Wine study

 I like wine. I enjoy a glass of wine with a meal. I love to celebrate with champagne. But I never thought I'd be interested enough to study wine and earn a certificate from the world's leading provider of qualifications to the wine and spirit trade, and to enthusiasts like me. 
Wine got me by the throat, literally, on Christmas day nearly twenty years ago. 
I was in Ottrott, Alsace, where I'd had spent a convivial Christmas Eve with my husband and other family members playing charades by a log fire in our hotel, before a splendid Réveillon de Noël dinner, followed by a walk through the snow to midnight Mass.
On Christmas morning, the hotel was quiet. The fire unlit. The main festivities were over. Everything in the town was closed. How would we spend the day? The hotelier suggested his friend, Monsieur Seltz, a wine-grower in nearby Mittelbergheim might give us a private tasting. He could, and he did. 
We perched on high stools at the bar in his tasting room. M. Seltz placed six glasses, a spitoon and a carafe of water on the counter, and produced a bottle of Riesling. The only Riesling I knew was German, not dry, and low in alcohol. I liked it because you could share a bottle before going to the cinema/theatre/opera, and still follow the plot. 
This Riesling was dry, almost austere. I liked it. Then we tasted lesser-known varieties - Sylvaner, Pinot Gris, and finally, Gewurtztraminer. The latter I knew only as a wine it was said could be drunk with Chinese food - a proposition I had never tested. I lifted my glass, and realised for the first time what was meant by ‘nose’. I smelled roses, and pineapple? Melon? And something else I couldn’t quite place. I took a sip, swirled it around my mouth. And then I got it. That elusive scent, now taste, was ginger. My curiosity was sparked. How could grapes become wine that tasted of ginger? I began to read about viniculture, grape varieties, ‘terroir’. I was hooked. 
When we moved to Belfast in 2014, we joined the Northern Ireland Wine and Spirit Institute and enjoyed regular tastings with other enthusiasts, mostly more knowledgeable than I am - including my husband who did his wine studies in London and has a diploma from WSET. It was he who suggested I take the exam and get a qualification. So a couple of months ago I attended a course at  Direct Wine Shipments in Belfast, and then sat down with twenty other students, most of them in the wine trade and all younger than I am, to take the Level 2 Examination. 
I am now the surprised, and yes, proud holder of a Level 2 certificate. 
It qualifies me to look for a job in the wine trade - a sommelière, perhaps? But I'm past retirement age. I'm content to enjoy the extra enjoyment that knowledge brings.