Level 3 Update & Some Exciting News…
Welcome back!
As you likely saw from my last update, I unfortunately got COVID a few weeks ago. Getting COVID set me back in my studies a lot more than I thought it would, given being stuck on the couch for a bit, and also losing my sense of taste and smell for a few weeks. Because of this, I couldn’t do any of my required tastings. Right now, the class is on week 8, and am I slowly but surely catching up as best I can.
Thankfully, doing wine school online allows students to go at whatever pace works for them. To that end, it’s not a problem that I’m a few weeks behind, but for my Type-A personality, I’m constantly nagging myself to catch up sooner than later.
Because of this delay, it really doesn’t make sense for me to schedule my exam for December, as I originally planned. I have a vacation coming up over Thanksgiving week, which will also hinder my studies, so I made the decision to push it out a bit. My second plan was to look at exam dates in January, but unfortunately, those are no longer available. Due to this, I have now booked my exam for February 26th in Napa. I’m not thrilled about how far out the exam is, but I feel much better about having ample time to study everything I need to, which I don’t think could’ve happened if I took the exam in December.
As for how Level 3 is going…I won’t lie, it’s a lot. On top of my full time job, I am averaging about 18-30 hours a week studying for this exam, mostly because I’m playing catch-up. Unlike levels 1 and 2, it is not sufficient to just read the book, study some notecards, and call it a day. Level 3 takes the wine world to a whole new level, requiring students to connect concepts from multiple different chapters, and memorize a plethora of wine regions, wine making techniques, etc.
Another big part about level 3 is memorizing maps of wine regions, topography, climate, continentality, and more. This has led me to do a lot more drawing for this level, which always makes me laugh because I have absolutely no artistic skill. The color coded maps that I’ve created thus far are pretty bad, but they do the job and help me photographically memorize not only where the wine regions are in contrast to each other, but why the wine grown there is the way it is. If there’s a mountain or ocean close by, that has a huge influence on the wine, so all in all, the terribly drawn maps have been very helpful.
So, is it difficult? Yes. Am I still loving it? 100%.
On to some more exciting news…Although I cannot divulge too many details about it yet, I do have some VERY exciting news coming soon for From Vine to Vin. On top of my studies and 9-5 job, I have been working on something else behind the scenes that I cannot wait to announce. I’m hoping to let you all in on this before the end of the year, so stay tuned to find out more details!
As always, thanks for following along!
Santé
