Advanced, urk.

We started the WSET Advanced Certificate in Wines and Spirits on Wednesday. When we did the intermediate course we were in a class of only five, which was great. Loads of leftover wine to take home each lesson. This time it's a class of 13 which seems huge. Everyone seems great though. And Ann's not the only female which is good, there are three others.

First lesson we got our course packs, did a bit of talking about how to taste wine. Some more detail required in the advanced tasting. We then had a set of 5 mystery whites to try. I feel like I was rubbish but with hindsight I got the last three were Chardonnay and that the third one was French. I just wasn't confident enough in my answer on 3. It was a Chablis. The others were a Semillon (which I don't think I've ever had before) and a Chardonnay blend that I got totally wrong.

I still really don't like Chardonnay, even when it is a Chablis. In fact maybe especially not when it's a Chablis. Our teacher reckons they do badly in blind tastings against bolder wines like the last two. Possibly. If that is to your taste apparently this one is fantastic, and it was interesting and distinctive but really not to my tastes at all.

The best two we tasted (IMO) were a bourgogne blanc (I think it was this one, but didn't write it down) and a Ten Minutes by Tractor 10X Chardonnay. I took the last little bit of that one home and enjoyed it. Maybe Chardonnay isn't all completely horrific... but if I have to go to a £20 bottle to start to enjoy it, that's not great.

Oh yeah, and I started looking at the course text book on the train this morning. It's huge and makes my bag very heavy. All I got through this morning was about wine reproductive system, classifications, crossing, hybridization and cloning. This is going to be a tough course.