Do wine writers need qualifications?
After 15 years as a wine autodidact, I am wondering whether it would help to study for some professional qualifications. So I spoke to some experts...
When I’m at a loose end, I like to go on Amazon and look at the customer reviews of my rivals’ books. One in particular that stood out was for Hannah Crosbie’s Corker, which I wrote about last year. The review was from an ‘Emma Sedly’. It seems to be Sedly’s only review so I am treating it as suspicious but anyway here goes:
“The author has not achieved the industry minimum educational or training background in wine. She seems to get around this, like any good con-person, by consistently proclaiming to be the victim of a pretentious industry. Well it is not a pretentious industry when you have taken the time, effort and expense needed to build up the acceptable minimum working knowledge of wine. The WSET 3 is regarded as the minimum industry standard for sommeliers and those working in the industry and the author hasn’t bothered to attain this or an equivalent.”
This rather took me aback because I don’t hold a WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust) Level 3 and yet nobody has ever criticised me for this. Though I was once called a ‘pretentious git’ by a diminutive American wine writer. I did do the WSET Level 1 back in the ‘90s which involved, as far as I can remember, being shown a map of France and pointing out where Burgundy was.
Furthermore many of the greats don't have any professional qualifications either. Did anyone write to Robert Parker, Hugh Johnson or Oz Clarke telling them they were ‘con persons’ for never having been near a WSET? It got me thinking how useful is a qualification for writing about wine.
I was taken on as wine writer for The Lady by the then editor Rachel Johnson precisely because I didn’t know that much about the subject. She didn’t want to be bored by too much wine talk. She had been sent my blog Henry’s World of Booze which I started in 2010 by a mutual friend, the journalist Craig Brown. My schtick was that my very lack of knowledge gave me an advantage. I have always seen myself as a writer first and foremost rather than part of the wine business.
Because of my own lack of qualifications, I was firmly in the gentleman amateur camp. I mean, do restaurant critics need to be trained chefs or theatre critics attend RADA? I thought the people who wrote the best about wine were people like Roger Scruton, Auberon Waugh or Lawrence Osborne. And to some extent I still agree. The most important qualification for a wine writer is to be able to write - there are plenty of Masters of Wine who can’t string a sentence together, just as many academics write pretentious unreadable, jargon-heavy prose.
I also thought that learning in a systematic way might somehow destroy my writing mojo or something. Sometimes too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing as you spend so much time going “well, on one hand, and then on the other.” I wanted to have the freedom to write that “Rioja is for babies” or as Roger Scruton said Australian shiraz is a “wine for hooligans.”
More learned wine people than me have reservations about wine education. Despite finding the WSET useful, Will Lyons from The Sunday Times told me that early in his career:
“I had already made the decision that I would never study for the MW as my biggest fear was that it would destroy my love of wine and teach me how to taste in a manner I wasn't sure suited my personality.”
But recently I have begun to change my mind. I’ve been doing this for 10 years as a full time professional. Though I am learning the whole time, I wonder if it might be helpful to learn more systematically. I’m particularly curious about blind tasting, something I’ve never trained myself to do well. I have done a little wine judging and found it an interesting experience. But the idea of being examined on your ability to differentiate wines by senses alone fills me with both fear and also a degree of ambition. Could I accomplish this? Perhaps it’s just the old story of the joker wanting to be taken seriously. Like when Groucho Marx met T.S. Eliot.
It’s interesting to look at the careers of two of England’s most respected wine writers Tim Atkin and Jancis Robinson. Both of them were already very successful before embarking on the Master of Wine qualification. Robinson had written several books and was host of Channel 4’s Wine Programme. So why take a fiendishly hard test that she might not even pass? She explained:
“What finally convinced me to have a go was an article that compared various wine writers to grape varieties. Edmund P-R [Penning-Rowsell] was of course Cabernet Sauvignon. Oz [Clarke] was sunny Chardonnay. I was, if you please, Gamay - here today, gone tomorrow!”
She passed first time when five months pregnant - the first person from outside the trade to become an MW. Tellingly, Jancis doesn’t put MW after everything she does. It seems it was more for her personal satisfaction than anything else. Some MWs, in contrast, have it in their email and Twitter handles - as some PhD people do. If I ever became an MW, I’d go one stage further and change my name by deed poll to Henry Jeffreys MW and insist everyone call me Mr Jeffreys MW.
Tim Atkin is another one who really didn’t need to take the exam but did. First of all, he told me that he relished a challenge but he continued:
“I also - with a degree of foresight - thought that wine columns in newspapers had a sell-by date. So I thought it was a good idea to get a professional qualification in case I needed to effect a career change. In hindsight it was a smart move.”
If Robsinson worried that she wasn’t being taken seriously, spare a thought for the legion of influencers who are out there trying to earn a crust out of wine such as Alice Griffiths who started her Instagram handle @posingwithalcohol in 2020. When I first saw her I thought she was a parody account, taking all the tropes of the wine influencer and turning them up to 11. And yet she holds a BSc in agriculture, once ran her own small holding and from talking to her knows far more about the nitty gritty of English viticulture than I do. Her column in Vineyard magazine is not what you would expect from looking at Instagram. She commented:
“I’ve often felt overlooked or not taken as seriously as male counterparts, even when they lack formal qualifications. Despite my knowledge and experience, I’ve seen how expertise can sometimes be judged by perception rather than ability. While the industry is evolving, qualifications offer a way to establish credibility—at least, I’d like to believe so.”
She is currently studying for a Diploma, the highest level offered by the WSET. She continued: “Without the structure of formal study, I think I would have struggled to re-enter the job market after 18 years away from lecturing (a life before children).”
The problem with all these qualifications is that they are expensive. Taking your WSET level 3 will cost between £720-995 while the Diploma costs £2000-2750 per semester and takes many years to complete. Hannah Crosbie worries that the cost of these qualifications makes them “inherently exclusionary.” She added that there’s a sort of “chicken and egg thing” for young people looking to get a job in wine. You need a WSET to be considered but you can only afford to do it if you are sponsored by a company. Funnily enough, Crosbie does actually have a Level 3 WSET - so in your face ‘Emma Sedly’ - but at the moment doesn’t have the funds to go any further.
With a family to support and a moderately successful writing career, I can’t see myself getting any further qualifications in the near future. One of the great things about the internet when I started is that there are no barriers to entry, I couldn’t have done it if I needed to study. I will admit, I was fortunate, in that my previous job gave me contacts in the media which led to professional work.
So do wine writers need qualifications? No, first and foremost they have to be able to write and a big dose of chutzpah helps but credentials are useful especially if you are a woman.
Thanks for writing this piece , I firmly believe as a writer you have the ability to put on paper what many of us who hold the DipWSET just can’t do . The notion that you don’t have enough knowledge to be a wine writer is ludicrous, the only person who knows exactly how invested you are and how much research you’ve done is you .
As a female outside the London area , I felt, I had no other option but to take the DipWSET for credibility reasons. It’s a hell of a lot of money to find just to prove you deserve your place on the ladder . There are many writers and influencers who hold little or no formal wine education, but who cares if their content is interesting , thought provoking and informative. That’s what people come for . 💪
A writer really has two qualifications needed - to be able to write - and to do so in such manner that readers finish the writing and come back for more.
WSET are retail qualifications really, enabling staff to learn the basics to enable them to answer questions in store, and to some extent host a tasting event.
But you couldnt write an article on say Valpolicella from what WSET teaches you. Good writing demands research, whereas WSET is for the immediate response. I did the diploma, and it nearly drove the love of the product out of me.
I very much doubt Harry Waugh, one of the great writers had a WSET qualification (I mean WSET wasnt even around then!) .
There is a parallel - wine is meant to taste good and bring pleasure. That is its only job. Yes we have been told for years than unless its this or that, or grown on a bed of ancient seashells on a slop of between 37 and 37 degrees pointing East South East then its going to be rubbish.. when obviously that isnt the case.
Both are out of date, elite opinions.
The type of writing matters too, is it a book on Barolo, or is it a 300 word article on barbecue wines? One requires expertise, knowledge and significant research into history, land, people, culture, cuisine, and very wide tasting. The other is to have found some wines, that are yummy and to be able to write about then in a way that others will be salivating.
So largely the big need for a writer I think is to taste widely, to be able to write about wines in some context. If you have only ever drunk 19 Crimes (which always seems to me to be a lot of crimes against winemaking in one bottle), then being able to tell whether you are recommending a good bottle of Spatburgunder or an indifferent one is impossible.
Getting some knowledge is never a bad thing, but essential to writing - absolutely not.