🗓️ Day 83 - 🎁 What's stopping you and how to fix them

+ Inland regions in Spain & NZ trivias

We start this Sunday’s post with a little pre-recorded webinar. We will go over five subscriber answers for the sweet wine question from Day 69:

*Apologies for the background dog noise... She really wanted to go for a walk 🐾

Timestamps

• 00:50 Breaking down the question

• 02:20 A closer look at the styles

• 02:52 Common mistakes and how to fix them

• 08:24 Let’s look at some subscriber answer

  • 08:52 What Fail looks like

  • 11:11 What Pass looks like

  • 14:22 What Merit looks like

  • 16:58 What Distinction could look like

• 20:33 Let’s do essay planning together

Here are the transcribed versions of subscriber answers. The model answer is towards the end of the document.

For your convenience, Day 40’s drop is here, if you’d like to refresh the various ways of articulating cause and effect.

If you find this webinar helpful, the best way to give back is to share this newsletter with your network, so that your mates can have the support and confidence to take on the Diploma 😎

💪 Warm up time

Here are some statements about New Zealand as a wine-producing country. Some of them may be wrong.

1. New Zealand’s UV levels can be 40% stronger than places of similar latitude in the Northern Hemisphere, thought to be partially due to the hole in the ozone layer and very low levels of air pollution.

2. Most of New Zealand’s wine regions have a maritime climate. Central Otago is an exception, having a semi continental climate as it is sheltered from ocean influence by mountains on all sides.

3. In the first half of the twentieth century, most New Zealand wines were made in a fortified style, referred to as ‘Port’ or ‘Sherry’, as there was little local demand for dry table wines. Growth of the modern wine industry was inhibited until the early 1980s, partly due to an influx of British immigrants with a beer and whisky drinking culture and a temperance movement demanding restrictive laws on wine sales.

4. New Zealand makes similar volumes of wine to Argentina, Chile, and South Africa, producing approximately 3.25 million hL of wine per year, based on the average of 2020–22.

The answer to this warm up question is at the end of today’s entry.

⏳ Past exam question

Question one from the May 2021 exam

Describe the grape growing, winemaking and maturation of wines made in the following areas:
a) La Mancha DO
b) Bierzo DO
c) Rueda DO

Each section carries equal weighting.

Incredible beautiful Biezo vineyards | Photo by Spain.info

💡 Examiner’s report

© Wine & Spirit Education Trust

This question focussing on three lesser well-known Spanish regions garnered a mediocre set of papers that included just two Distinctions yet a high number of Fail Unclassified grades. Many of these were down to a basic lack of knowledge of the region’s geographical locations, or more typically, pinning inaccurate grape varieties to them. Noting Mencia was synonymous with Bierzo, and Verdejo with Rueda was a prerequisite for all passing papers. As such, it is well worth remembering that Spain does not only consist of Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Priorat and Rias Baixas and candidates should not limit their studies to the more famous areas.

Better answers were able to correctly link grapes to regions and provide some information on environmental factors such as climate and soils. However, many of these were largely vague and generic, especially when it came to winemaking. Just stating that some producers in Bierzo age their wines in oak while others don’t, or that the white wines of Rueda undergo anaerobic winemaking is not enough and could be applicable to any wine region in the world. The same can be said regarding quality levels. Too often candidates labelled each region’s wines with a specific quality level; most commonly, La Mancha as “inexpensive”, “entry-level bulk wine”. While much of the wine produced here does fit into this category, premium examples are produced there as well. Given that the question asked candidates to discuss ‘maturation’ it was noticeable how few candidates included that higher- quality red wines from La Mancha are labelled under Reserva and Gran Reserva. Scripts that offered this level of detail typically achieved borderline or low passing grades at best.

The strongest answers discussed different nuances or styles within each region. For example, candidates were expected to acknowledge that there are effectively two different areas within Bierzo which, while using the same grape, produce completely different wines, often employing very different winemaking techniques. Similarly, papers that highlighted the range of wines produced in Rueda from simple wines produced in stainless steel vessels to high-class barrel fermented examples were rewarded with higher marks.

Away from content, other areas that let candidates down were handwriting and length of answer. Examiners appreciate that under pressurised exam conditions handwriting may be rushed, but if it is illegible, candidates run the risk of their paper not being marked as was fully intended. Moreover, the examiners highlighted the large number of short answers of less than two sides in length. The theory examination allows for 40 minutes per question, and examiners expect a corresponding minimum level of detail for a passing grade.

🥁 Answer to today’s warm up question

1. ✔️ New Zealand’s UV levels can be 40% stronger than places of similar latitude in the Northern Hemisphere, thought to be partially due to the hole in the ozone layer and very low levels of air pollution.

2. ✔️ Most of New Zealand’s wine regions have a maritime climate. Central Otago is an exception, having a semi continental climate as it is sheltered from ocean influence by mountains on all sides.

3. ❌ In the first half of the twentieth century, most New Zealand wines were made in a fortified style, referred to as ‘Port’ or ‘Sherry’, as there was little local demand for dry table wines. Growth of the modern wine industry was inhibited until the early 1980s 1960s, partly due to an influx of British immigrants with a beer and whisky drinking culture and a temperance movement demanding restrictive laws on wine sales.

4. ✔️ New Zealand makes similar volumes of wine to Argentina, Chile, and South Africa,producing approximately 3.25 million hL of wine per year, based on the average of 2020–22.

Plenty for today! Remember to take a break, go for a walk and see some nature to reset your brain🧠