Congratulations to Tim Thompson, FWS, for achieving highest honors in the French Wine Scholar exam with West London Wine School.
About Tim:
I’m a wine and food enthusiast and have always appreciated a good glass of wine.
A chance meeting with someone at a wine tasting event led me to the WSET Courses and then to the Wine Scholar Guild. The Covid Lockdowns of 2020 provided the perfect excuse to take my learning to a new level. I’m definitely glad I took the courses as not only was it an enjoyable experience but I’ve also learned a lot about the world of wine.
I sat the WSET Level 2 and 3 at the start of lockdown. I decided to take the French Wine Scholar course as I love France and French wine and cheese and don’t have time to take on the WSET Level 4 Diploma at the moment.
The French Wine Scholar course provided a great opportunity to really focus on a single country. The WSET course is great for getting a world view and a general breadth of knowledge - while the French Wine Scholar course added depth of knowledge to complement everything I’ve learned so far.
Taking the French Wine Scholar course gave me an appreciation for how the unique combination of grapes, climate, geology, culture, and historical influences all make their way into a bottle of wine.
The French Wine Scholar course has given me a much deeper appreciation for French wine and wine more generally. The course gave me a lot of knowledge and from that, confidence to talk about and order French Wine.
It has also given me a greater appreciation for the wine in the glass and the factors that make it unique. The fun thing about the French Wine Scholar course is the wide range of topics covered for each area covering history, cultural influences, climate, geology, local foods, grapes, and wine making techniques. There are some brilliant pieces of information about the region and history as well as the wine.
I also learned that there is a lot more to know! I’ve just signed up for a Bourgogne master level course so I can really get an in-depth knowledge of this unique area of France.
