6 Reasons Why You Should Take Up a Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Course

How many times have you found yourself confused at what to get from the wine and liquor aisle? More and more brands and bottlings are coming out of the woodwork, more choices which is great, but it also leaves us with a sea of products to navigate. The wine selections alone can get you a bit cuckoo, should you get a bottle that says Haut-Médoc, Saint-Émilion, or a Gevrey-Chambertin? Should it say AOC, DOC, or DOCG? Sometimes to be on the safe side, we just grab the most expensive one on the counter. How can you go wrong with pricey, right? Then you come home, pour a glassful of wine that smells and tastes like horse shit. Often, we just end up scratching our heads from all the lousy bottle choices.  

In DrinkManila.com, we love to share our knowledge about the beverage industry to our readers. We learn from various tastings, product reviews, and gather information from experiences, but we also take courses from industry experts to elevate our drinking practice and expertise. Last year, we decided to get a WSET Level 2 Award in Wines and Spirits certification at Enderun Colleges for the DrinkManila team to learn more about oenology, wine geography, viticulture, proper wine tasting, and the various types and processes of spirits and liqueurs. I have been in the spirits and bar industry for three years in DrinkManila, and a couple more years in beverage advertising, you’d think I would know everything there is to know about wine and spirits. But, there is still so much more to know and learn. I can’t wait to have the time to go for a grueling WSET level 3. 

For the New Year, we encourage everyone interested in wines and spirits, to make it your goal to raise your drinking knowledge. Buy books, read more about your favorite brands, and learn from tastings and masterclasses. Take your wine and spirits education to another level, and learn from industry experts. There are various courses and workshops monthly, and we will keep you guys posted on our drink-related listings. For wine and spirits education, here are six reasons why you should be taking up a Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Course:

1) Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) multi-tiered Level Awards program is approachable and perfect for industry nubes, enthusiasts, or professionals. 

Wine & Spirit Education Trust, often referred to as WSET (pronounced as double-you-es-ih-tee, not double-you-set), provides high-quality education and training in wines, spirits, and other alcoholic beverages. Many of the drink world’s most famous names completed a WSET education. 

According to Gail Sotelo, a local wine expert and our instructor for the WSET course at Enderun Colleges, what’s good about WSET programs is that it caters to specific people’s interests. If you’re a budding wine or spirits enthusiast, you will have a better understanding of the basics of wine and spirits, each variety, where it comes from, how to properly taste, how to read the labels and the fun part, how to pair food with alcohol. “WSET Level 1 Award in Wines is for beginners,” shares Gail. “It’s an introductory level for those starting a wine career or pursuing an interest in wine because you get to learn about the main types and styles of wine.” WSET Level 1 Award in Wines and Spirits certification caters to people who want to know about the basics of wine with learnings on spirits. 

If you’re already working in the food and beverage industry or have advanced knowledge in wine and spirits, the WSET Level 2 certification is a perfect refresher. The program will give you the experience of the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting Wine® (SAT), varieties of grapes and its geography, food pairing, wine storage, and other technical processes on the creation of wine and distillation of spirits that you can apply at work. “Apart from wine styles, there is an emphasis on quality, plus the factors influencing the eight principal grape varieties,” explains Gail.   

2) You will learn from the experts

Enderun WSET instructors are known industry connoisseurs who finished degrees and accreditations in international schools and educator’s programs. For WSET classes, you might get the course with Ms. Bel Castro, wine connoisseur, a teacher extraordinaire who has taught most of the bar and hospitality professionals you probably come across within your local favorite drinking spot. She oversees all the wine programs offered by Enderun Extension, and she is the assistant dean of the College of Hospitality Management in Enderun Colleges. She has a degree in Restaurant Operations from Le Cordon Bleu in Australia and a Master of Arts in Gastronomy, a double-badged program of Le Cordon Bleu and the University of Adelaide in South Australia, and a Level 3 Award in Wine & Spirits from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust in the UK. Just reciting her accolades makes me want to pour another glass of wine. 

Depending on the schedule, you might get the class with Gail Sotelo, wine expert, a colleague in the industry, a WSET Level 3 Advanced Certificate holder, a beverage, and a foodservice consultant for several restaurants in the Philippines and Hong Kong, and the proprietor of beverage blog 2shotsandapint.com. Her class will be fun but serious, and you will learn a lot. She will feed you with side morsels about her travels and insider tidbits within the local drink industry, which will get you more excited about the drink world. 

3) You will meet other wine and spirits enthusiasts 
For our batch in class, we were learning together with a mixed group of people. Some are students finishing their courses in culinary and hospitality, and others are professionals from the industry—sommeliers, distributors of wines and spirits, hoteliers, bartenders—and the rest are enthusiasts wanting to learn more about the world of wine and spirits. You’ll be seated with a diverse group of people who share the same interest and won’t sneer at you when you start talking enthusiastically about terroir, botrytis cinerea, malolactic fermentation, or what kind of still was used for your favorite bottle of spirit. 

4) You will taste various wines and spirits
You won’t be reading this article if you are not a lover of fermented or distilled beverages, so get excited to taste different bottles when you go to a WSET class. Level 1 Award in Wines will teach you how to describe wine using the WSET Level 1 Systematic Approach to Tasting Wine® (SAT) during a tutored tasting of nine wines. WSET Level 2 Award in Wines & Spirits will be extensive and with tutored tastings of 48 wines and various bottles of spirits.  

5) You will save money in the long run 

How’s your wallet after the busy holiday gatherings? Did the “sale”  labeled wine get you spending on a crate and end up regretting it after opening the first bottle? Aside from work, I wanted to learn more about wine to know what to get when shopping for one. The choices are endless; learning to read the label alone will save you time and money. Imagine walking between rows of spirits and wines and actually knowing what you are seeing as if each bottle is a map, telling you where it’s been, how it’s bottled, and why you should be going home with it.     

6) It will open your eyes 

After the program, you should be able to distinguish excellent wine bottles from faulty ones or be able to know what are its flavor notes just by its appellation (protected geographical indication). Next time you see a Chablis on the label, you’d already know what to expect from that Chardonnay. 

By the end of your class, you would be able to understand how to pair reds, whites, and bubblies with food and why some pairings never worked with certain bottles you enjoy. By the time you reach fortified wines, spirit lovers will have a better understanding of sherry casks and other wine casks finishing in rums and whiskies.   

Whatever your reason will be from the above listing, know that after finishing the program, you’ll be a changed person. You won’t just be another drinker; you’ll be a knowledgable one. It also doesn’t hurt to receive a WSET certificate and lapel pin.

Don’t miss the next WSET Level 2 Award in Wines & Spirits on January 21 – 23, 25, 2020. If online learning is more your thing, you can also enroll for the WSET Level 1 Award in Spirits Online happening on January 6. Visit  enderunextension.com today and see the schedules of their beverage certificate programs. For more information contact +632 8856 5000 local 505 or 
extension@enderuncolleges.com.