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Why the WSET is the UK’s greatest gift to the world of wine

20 September 2024 By Patrick Schmitt

London’s merchants may be skilled at cross-border fine wine trading, and English fizz has certainly grown in global reputation, but if I were to name the UK’s greatest gift to the world of wine, it would be education.

That was the note I penned to myself after a dinner last night at London’s Vintners’ Hall held to celebrate 55 years since the foundation of the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET), which is the globally-recognised industry standard for drinks qualifications, not only taking in wine and spirits, but also sake, and most recently beer too.

Although it is an organisation that was founded in 1969 to improve the UK’s economic performance through education following the government’s 1964 Industrial Training Act, it is the WSET’s international reach that has brought it worldwide fame, and longstanding success, with over 80% of students from beyond Britain’s borders.

Credit for the organisation’s international expansion was given by WSET chair Simon McMurtrie to former WSET CEO Ian Harris, who was present at last night’s celebration alongside current CEO Michelle Brampton, and many other high-profile drinks industry figures who had gathered for the event.

Speaking at the dinner, McMurtrie recorded, “The WSET was founded to support drinks education in the UK but after the WSET team had participated at an event in France with great success and found themselves providing materials to people in Belgium, America, Denmark and even Ireland, the objects of the WSET were changed in 1973 so that they now read (as they still do today) ‘the Trust is established to provide education and training of persons who are engaged with the wine and spirit trade whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere’.”

Continuing, he said, “’Or elsewhere’ provided the inspiration for Michelle’s charismatic predecessor, Ian Harris, to accelerate the expansion of WSET’s reach right across the world into multiple languages and territories with tremendous success.”

Brampton would later address the attendees, and report that the WSET has educated as many as 1.5 million students since 1969, and now provides 72 courses in 83 countries.

It was on the trust’s 50^th birthday that I chaired a panel discussion of WSET Diploma graduates on how studying for this qualification had given them a firm foundation in the wine trade.

During that event Harris told me that the WSET’s first international course was run in 1977 in Toronto, for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, while stressing that education had played a key role in the success of the drinks trade.

“The more people know about the product, the more they will be prepared to spend,” Harris said five years ago, which was before his retirement in 2022.

Meanwhile, the trust’s most famous alumni, Jancis Robinson OBE, MW, said during that same discussion that success with the WSET Diploma had led her to become a Master of Wine. She pointed out that the WSET had taken her on an educational journey that proved to her peers that wine was serious topic. “When I graduated in the early ’70s wine was seen as an utterly frivolous subject, and my friends would have said it was a waste of an Oxford education,” she admitted.

Also present at that event was Jon Pepper MW, then CEO at Enotria & Co, now president of the Tenute del Mondo Wine Group, who rightly stressed the huge value of the WSET’s systematic approach to tasting. “It has created a more homogenised way of talking about wine”, he said. “This is important with a subject like wine, which is so emotive and widely panned, because it enables wine professionals around the world to talk a common language,” he added.

Meanwhile, I think it’s important to record another point made at that 50^th anniversary event, which concerned the positive feelings generated through learning. “People talk about endorphins from exercise, and I think there is a mental counterpart: the joy of learning; it gives you a high,” said Robinson.

Revisiting the points from that discussion, and listening to the speakers last night, I’m reminded of the huge and far-reaching impact of the WSET. As I thought following the organisation’s 50^th anniversary celebrations, and again after its 55^th birthday yesterday evening, the WSET has played an instrumental role in the careers of some of the wine industry’s most influential personalities while creating a solid base of informed consumers around the world.

Such a service has been vital for the sustained success of the drinks trade, and it’s why, in my view, the WSET has proved to be the UK’s greatest gift to the world of wine.