By Richard Ballantyne MW
The MW practical exam has a lower pass rate than the theory. In 2021, it was 8%. In a normal year, it sits around 15%. Most candidates who fail do not fail because they cannot identify wines. They fail because they leave marks on the table everywhere else.
Identification accounts for roughly 40-45 per cent of the total marks. The remaining 55 to 60 per cent is spread across quality assessment, maturity, method of production, and commercial position. This balance shifts slightly year to year. The pattern does not. Most marks are never about pure identification.
Peter Marks MW, chief examiner for the practical and a formidable taster in his own right, wrote in the 2023 practical report of closely reviewing every candidate who scores between 60 and 64.9%, one or two papers short of an overall pass. That year, moderation took 28 borderline candidates and found nine additional passes among them. Reviewing all three papers side by side lets an examiner see clearly whether a candidate shows convincing logic even when the conclusion is wrong, and whether they can hold that standard consistently across all papers over three days, not just on the day the questions happen to suit them.
What separated those nine from the ones who stayed short was not sharper identification. It was what they did once they were unsure. Marks describes them as offering reasonable alternatives grounded in the glass, then arguing logically even when the conclusion turned out to be wrong, rather than trying to shoehorn their answer to fit a guess. When they did recognise a wine, they used the evidence efficiently and moved on. And their commercial answers drew on real theoretical knowledge rather than resorting to a rote response.
You can identify every wine correctly and still fail. You can misidentify a wine and still pick up substantial marks if everything else is sound. This is not a parlour game. It is a test of reasoning, and reasoning is assessed regardless of whether the final answer is right. Think of it like a maths exam. The workings out carry the marks. The final answer is often just confirmation.
The candidates who fail are not, for the most part, bad tasters. They taste adequately. They often identify correctly. They fail because they cannot communicate what they taste in a way that earns marks. They write “good quality” and move on. They describe a wine’s production with the same template they used for the previous four wines. They name a venue for commercial position and stop there. These are marks sitting on the table, and they walk straight past them.
This guide is about the everything else. It is about becoming a Points Monster: a candidate who treats every section of every wine as a chance to demonstrate knowledge, judgement, and real-world understanding, whether or not the identification lands. That is the skill that separates candidates who know their wines from candidates who pass the exam.
I will address identification briefly, but it is not what I coach first. It needs wine in the glass, and that cannot be taught on a page. What can be taught, practised, and improved through structured feedback is the discipline of building a logical, evidence-led argument from what you taste. That discipline is the exam’s real test.
One more thing, before anything else. By Stage 2, you should be writing dry tasting notes every day. On the bus. In the doctor’s waiting room. Little and often, whenever there’s a spare five minutes.
I am also an amateur, but keen, classical musician. When I learn a new piece, I learn it slowly at first, deliberately, making sure I do not make mistakes. Only once it is correct do I bring it up to speed. Do it the other way round, rush before it is right, and you practise the mistakes into muscle memory along with everything else. Dry tasting notes work the same way. Repetition builds the habit, but only a coach checking your work can stop that repetition from baking in bad habits alongside the right ones.
The Three Pillars
The practical exam tests three things. Taste. Interpret. Communicate.
Tasting is whether you can accurately perceive what is in the glass. This comes from practice with wine. There is no shortcut.
Interpreting is about connecting what you taste to what it means: the grape variety, the region, the winemaking, the quality level, the maturity, the commercial position.
Communicating is whether you can express that interpretation so the examiner can follow it: logical, evidenced, precise, economical.
These last two, interpreting and communicating, are what coaching actually works on. Most candidates can taste. Many can interpret. Fewer can communicate their interpretation well enough to earn full marks. The Points Monster lives in the communication. That single sentence is worth remembering above everything else in this guide.
A Brief Word on Identification
I will not teach identification in this guide. It requires repeatedly tasting real wines with feedback. No amount of reading substitutes for that.
One exercise, though, is worth doing on paper. For every major variety, write down six things that make it what it is. Just six. Bullets. Nothing else. By about bullet four, the variety should be unmistakable. This forces you to separate primary evidence, the things that define a variety, from secondary evidence, the things that are consistent with it but could point elsewhere too.
Take Riesling. High acidity, petrol or kerosene potential, lime or citrus blossom, moderate alcohol. By the fourth bullet, you are not describing Chenin Blanc or Sauvignon Blanc. You are describing Riesling. This works for most varieties. Do it for every one you expect to meet in the exam.
Primary Evidence First
Some evidence points nowhere. Some evidence points somewhere specific. Learning to tell the two apart, and leading with the second kind, is one of the most valuable skills you can build.
Take a red wine described as dark in colour, with 13.5% alcohol and some oak. That description fits almost any ambitious red wine from almost anywhere. It leads nowhere because colour, moderate alcohol, and oak are at best supporting evidence. Now take a wine described as pale in colour, with 14.5% alcohol and high acidity. Those three details alone point hard at Nebbiolo. Colour there is doing real work, because pale colour combined with high alcohol and high acidity is unusual and specific. For a generic red, colour tells you almost nothing. For Nebbiolo, it is close to primary evidence.
The lesson: know, for each variety and style you expect to meet, which piece of evidence is doing the real identifying work, and lead with that. Do not open with the evidence that fits everything. Open with the evidence that narrows the field fastest. But leading with the strongest evidence does not mean leaving the rest out. Every piece of supporting evidence still belongs in the answer. Order it by strength. Do not delete it for the sake of economy.
What a Flight Tells You
A flight of wines is not four unrelated questions. It is one question asked four times, and the pattern across the flight is itself evidence.
If four wines share a variety and a broad regional style, and the question also asks you to assess quality in context, that uniformity is a clue. It points toward a narrower set of candidate regions than the variety alone would suggest. Pay attention to what the exam has chosen to put in front of you as a set, not only to each wine on its own.
Use this with caution. It is a way of narrowing possibilities, not a shortcut to an answer. If the pattern across the flight does not match what is actually in your glass, trust the glass. The flight gives you a hypothesis to test, not a conclusion to assert.
Read the Room
Not every wine demands the same approach. Easy wines need confidence and economy. Hard wines need careful funnelling and honest uncertainty.
If Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is in the glass, the gooseberry, green pepper, and high acidity will announce it within ten seconds. Do not spend half your answer funnelling from “cool climate” to “possible Southern Hemisphere” to “New Zealand considered.” That level of deliberation, on a wine this obvious, signals doubt in your own palate rather than rigour. Be direct. State the variety and origin. Give your evidence. Move on. Spend the time you save on a harder wine that actually needs it.
If the wine is genuinely ambiguous, a Grenache that could be Southern Rhône, McLaren Vale, or Priorat, the funnelling earns its keep. Consider the options openly. State what the evidence supports and what it does not. The examiner wants to see you navigate real uncertainty with logic, not bluster.
Knowing which situation you are in is a skill in itself. It comes from tasting experience, and from having someone challenge your judgements until you learn which ones to trust.
Quality: The Marks Most Often Left on the Table
Quality assessment carries more marks than most candidates realise, and it is where the weakest answers consistently show up.
“Good” Is Not a Quality Assessment
“Far too many students use just ‘good’ and ‘very good’ to address quality.” Says Ulf Sjödin MW in the 2019 Examiners’ report.
“Good” tells the examiner nothing. Neither does “very good.”
Candidates use “good” and “very good” as if they were assessments. They are adjectives with no content. Good compared to what? Good for the region? For the price? For the variety? Show your working.
Quality Within Context
This phrase covers two separate questions, and a full answer needs both.
The first is official position. Is this a Grand Cru or a Premier Cru? Village level or regional? Single vineyard, or MGA in Barolo? State where the wine falls within its classification.
The second is intrinsic quality. Regardless of its official position, how does it compare to its peers? A village-level wine can outperform its classification. A Grand Cru can underperform its own reputation. Both facts are worth stating, and stating together.
The examiners are not always explicit about wanting both halves. Sometimes their guidance on this point is genuinely mixed. This two-part structure is my own teaching framework, built from what consistently earns marks, not a direct quote from any single report.
When wines of similar style are tasted side by side, the quality gap between them should be obvious. If the exam puts a village-level Riesling and a Grand Cru Riesling in front of you and you assess both as “very good quality,” you have missed the point of the flight. Say which is better, and say why, in terms of complexity, concentration, and length.
High Quality, Not Recognised
The exam often features genuinely high-quality wines that candidates fail to recognise as such. A wine that would retail at £50 or more sometimes gets marked “good quality” because the candidate has not tasted enough at the top end to calibrate their scale. This is more of a tasting-experience problem than a technique problem. But technique helps. If a wine shows real complexity, length, and integration, say so with confidence, even without certainty on identification. Quality assessment does not depend on knowing what the wine is. It depends on knowing what quality looks like.
Say What Is Missing
Quality is not only about what is present. If a wine lacks complexity, say so. If the finish is short, say so. If oak overwhelms fruit, say so. The examiner is not looking for relentless positivity. They are looking for honest, evidenced discrimination. “Acceptable quality, clean and well made, but lacking the concentration and complexity of the top tier” shows more judgement than “good quality” ever will.
Maturity: Where It Has Been, Is, and Is Going
Maturity is not a dating exercise. I see this constantly in the students I coach. They treat maturity as a birthday to guess. “This wine is approximately five years old.” That is an age estimate. It is not a maturity assessment.
Age and maturity are not the same thing. I am 53 years old, but my wife will tell you I behave like a schoolboy. Wine is no different. The examiner wants to know where the wine is in its life, not how many birthdays it has had. A five-year-old Barolo is near the start of its journey. A five-year-old Pinot Grigio delle Venezie is well past its best. Same age, entirely different maturity. Writing “five years old” for both says nothing useful about either.
Three Dimensions
Where it has been. What development has taken place? Primary fruit giving way to tertiary characters. Tannins softening. Colour moving from ruby to garnet, or lemon to gold.
Where it is now. Is the wine at the start of its drinking window, in the middle, or past its best? Some students find it useful to name a plateau stage: the period where a wine has reached its peak and holds there for a few years before decline sets in. I call this the hold.
Where it is going. Will it improve further, and over what timeframe? Or has it peaked, and how long before the fruit fades?
A full maturity statement touches all three. “This wine shows evolved tertiary characters of leather and dried fruit, with softening tannins and a garnet rim. It is in its hold now, and will keep for another three to five years before the fruit begins to fade.” That is a maturity statement. “This wine is ten years old” is not.
Vintage
Vintage knowledge supports a maturity assessment, and for classic regions it is expected. If you taste a tannic, concentrated Left Bank Bordeaux and judge it young, can you narrow the vintage from the style alone? That precision is rewarded.
The technique is to work in two steps. First, set a range from the maturity evidence in front of you: more than five years old, less than ten, because of this development and that structure. Then narrow within that range using what you know about the vintages within it and what the glass supports. Do not jump straight to a single year. Earn it.
Sometimes the question does the narrowing for you. If it simply asks you to state the vintage, worth perhaps two marks, then state it. Do not wrap a direct request in a paragraph of hedged reasoning it did not ask for. The same logic applies to questions asking you to state an ABV or a residual sugar figure directly: answer what was asked, at the level of precision it was asked at.
Where the question does not specifically ask for a vintage, treat it as a supporting detail rather than the headline. The nuance sits in the question, not in a fixed rule. Always answer what is actually being asked.
Method of Production: A Theory Exam Too
The practical exam is often described as a theory exam with wine in front of you. The production section is where technical knowledge meets the glass, and where the gap between genuine understanding and memorised formula becomes obvious.
Fortified, sparkling, and sweet wines are where this shows up most, because their production methods are the most distinctive and the most rewarding to discuss. If you cannot explain how the traditional method works, the timing of fortification, or how residual sugar remains in the wine, you are not ready for this exam. None of this is obscure. It comes up every year.
Kill the Stock Phrases
Winemaking answers fail for three different reasons, and each one costs marks differently.
Says nothing at all. “Fermentation to dryness” is true of almost every dry wine ever made. Stating it earns nothing. It is the winemaking equivalent of writing “the grapes were harvested.”
True, but a reflexive default. “Clear aspect points to fining and filtration before bottling” is often correct, and you can genuinely see it in the glass, so it can be a fair, easy mark. The fault is not the observation. The fault is reaching for it on every wine in every flight regardless of whether it is the most useful thing you could say. Use it when it is true and relevant. Do not lean on it as a default.
Specific-sounding, but generic. “Fermentation at 27 to 29 degrees with daily remontage for colour and tannin extraction” may well be entirely correct. That is exactly the problem. It is also correct for a very large number of reds that taste nothing like the one in your glass. A statement can be true and still earn no marks if it does nothing to separate this wine from the wine next to it, or from a thousand others made the same generic way. The examiner already suspects the numbers are plausible. What they want to know is what made this wine, this wine.
Examiners have named this failure directly, more than once. Philip Tuck MW’s 2017 Paper 1 report noted that many winemaking answers were simply trotted out without reference to either the wine or its possible origin, when the strongest answers linked winemaking choices back to climate and location. The same pattern recurred in 2016, specifically in the fortified wines section, where candidates were warned against overly formulaic answers.
It is worth separating winemaking from maturation while you are at it. Peter Mitchell MW’s 2019 Paper 2 report was blunt on this point: bottle age is not a winemaking technique. If a wine’s development in the glass comes from time in bottle rather than a decision the winemaker made, say so, but do not present one as the other.
If it reads like a generic answer, particularly if you have said it more than once, it is probably best to find something additional to say. These small details are the difference between an essay marked at 60% and another at 65%.
Typicity, Not Generic Winemaking
The most common weakness in production answers is the use of a generic winemaking template applied to every wine, regardless of origin. The examiner is not asking how red wine is made. They are asking what this winemaker did to this wine from this place.
What makes Brunello di Montalcino, Brunello? Long maceration. Extended ageing in large neutral oak botti. Connect what is in the glass to the region’s specific traditions.
Candidates who score well on production connect every observation to a specific technique. Extended lees contact becomes “48 months on the lees before disgorgement.” Warming alcohol with arrested sweetness becomes “fortification with grape spirit at around 77% ABV during fermentation.” These are not guesses. They are theory applied to sensory evidence, which is the whole point of the exercise.
Worth being attentive here, too: a flight built around one winemaking question usually has a genuine point of difference somewhere within it. Notice it.
What Is Absent Is Evidence Too
The absence of a technique is itself informative. No malolactic fermentation. No oak. No botrytis on a sweet wine. State the absence and connect it to the wine’s style and quality level. You do not need to prove the winemaker’s motive, only to notice what is not there, and say what it points to. Observe it, name it, connect it. Leave the psychoanalysis of the winemaker out of it.
Candidates consistently describe what they can detect and ignore what is absent. Every absent technique is an easy mark, sitting there unclaimed.
Be Precise
If you mention oak, say French or American, what percentage new, what size vessel, how long, and what level of toast. If you cite a fermentation temperature, give a narrow range. If you estimate residual sugar, commit to a figure in grams per litre, for example 120 to 130 g/l for a good Sauternes vintage. If you mention lees ageing, say how long it lasts. Vague quantification, “some oak,” “a period of ageing,” “sufficient residual sugar,” signals that you do not actually know. State only what you can actually taste, and evidence it, all the way through.
And if you claim to detect something, make sure it is plausible. Whole-bunch inclusion can occasionally show green or spicy notes if the stems were unripe, but that is not the effect examiners are testing for, and it is not what the technique is known for. A 1-micron pad filter cannot be tasted. Invented technical detail is usually obvious to anyone reading closely.
Commercial Position: Think Like a Merchant
Some of the more attainable marks on the paper sit here, and candidates routinely leave them unclaimed by answering too narrowly.
The Venue Trap
The most common weakness is an answer built almost entirely around venue, on-trade against off-trade, supermarket against independent, with everything else left out. Peter Mitchell MW’s 2019 Paper 2 report caught this directly: he found that market position was poorly answered by candidates who either thought naming a price covered it, or said the wine would work well in a steakhouse.
There is a second, related blind spot. Mitchell also observed that far too many candidates, mostly from the US and UK, considered only where a wine would sit in their own domestic market, ignoring other countries and the relevant local markets, which in many cases would matter more. Do not answer this question from your own postcode. Think globally, then narrow.
Here is why venue alone matters so little. “This wine would succeed in fine dining restaurants” tells the examiner where it might be poured. It says nothing about price, buyer, competition, or whether the market is growing or shrinking. Think of yourself as the sales director for this wine. Where would you focus your effort? At what price? In which markets? Against which competitors? For which consumers? A full commercial answer covers:
Price point. Be specific. “Premium” is not a price point. “£15 to £20 retail in the UK” is. Your price should match your quality assessment.
Markets. Where is this wine sold outside its home market? A Barossa Shiraz has a different commercial footprint from a Côtes du Rhône. If a wine’s production is heavily concentrated in one export market, say so. It shows real commercial awareness.
Competitive set. What else competes at this price and quality level? A £12 Malbec from Mendoza competes with Côtes du Rhône, Primitivo, and Chilean Cab on the same shelf.
Consumer. Who buys this wine? Are they adventurous or conservative? That distinction matters, and it changes the answer.
Choose and Justify
Some questions push you to choose a single sector and defend it. Do not hedge across three channels. Pick the one where the wine has the best chance, and justify it with evidence from the glass and the market.
The Wine No One Wants
Some wines in the exam are commercially difficult. A vin jaune from the Jura. A Vin Santo del Chianti Classico. An aged white Rioja. These are genuinely interesting wines that most consumers have never heard of and might not enjoy on first taste.
Resist the urge to oversell their potential. The examiner knows these wines are niche. Naming the real challenges – limited awareness, an acquired taste, small production, high price against more familiar alternatives – shows real understanding. It also lets you answer the more interesting question: how would you actually sell this to someone who has never tried it?
Bold, Not Reckless
Original thinking earns marks. But there is a line between bold and merely bizarre, and it is worth knowing where it sits.
One student, tasting a Champagne, suggested it could be targeted at a sponsorship deal with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. Genuinely original, and not indefensible, but the kind of idea that risks reading as flippant rather than commercially astute, however entertaining it might be to write.
The test is simple. Can you justify it with a straight face, using evidence from the glass and the market? If yes, be bold. The examiners reward original thought over safe, generic answers. If you are reaching for novelty rather than making a real argument, pull back. An examiner is not looking to be entertained. They are looking to be convinced.
The Traps
Inventing What You Cannot Taste
Examiners see this pattern every year. The candidate decides what the wine is, then writes descriptors that match the identification rather than what is actually in the glass.
You decide it is Australian Shiraz. You write “eucalyptus” and “chocolate” because those fit your mental model, even though you cannot smell them. You decide it is Burgundy and write “elegant” and “silky tannins” even though the wine is robust and tannic. The examiner knows what the wine is. They can see your descriptors do not match. Now they doubt everything else you have written.
The discipline is simple. Describe first, conclude second. Write what you see, smell, and taste before you decide what the wine is. If the evidence does not quite fit your conclusion, say so. “The high tannin is unexpected for what I believe is Pinot Noir, but the perfumed red fruit and pale colour are more consistent with this variety than any alternative” is honest, and it earns marks. Inventing “silky tannins” to tidy up a Pinot Noir misidentification earns nothing.
This is what we call shoehorning: forcing the evidence to fit a conclusion you have already committed to, usually out of doubt, and a need to put something, anything, on the page. It is understandable. It is also the fastest way to lose an examiner’s confidence in everything else you have written. That said, an imperfect answer, honestly reasoned, still beats a blank page. The goal is not silence when you are unsure. It is honesty about what does and does not fit.
Conclusion at the Top
Write your conclusion, identification and quality level at the top of every answer, not the bottom. This lets the examiner follow your logic with the answer already in mind, and award marks for valid reasoning even where they disagree with your conclusion. It also protects you. If you run out of time, your identification is already on the page. This applies to every answer, not only identification. Always write the conclusion first. It is easier to mark, and easier to write.
The Evidence-First Sentence
This is the practical exam’s version of leading with the principle in a theory essay. The observation leads. The deduction follows.
Evidence-first: “High, brisk acidity combined with aromas of green pepper and grapefruit point directly to Sauvignon Blanc.”
Conclusion-first: “I think this is Sauvignon Blanc because of the acidity and green pepper.”
The first shows the reasoning. The examiner can follow the logic and award marks even if the final identification is wrong. The second states the answer first and justifies it afterwards, forcing the examiner to work backwards to check your reasoning.
This applies to every section of the note, not only identification. “Subtle vanilla and toast from 20% new French oak barriques over 12 months” is evidence-first. “The wine was aged in oak, as suggested by the vanilla notes” is conclusion-first. Train yourself to put the observation before the deduction, every time.
Building the Instinct
Everything in this guide describes a conscious process. Identify. Assess quality. Judge maturity. Connect to production. Place commercially. Lead with evidence. Kill the stock phrases.
At first it will feel slow and mechanical. That is normal. You are building a structure that will eventually run on its own. The goal is not to think through each step in the exam. The goal is to have practised it so many times that the structure runs automatically, leaving your attention free for what is actually in the glass.
Think of Jonny Wilkinson lining up a goal kick. The power, the posture, the technique, none of it arrived by accident. Hundreds of hours on the training field, kicking from every angle and distance, in every weather, weighing wind and angle and distance, with a coach beside him correcting his stance and his technique the entire time. On match day, it comes together, and the ball goes through the posts. That is not talent. That is practice, coaching, and time.
No one is born to be an MW. I am living proof of that. There is no code to unlock. There is only the work: practising until quality assessment is instinctive, until maturity means trajectory and not age, until “fermentation to dryness” makes you wince before you have even finished writing it. And at every stage, you need someone who has been through it to read your work cold and tell you what you cannot see yourself. Every Master of Wine has needed exactly this to get where they are.
One Final Thought
This is not a parlour game. It is a test of whether you can consistently build a logical, evidence-led argument from sensory data under pressure. The wines are the medium. The reasoning is the skill. And most of the marks sit in the reasoning, not the identification.
The gap between a candidate who tastes well and one who passes is not in the glass. It is on the page. It is the quality assessment that situates a wine within its regional context rather than calling it “good.” It is the maturity note that reads like a trajectory rather than a birthday. It is the production section that explains what makes Brunello, Brunello, not what makes red wine, red wine. It is the commercial answer that thinks like a merchant, not a sommelier picking a wine by the glass.
These are skills. They are learnable and measurable, and they improve with honest, structured feedback. I have seen a candidate score over 80% of the marks on one wine despite misidentifying it (admittedly, a tough and obscure wine). The wrong identification cost her perhaps two marks. Everywhere else- quality, maturity, production, commercial- her reasoning was sound, specific, and evidenced, and the marks followed the reasoning, not the label. She had clearly rehearsed this many times over. Get the reasoning right, and the identification barely matters.
Become the Points Monster. Extract every available mark from quality, maturity, production, and commercial position. Practise the discipline with structured feedback until the structure runs on its own, and your judgement is free. Identification improves with tasting experience. The discipline, like a piece of music learned slowly and correctly rather than rushed and wrong, improves with coaching.
That is what I do.
Richard Ballantyne MW is the founder of MW Exam Coaching, a coaching platform for MW students offering structured, MW-standard feedback on theory essays and dry tasting. To find out more, visit richardballantynemw.co.uk.