Happy New Year and greetings from my "snowbird" vacation to southern FL!
I was recently contacted by Kathleen Lisson, a fellow Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) and Wine Century Club member. Kathleen has started a blog post about tips and approaches for studying for the challenging CSW exam, and asked me to participate by adding my studying tips.
I've written about the CSW and other wine certifications before, but had not really detailed my CSW experience. I nearly botched the approach to the CSW exam completely, so I thought I'd write a post in response to Kathleen's request, so that any readers out there who are contemplating sitting the CSW exam have an idea of what not to do to pass it...
First, a bit of background: I put off the CSW exam for nearly a year. I had intended to sit the exam in Philadelphia in April, and life "got in the way" as they say. Because the Society of Wine Educators (who oversee the exam and certification) administer the exams throughout the U.S., I needed to wait until they sat another CSW exam close to home. That meant waiting until October to take the exam in D.C.
I never ordered the CSW study materials from the SWE. October was fast approaching, and I'd not studied consistently since April. I was definately setting the stage for being totally screwed on this exam.
At the 11th hour, I got a bit smarter about my approach: as a paid member in good standing of the SWE, I had access to their on-line wine academy, which has excellent information and practice exams for the CSW. I crammed, hitting the on-line wine academy hard, taking every pre- and post-test and the CSW practice exam. I took notes along the way and highlighted the areas that gave me trouble during the practice tests, and revisited those to make sure I was more comfortable with that material prior to the exam.
I had one other decent idea before the big exam day arrived: the weather forecast for D.C. was excellent, so I treated my wife to a stay in D.C. (using hotel points). We had dinner at the same restaurant where the CSW (and the more difficult Certified Wine Educator exam) was being held the next day, so I could get familiar with the exam area. So we were able to take a potentially stressful situation and have some fun with it, which dialed down the stress considerably for me.
Come exam day, I felt great, well-fed, and well-rested (being able to sleep just a block or two away at a nice hotel). Unfortunately, the exam started late due to a fire at the SWE building location, but thanks to my low stress level that didn't phase me too much. When I received my exam results a few weeks later, I was flabbergasted - I did not just pass, but did really well.
I suppose the moral of this story is, if you're going to sit the CSW:
Cheers!
Showing posts with label wine exams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wine exams. Show all posts
CSW Exam Don'ts
Wheel of Misfortune OR "Screw it & pass the Bubbly!"
I've posted previously about my take on the "main" (aka internationally-recognized) streams of wine certification. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to take one of the certification exams, you should check out the World Wine Challenge game that I stumbled upon recently.
It's a simple flash game - a) spin the wheel, b) answer the question, and c) unless you've done some hard-core wine studying, prepare to become the wheel's b*tch. The questions are reasonably tough - more difficult than most of the questions in the WSET Intermediate certification exam, and almost consistently as tricky as those in the Certified Specialist of Wine (CSW) exam.
How did I do? Not as well as I should have considering how recently I passed the WSET Advanced and CSW exams. So... I said screw it and decided to drink some wine instead (back to the old-fashioned wine study method!).
For those times that you say "Screw it! Let's have a drink..." this holiday season, I advise you not to forget the Bubbly (aka sparkling wine). Here in the Northeast, when the weather gets cooler we start to gravitate towards the heavy, alcoholic, and very red wine styles to give our insides that warm-and-fuzzy feeling. So we tend to forget how awesome it is having a bottle of bubbly around for the holidays.
My buddy Jason has recently penned a list of his holiday fizz favorites for Main Line magazine. A snippet from his picks are below (click to enlarge). If you're in the mood to splurge, I highly suggest "La Grande Dame" (if you're also in the Philly area, I also highly suggest that you e-mail me when you open it!).
Cheers!
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