Category: WSET Level 4 Wine

The D5 Fortified Wine exam asks you to connect production knowledge with the wine in front of you. Knowing that a wine was fortified doesn't expla

French Vins Doux Naturels and Rutherglen Muscat share an important production idea: spirit preserves grape sweetness before fermentation consumes

Madeira combines two things that can pull a wine in opposite directions: substantial richness and striking freshness. Its grapes, fortification ti

Port styles tell you what happened after fortification as much as what happened during fermentation. Some preserve youthful fruit and colour; othe

Port production compresses one important job into a short window: extracting the desired colour, flavour and structure before spirit interrupts fe

Sherry styles are easier to understand when you ask two questions separately: how did the wine age, and why is it dry or sweet? Colour helps you o

Sherry production makes more sense when you follow two living things: the vine outside the bodega and the yeast inside it. Palomino provides much

Fortified wine begins with a useful interruption to the usual wine story: a producer adds spirit. What happens next depends on when that addition

The D4 Sparkling Wine exam rewards two related skills: explaining how a wine came to be and judging what is actually in the glass. Revision works

A cool vineyard and a bottle fermentation can produce compelling sparkling wine in several corners of the world. They don't produce the same wine