Advanced Tasting Checklist
Advanced Tasting Checklist
Section titled “Advanced Tasting Checklist”
Advanced tasting is a timed flight of wines, described blind, out loud, with grape, origin, and often vintage range as the payoff. What makes it brutal is not any single wine; it is the compression. You have a fixed number of minutes to deliver a complete, structured, spoken assessment of each glass, and there is no time to circle back. Candidates who can taste beautifully in a relaxed setting fall apart here because their method is not fast enough to survive the clock.
What the Advanced tasting flight demands
Section titled “What the Advanced tasting flight demands”You taste multiple wines blind and describe each one systematically within a tight time limit, moving from appearance through nose and palate to a specific conclusion, then defending that conclusion with the evidence you called. The examiners want precise, correct descriptors delivered at pace, and a conclusion that clearly follows from your analysis. This is deductive tasting performed as a spoken sprint, not a leisurely study session.
Can you run the grid at speed?
Section titled “Can you run the grid at speed?”Do a timed blind flight and verify each point before revealing.
- Can you deliver the full grid aloud, per wine, inside the time limit without cutting the palate short?
- Are your structure calls (acid, tannin, alcohol, body) precise rather than hedged?
- Can you identify markers of grape, climate, winemaking, and age accurately and quickly?
- Does your final call on grape, origin, and vintage range flow logically from stated evidence?
- Can you speak in clean, complete sentences under time rather than muttering fragments?
- Can you move to the next wine without letting a shaky call rattle the rest of the flight?
If you run out of time or freeze on one wine, the problem is pace and composure, not palate.
Where Advanced tasters break down
Section titled “Where Advanced tasters break down”| Failure | Cause | Repair |
|---|---|---|
| Running out of time | Over-describing early wines | Set an internal pace per wine and hold it |
| Hedged structure | Fear of being wrong | Commit to a level; a decisive call scores |
| Cascade effect | One bad wine shakes the rest | Close each wine and reset before the next |
| Conclusion without support | Guessing, then narrating | Let evidence drive the call, every time |
A flight drill for the clock
Section titled “A flight drill for the clock”Set up two to six wines blind with a partner and impose a strict per-wine time limit. Speak the entire assessment aloud, commit to grape, origin, and vintage range, then reveal. Write one precise correction per wine and, just as importantly, note whether your timing held. If you spent three minutes on the first wine and rushed the last two, that pacing flaw will cost you more points than any single misidentification. Practice the flight as a sequence, not as isolated glasses, because the exam tests your stamina across the set.
Volume plus honest reveals is the engine of tasting improvement at this level. Confirm the current Advanced tasting format, flight size, and timing on the official Court pages before you sit.