{"id":8622,"date":"2021-07-11T10:10:40","date_gmt":"2021-07-11T09:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/?p=8622"},"modified":"2022-03-29T13:12:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T12:12:46","slug":"the-life-of-an-mw-student-nine-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/the-life-of-an-mw-student-nine-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Life of an MW Student &#8211; Nine"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"l-section wpb_row height_medium\"><div class=\"l-section-h i-cf\"><div class=\"g-cols vc_row via_flex valign_top type_default stacking_default\"><div class=\"vc_col-sm-12 wpb_column vc_column_container\"><div class=\"vc_column-inner\"><div class=\"wpb_wrapper\"><time class=\"w-post-elm post_date entry-date published\" datetime=\"2021-07-11T10:10:40+01:00\" title=\"11 July 2021 at 10:10:40 Europe\/London\" itemprop=\"datePublished\">5 years ago<\/time><div class=\"w-separator size_small\"><\/div><div class=\"wpb_text_column\"><div class=\"wpb_wrapper\"><h1>THE LIFE OF AN MW STUDENT \u2013 NINE<\/h1>\n<p>Things I have learned during my first year as an MW student:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>When talking to a winemaker, the answer to literally any question is \u2018it depends\u2019. <\/b>Grapes are an agricultural product, and all decisions made in the winery are responses to what nature provides. Each year, the quantity and quality of grapes harvested depends on the conditions of the vintage and the winemaker must adapt their practices accordingly. There is no set recipe for making wine, which while sometimes frustrating for we students, is ultimately what makes wine exciting and interesting.<\/li>\n<li><b>Settle for \u2018good enough\u2019 rather than agonising over perfection.<\/b>\u00a0I love writing. Finding the perfect way to express a concept concisely and eloquently is, to me, one of life\u2019s great joys. However, under the time pressure of an exam this is simply not possible. I have learnt to write functionally, factually, and above all, fast. It is no good to write a beautifully constructed argument for question one if it means you will not finish question two. The same goes for the study programme as a whole. I very quickly abandoned any aspirations of achieving top marks \u2013 one point over a passing grade will be quite enough.<\/li>\n<li><b>Blind tasting is difficult and even the experts get it wrong.<\/b>\u00a0After a particularly galling tasting exam, I took to twitter to vent my frustrations. \u2018Has anyone else had a blind tasting experience so relentlessly awful it had them questioning the last six years of their career? Asking for a friend.\u2019 The response was amazing. Dozens of Masters of Wine commented on my post, sharing their own most embarrassing moments. My favourite was a prominent MW who, three weeks before she sat the practical exam for the second time (and passed), missed a whole flight of Beaujolais. This doesn\u2019t sound too bad unless you know that at the time she had been writing the Beaujolais section for Oz Clarke\u2019s guide to wine for six years!<\/li>\n<li><b>There is no place in the IMW for wine snobbery.<\/b>\u00a0Before I embarked on my studies, I have to confess to being a bit of a wine snob. It happens to many of us. When you start to learn more about wine, you can become dismissive of popular, mainstream styles or producers (regardless of whether you enjoyed those same styles yourself until only recently). However, you don\u2019t become the world\u2019s best seller by making bad wine. There is an incredible amount of skill involved in creating enormous volumes of consistent, commercially appealing wine. The more I learn about such producers, the more I respect them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div><\/div><div class=\"w-separator size_small\"><\/div><div class=\"w-post-elm post_author vcard author color_link_inherit with_ava avapos_top\"><a href=\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/author\/owcemily\/\" class=\"fn\" aria-hidden=\"true\" tabindex=\"-1\"><div class=\"post-author-ava\" style=\"font-size:96px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"96\" height=\"96\" src=\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-96x96.jpg\" class=\"avatar avatar-96 photo\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-96x96.jpg 96w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-350x350.jpg 350w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-600x600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-400x400.jpg 400w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-24x24.jpg 24w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-48x48.jpg 48w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n.jpg 640w, https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/116377708_608815716686001_1898708497719331632_n-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 96px) 100vw, 96px\" \/><\/div><\/a><div class=\"post-author-meta\"><a href=\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/author\/owcemily\/\" class=\"post-author-name fn\">Emily Silva<\/a><div class=\"post-author-info\">Emily is Head of Retail and Marketing at The Oxford Wine Company. She is also a stage two student on the Master of Wine Programme.<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5 years agoTHE LIFE OF AN MW STUDENT \u2013 NINE Things I have learned during my first year as an MW student: When talking to a winemaker, the answer to...","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[202,215,216,217,213],"class_list":["post-8622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oxford_wine_blog","tag-emilysilva","tag-mwstudent","tag-mwstudy","tag-wineeducation","tag-winestudy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Life of an MW Student - Nine - Oxford Wine Company<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/the-life-of-an-mw-student-nine-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Life of an MW Student - Nine - Oxford Wine Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/the-life-of-an-mw-student-nine-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Oxford Wine Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/theoxfordwinecompany\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-07-11T09:10:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-03-29T12:12:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Emily Silva\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@TheOxfordWineCo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@TheOxfordWineCo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Emily Silva\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/the-life-of-an-mw-student-nine-2\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/the-life-of-an-mw-student-nine-2\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Emily Silva\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/oxfordwine.co.uk\/owc\/#\/schema\/person\/0218c55a34881e04418f0ddf572efa32\"},\"headline\":\"The Life of an MW Student &#8211; 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