Do You Have to Be Wired Differently to Become a Master of Wine?

I’ve become slightly obsessed with the Master of Wine qualification recently.

There’s something about it that fascinates me. There are only a few hundred Masters of Wine in the world and, when you consider how many millions of people work with wine, drink wine and study wine, that is an absolutely tiny number.

Naturally, this sent me down a rabbit hole.

I started reading about the qualification, watching Masters of Wine talk about how they taste and wondering what on earth separates somebody who enjoys and understands wine from somebody capable of tasting it at that level.

Then I heard Konstantin Baum MW say something that really got me thinking.

When a Flavour Has a Colour

Konstantin has spoken about associating what he tastes with colours. A particular flavour or characteristic of a wine can have a visual association for him.

I found that fascinating.

My first thought was whether there could be some relationship between the type of brain capable of reaching this level of wine tasting and neurodivergence. Autism in particular came to mind because of the associations we often hear around intense interests, sensory processing and pattern recognition.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that was probably far too simplistic.

For one thing, I’m certainly not going to start diagnosing Masters of Wine from YouTube videos. More importantly, experiencing one sense through another can be associated with synesthesia, which isn’t the same thing as autism anyway.

Still, I don’t think my original question was completely without merit. I was just asking the wrong question.

What I’m really interested in is whether the people who become exceptional wine tasters experience wine differently to the rest of us.

What Happens When You Taste Thousands of Wines?

This is where it gets really interesting for me.

I can remember when tasting wine meant deciding whether I liked it or not. Then you start identifying blackcurrant, plum, cherry, vanilla or whatever else might be in the glass.

After a while that isn’t enough.

I’ve noticed it happening in my own tasting notes. I’m increasingly interested in texture, acidity, tannin, length and what happens to the wine after I’ve swallowed it. I’m starting to recognise certain characteristics that remind me of other bottles I’ve tasted.

I’m obviously nowhere remotely near MW level, but it makes me wonder what happens when you multiply that experience by thousands upon thousands of wines.

Perhaps what looks like an extraordinary natural ability is partly the brain becoming exceptionally good at categorising information.

A smell isn’t just blackcurrant anymore. It sits alongside the acidity, tannin, alcohol, ripeness, oak and everything else happening in the glass. Those characteristics start forming patterns and those patterns potentially tell an experienced taster where the wine came from, how it was made and how good it is.

If you’ve spent twenty years building that library in your head, perhaps tasting a wine really does become a completely different experience.

Is It Ability or Obsession?

I suspect it’s probably both.

There must be some natural variation in sensory ability. Some people have better noses than others and some people seem naturally brilliant at remembering smells and flavours.

But I can’t imagine anyone becoming a Master of Wine through natural ability alone.

You’d have to be at least a little bit obsessed with it.

And I mean that in the best possible way.

Nobody accidentally develops an encyclopaedic understanding of vineyards, geology, grape varieties, winemaking, maturation, international wine markets and everything else involved while simultaneously training themselves to analyse wines blind.

The more I’ve learnt about the qualification, the more ridiculous the level of knowledge required seems.

That’s probably why I’m so fascinated by it.

Could I Ever Become a Master of Wine?

This inevitably led me to wonder whether I could ever do it myself.

Technically, perhaps.

Realistically, I’m not sure I want to find out.

I’m 38 with a young family and I’ve reached the conclusion that pursuing MW seriously would require a level of commitment that I’m simply not prepared to take away from other parts of my life.

It’s not really the qualification itself either. It’s everything I would want to do around it.

I’d want to travel. I’d want to visit the regions I was studying. I’d want to taste constantly and, knowing what I’m like when something grabs my attention, I’d probably become completely consumed by it.

Five or seven years of making wine the dominant feature of my life sounds incredible to the wine obsessive in me.

It sounds considerably less sensible when I think about being a husband and dad.

And I’m fine with that.

How Far Do I Actually Want to Go?

That’s probably the more useful question this whole rabbit hole has left me with.

I absolutely want to continue learning.

WSET Level 3 is something I want to do and I’ve even started wondering about the Level 4 Diploma. But I’m now questioning whether I would actually need Level 4 either.

What am I trying to achieve?

If I wanted to become an MW, work at the very top of wine education or pursue certain careers within the trade, Diploma would make complete sense.

But that’s not necessarily what I’m trying to do.

I want to understand wine properly.

I want to be able to taste something and understand why it tastes the way it does. I want to understand the decisions in the vineyard and winery that eventually resulted in what’s sitting in my glass. And, probably most importantly, I want to keep enjoying discovering it.

There doesn’t necessarily need to be a qualification at the end of that.

Perhaps That’s the Point

The strange thing is that learning more about the Master of Wine qualification hasn’t particularly made me want the letters MW after my name.

It’s made me want the knowledge.

That’s quite an important distinction.

I’m fascinated by people who can taste wine at that level and by what years of training might actually do to the way the brain processes flavour. Hearing someone describe flavours through colour only made that fascination stronger.

But perhaps I don’t need to become a Master of Wine to learn something from the way they approach it.

I can taste more deliberately. I can compare wines rather than simply drink them. I can keep questioning why I’m tasting something rather than just writing down that it’s there. I can study regions, producers and winemaking and then see whether I can recognise those things when the bottle is actually in front of me.

And if there’s one thing this latest rabbit hole has taught me, it’s that I don’t think I’ll ever know everything about wine.

Which, frankly, might be exactly why I enjoy it so much.