Diploma tasting group

I've joined a tasting group in London. At the first meeting I attended there were six of us, all WSET Diploma students sitting Unit 3 in January 2009. We also have a couple of experienced tutors who will be taking it in turns depending upon their particular specialities to choose the wines and then critique our assessments. This group had been together previously for Units 4 and 5 so I consider myself lucky to have been able to join as I found the first meeting SO useful. In a nutshell I feel these meetings, weekly between now and January, will make the difference between a borderline pass/fail on the tasting paper and potentially a reasonable mark.

I've always struggled to get a decent mark with tasting papers. I failed sparkling despite correctly identifying 2 out of 3 of the wines. I got a merit in the fortifieds with the rest being passes. Our first tasting group meeting helped me understand why my marks have always been low.

Our tutor reminded us of the marking system. Each wine within a group of 3 gets 30 marks with 10 of the overall 100 being left for the overall assessment such as "what's the grape variety" (4 marks) and "how did you arrive at that conclusion" (6 marks). If I don't make a good attempt at the overall assessment and give the marker 10 facts he can mark me on, I could lose up to 10% of the overall marks.

I realised during the meeting I've probably been failing on the aroma and tasting descriptors. I need to identify 5 aroma and 4 taste descriptors which means that's 9 marks of the possible 30 or another 30% in total marks. Giving 5 aroma descriptors leaves 1 mark for intensity and 1 mark for development to give the usual 7 for aroma. I've never written nearly enough in the way of these descriptors and if I don't give the marker enough to mark then I am always going to get a low mark so I need to work harder at identifying aromas and tastes.

We were reminded of the common trap students fall into of deciding what the grape/wine is before completing the assessment thereby fitting the assessment around what we think it is rather than working it out from our assessment. Not a new observation but a timely reminder given the wines we were about to taste .....To be continued.