Congratulations to Bart Crols, SWS, for passing the Spanish Wine Scholar with highest honors!
About Bart:
I only got the wine “virus” when I met my wife. My late father-in-law had a real interest in wine and several books, a.o. Hugh Johnson’s World Atlas of Wine. As I learned to appreciate the product and read about it, I gradually became truly hooked. As with many (all?) other things, once you understand more about it, you appreciate and love it even more. And gathering knowledge about something you love is addictive, so… Furthermore, the wine world is so incredibly diverse, so you can learn forever, always discovering new things, and deepen your knowledge!
I always thought studying wine (as opposed to just reading books, magazines and reviews about it) is impossible to combine with a full time (non-wine) job, until I discovered online courses. I got the WSET Level 3 award in Wines in 2019, and as Level 4 really seems impossible to do unless you follow classroom sessions (incl guided tastings), I chose the Wine Scholar Guild to continue my studies. I did FWS last year as it builds further on the vini/viticulture basis laid out in WSET, and deepens your knowledge of France in a very structured way.
This year SWS followed.
I knew about Rioja, Priorat (visited the region in July 2020), Rias Baixas and obviously Cava and sherry (I am of big fan of the latter – sadly the most underrated wine in the world), heard about other regions without knowing much about them, and never heard of many more. SWS was a true discovery journey not just of Spanish wine, but equally of Spanish geography and history (one of my hobbies as well!). I followed up on it with a holiday travelling through Green Spain this summer, and maybe the northern Meseta in 2022 ? Or maybe IWS (I enrolled for unit 1 and will start my studies in the next few weeks) might attract me to Italy instead?
