in to teach us about viticulture. So, why does anyone do it online? Because London is horribly, horribly expensive and spending 9 days in London will distort these figures completely. Not counting taking the time off work, the flight costs, accomodation, travel within London, food and other expenses, it’s also a lot of time to take off from your personal life. Thus, it becomes a much closer call.

I did my level 3 and the entirety of the WSET Diploma in London, flying backwards and forwards from Barcelona each time. I started the process when I was 26 years old, having just left a stable job and I was lucky if I was making €1000 a month. Fortunately I hadn’t yet started a family, so it was more the financial barrier that made life tricky. £1840 upfront is no joke and then I had everything else to figure out. Yet, I went for it anyway and by doing so, I started to learn how to be thrifty in London.

Below I’m going to list how I kept costs low, and how you can do the same. This won’t be for everyone but I hope there’s something to be gained from it for someone. My priorities were entirely wine focused at the time and so, I would have moved heaven and earth to make sure I was in the classroom, ready to learn. I know there are other students in a similar situation, and I hope this helps you trim the costs so you can fit this valuable course into your budget:

How to travel on a budget whilst doing your WSET Diploma in London

Flights

This might seem like the most obvious choice – as cheap and cheerful as possible – but bear with me. I started in this way but quickly changed. When you travel to do your WSET Diploma in London, you must, quite ridiculously, bring your own glasses with you. That’s 12 glasses to take from one country to another, on top of your books, clothes, toiletries etc. It suddenly becomes an awful lot to fit into hand-luggage and it turns out, budget airlines + hold luggage comes to about the same price as a better airline who include hold luggage in the price of your ticket. Better yet, there’s usually more hand-luggage allowance (2 bags instead of 1) meaning that you don’t even need to risk your delicate glasses to the not-so-gentle caress of the baggage handler.

I changed to flying with British Airways, and signed up for their frequent flyer program. It was one of the best decisions I made in my time tweaking my travel plans. If you book in advance, your flights are often cheaper than the budget airline equivalent, you’ll fly in more comfort and who knows, perhaps one day I’ll have enough Avios points for a sandwich.

Accomodation

Here’s the kicker, the single cost that stops people from flying to London to study. Have you seen hotel prices in London? Even Air BnB is outrageously expensive. I really struggled to figure out a way around this, then decided to regress to my younger days. Hostels. Whilst sharing a room with 9 different strangers every night may not sound appealing, I had a great time and I don’t know if I could have studied without this option. After a lot of searching around, I settled on a St.Christophers Inn hostel – The Village – which was a 10 minute walk around the corner from the school, right next to London bridge and with a Sainsburys supermarket directly across the road. Perfect. St Christophers Inn The Village.

A bed at the hostel starts at around £15 in the larger dorms and gets more expensive as your room becomes smaller. It all depends on your budget. At the start I was in a 16 bedroom dorm, yet by the end of my course, I was living in the luxury of only having 7 different room-mates a night. Needless to say, 5* accomodation this is not, but it was clean, well organised and I got a good nights sleep most of the time. The beds are organised into bunk-beds (I highly recommend asking for one on the bottom) with two metal cages underneath them, one for you and one for your overhead companion. Bring a small lock for this and that’s your luggage taken care of. The showers are hot, the rooms are spartan yet clean, and despite spending something like 24 nights in this same hostel, I never had cause to complain.

A buffet is spread out every morning from 7am and is usually included in the cost of your room. Take advantage of this. If you’re the first person down there, there’s plenty of cereal, toast, breads, cheeses, ham and a toasty machine. Skip the machine unless you want to spend 10 minutes waiting for it to cook whilst an impatient queue forms behind you. I had a hearty breakfast of cereal and fruit, plenty of coffee and then sneakily made sandwiches from the other ingredients to take to class with me. This may sound incredibly cheap, but the WSET school is based in Bermondsey; say farewell to your budget if you plan on eating out every day for lunch. That’s accomodation, lunch and breakfast taken care of for around £15-20. Not bad!

At night, the Sainsburys supermarket across the road starts to make a lot of sense. There’s an Irish Bar below the hostel, but at £5 a pint and £10 for a burger, this wasn’t an option for me. British supermarkets have a variety of reasonable priced food to go, which can be quite uninspiring but it’s usually fresh and reasonably healthy. I’ll take a cold water, a big pot of pasta with pesto and something sweet for £5 instead. Any spare budget was saved up for a night out somewhere more worthwhile.

Travel

The beauty of staying at the St. Christopher hostel is that you don’t have to use any sort of paid transportation to get around, it really is just around the corner from the school. However, you’re in one of the grandest, most exciting cities in the world so getting out and about is part of the fun. Besides, you’ve already saved quite a bit of money so far, so venturing out for a glass of wine or two is only fair. The question is, how to go about it.

The London Underground is a vast, connected space that is a million miles away from the peaceful, spacious tranquility of the Barcelona Metro system. If you need to catch a train in the morning, don’t be surprised to have to wait for 3-4 to pass you by, faces pressed against the glass as commuters play a game of chicken with the oxygen supply in each carriage. In the evening, life is a little less crazy although not less expensive. Single tickets run £4.50 for a single zone, not including the return journey. The first time I was there, I didn’t realise that I could get an Oyster Card, as I thought they were only for residents. They aren’t. Get an Oyster Card.

An Oyster Card is a sort of travel-card, that you top up and use on Buses, Trains and the Underground system. It costs around £5 to get initially, which you can do through an automatic ticket machine in most train stations, which you then top up through the same machines. There’s a limit on how much can be charged to your card, so if you’re dashing around the city, after about 3-4 journeys, no more money is taken. It’s quite a bit cheaper than a daily pass and a lot cheaper than paying for each trip separately! It’s an electronic card so you swipe it as you pass through the barriers and away you go.

The rest is up to you! There’s so much to see and do in London, and like me, you’ll probably want to unwind after a long day in the classroom. We had several gatherings around the city, where myself and my classmates would visit different wine bars, shops and soak it all up. Whilst I haven’t had a real holiday in almost 3 years thanks to pouring all my money into these courses, it really was a lot of fun and I don’t think it would have been close to the same experience without being in London. I hope this short explanation of how I achieved it on a budget is useful to you and do feel free to get in touch if anything is unclear. Salud!

For more about the WSET Diploma in London as a course, read: Thoughts on the WSET Diploma

For more about the WSET Diploma in London Unit 3 exam, read: WSET Diploma Unit 3 Exam