In the spring I decided to do something different. Just for fun I decided to signup for more formal training in wine appreciation. After a couple of years off occasionally taking casual classes at The Texas Wine School  I signed up for the more formal Wine & Spirit Educational Trust Level 2 Award, aka WSET 2.

I undertook this adventure along with my brother-in-law, Fred Salumunek. The WSET 2 classes took six weeks to complete, including a written exam. I happy to announce that I passed “with merit” and Fred passed “with distinction.”

Fred and I dove into wine as an area of interest at about the same time.  It’s funny, back then I had decided to sign up for Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV monthly wine club. That meant a monthly shipment of wines, to be tasted while viewing a recorded tasting online. It was a way to force us to try different wines, and hopefully come to appreciate them. Our first time was in April 2009.

Back then we both such simpletons. Now we’re truly wine-soaked simpletons. Now we are not only certifiable, but actually certified.

The very fact that we’ve gone through this schooling allows me to use the WSET logo that you see here. It remains unlikely that I will ever devolve into a wine blogger, but I thought it fun to use it at least this once.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled Sunday afternoon.