Congratulations to Hyunseok Kang, IWS, for achieving highest honors in the Italian Wine Scholar exam with WSA, Seoul.
About Hyunseok:
Greetings. My name is Kang Hyunseok and I am a journalist and reporter in broadcasting station in South Korea. I’ve finished the IWS course this year after completing the FWS last year. It was great experience to study the IWS.
It was a harsh challenge for me to study IWS because English is not my first language. I have to overcome the language problem. Another problem was the number of varieties existing in Italy. When I studied the FWS, variety was not the issue. Almost varieties such as cabernet sauvignon, merlot, grenache were already familiar for me before starting FWS. Numerous varieties in IWS were totally different. It was a kind of nightmare!!!! To get over the language problem, I decided to translate main material textbook to my first language, Korean. With translation, it was much easy to memorize some key factors like DOCGs.
For variety issue, I utilized visual materials. Whenever I was faced with new and unfamiliar varieties, I checked the photo of variety with web searching. The efficiency of memorizing varieties was so high with a visualized image of variety. And a simple fact is the most important. Studying everyday until the exam. The whole volume of study is so wide and huge. Once you are backed up, you cannot catch up with remaining study stuffs. I guess the key is diligence.
I’ve just finished IWS with highest honors and it gives me a kind of confidence. I gain confidence that I can study wine with a second language. As long as time permits, I hope to study next step like a master course of FWS or WSET diploma.
