Down the Rabbit Hole: How Funneling on the D3 Blind Tasting Exam Can Help You Pass

Noelle Hale DipWSET

Director of Napa Valley Wine Academy’s WSET Diploma Program

What is funneling and why is it important?

For many WSET diploma students, one of the most intimidating parts of the program is the D3 blind tasting exam, which involves writing tasting notes, quality conclusions and various identification answers about 12 wines. The WSET always publishes the exam wine list a couple of days after the test, and its publication usually produces two responses: jubilation from students who got a lot of the wines “right” and despair from students who didn’t.

While the post-exam psychological boost of acing wine identification is nice, it’s important to remember that the majority of the available points come from accurately observing the different characteristics of each wine (pale intensity, dry, full body, etc.), rather than correctly identifying where the wine is from or what grape variety it is. You can actually pass the D3 tasting exam without correctly identifying any of the wines.

While you’ll have to answer some identification questions, if you end up choosing a grape or region that is wrong but makes logical sense based on how the wines taste, you can pick up a lot of points for showing the examiner your thought process. One way to accomplish this on exam day is to think of identification arguments like a funnel, which starts wide at the top and becomes more narrow as you move toward your conclusion. A good funnel helps an examiner award you points for the parts of your argument that were logical, even if your final answer was incorrect.

The grape variety flight on the D3 exam

The D3 tasting exam is divided into four flights of three wines each. The first flight always contains three wines of the same grape variety (or same predominant grape variety). While this can seem intimidating, having three wines to help you reach a conclusion can be helpful — you have three chances to pick up on characteristics that lead you to the right answer for all of the wines!

Historically, the wines in each grape variety flight have always been from a range of different places around the world. So for a grape to be likely to appear in this flight, it must be widely grown in multiple countries around the world. It would be extremely unlikely, for example, to have three Xinomavros on the grape variety flight because nearly all of the vineyard acreage is in Greece, and that wouldn’t test the global breadth of your knowledge as a diploma student.

This means that grape varieties most likely to appear on the exam are more limited than many students first realize. For white grapes, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Chenin Blanc are the most common options, with Semillon and Viognier popping up on very rare occasions. Out of the world’s red grapes, I looked back at nearly 20 years of red wine grape variety flights on the D3 tasting exam, and all of them have featured Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Pinot Noir or Grenache. Doesn’t that seem more manageable?

How to start funneling

One common mistake I see diploma students frequently make is relying too much on flavor characteristics when writing grape variety identification answers. The problem is flavors can overlap. Nearly all red wines will display either red or black fruit notes (or both!), so this is unlikely to be your strongest evidence for correctly identifying a grape variety. Structural characteristics are what give different varieties their distinctive profiles and can help point you in the correct direction. For example, if the grape variety flight has three red wines with M+ or high acid, it is unlikely they will be Grenache or Merlot because those are not typically very acidic grape varieties. If the same three red wines also had high levels of drying tannins, Pinot Noir becomes a much less likely option because its thin skins lead to more moderate tannin levels. Looking back at the list of likely red grape varieties, the options have quickly narrowed to Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah without considering flavors or any structural characteristics outside of acidity and tannin.

Describing a characteristic of a wine, followed by what it tells you, is how you start constructing a funnel. Your goal is to rule things out so that you end up with the correct answer, or barring that, an incorrect conclusion with a lot of logical evidence that will get you a lot of points. With the tasting practice and theory study that happens during D3, students begin to develop an understanding of when something is logical. If a little voice in your head is telling you the answer you’ve come up with isn’t making sense, listen to it! Go back to your tasting notes and see if there’s something you’re missing.

Funneling in action

Once you have these things in mind, writing a grape variety identification answer becomes simpler. The best answers proceed logically by linking 1-2 pieces of evidence from the glass at a time to one theoretical observation. Also sure you are considering evidence from all three wines — this is the biggest advantage of a three-wine flight.

Let’s consider two grape variety identification answers for the same imaginary flight: a Mosel Kabinett Riesling from Germany, an Eden Valley Riesling from Australia and a dry Riesling from Alsace AOC:

1. Riesling. Dry to medium-sweet palate, strong lime and petrol flavors with no new oak, and high acid all point to Riesling. Low alcohol on the first wine supports Riesling.

2. Riesling. High acid on all three wines, with low alcohol on wine 1 and medium alcohol on wines 2 and 3, suggests a grape grown in cool climates. Medium-sweet palate on wine 1 and dry palate on wines 2 and 3 indicate a grape made in a range of styles. Riesling and Chenin Blanc considered. Pronounced intensity elderflower notes on wine 1 and lime candy notes on wine 2 suggest an aromatic grape and make Riesling more likely. Lack of new oak aromas (toast, vanilla) on all three wines supports Riesling.

While neither of these answers is perfect, the problem with the first answer is that if the grape variety isn’t Riesling, it’s very difficult to award the writer any points because it doesn’t provide any alternatives or show how any other varieties were ruled out. In contrast, if the wines did turn out to be Chenin Blanc after all, the writer of the second answer could still pick up some partial points for showing good logic about acidity and sweetness, illustrating the step-by-step thought process of how he or she arrived at an answer.

Takeaways

It’s as possible to identify all 12 wines correctly on the D3 exam and fail as it is to identify them all wrong and still pass. The key is to taste each wine as accurately as possible, allowing you to rely on it when you write your conclusions. Resist the temptation to jump to a conclusion too quickly, and if your tasting sixth sense is telling you something isn’t quite right with your answer, go back to your tasting notes to see if you’ve missed something. Showing the examiner your thought process using a step-by-step funnel can help you pick up lots of partial points and pass the D3 tasting exam, even if your wine identifications aren’t perfect.

Back to Pouring Points