Add colour to your WSET Diploma exam answers with this ONE trick…

This post was originally sent by email as part of Anne’s newsletter for Diploma students. If you would like to receive the weekly email, you can sign up for free here .

I’ve got a great tip for you this week on how you can add colour to your exam answers and impress the examiners WITHOUT investing a huge amount of time in learning extra facts.

Although the Diploma PDF textbooks already contain a huge amount of information, I nevertheless recommend using a few other sources to make sure that your knowledge and your exam answers are well-rounded and interesting to read.

Amongst my favourite ‘extra’ sources are the weekly trade email newsletters from publications like?The Drinks Business,?Harpers?and?Meiningers International.

‘But Anne, I am finding it challenging enough to remember everything from the WSET PDFs. How am I supposed to absorb the content from hundreds of online trade articles too?!’

The answer is that?you don’t have to absorb ALL of it.

Often, the little article snippet that appears in the email is enough to give you a juicy soundbite of information that will be really useful in a theory answer. I find these particularly helpful for those questions that ask for references to?potential,?opportunities,?challenges?or?threats.

If you have time, you can click into the article to get further facts, figures and context (sometimes you may wish to do this VERY quickly, with a quick skim to capture the article’s key message, or even give the URL to your favourite AI tool like Chat GPT, Gemini or Claude and ask it to give you the key message(s) or a short summary), but if you DON’T have time, then you’d be amazed at how useful it will be just to capture the snippet?(you could screenshot it and add it into your electronic notes, or if your notes are in hard copy then you can simply jot down the essential details of the soundbite into the relevant section of your folder, along with the publication and date).

Here are some examples, taken from?The Drinks Business?and?Harpers?this week and last week:

Snippet no. 1:

How it could be used in an exam:?Pinot Noir in Alsace is a topical and potentially very examinable subject, since plantings have been growing steadily and in many cases have been replacing Gewurztraminer plantings. So the recognition of a third Grand Cru for Pinot Noir is evidence of the commercial significance of this grape variety and the respect being granted it by the region’s authorities. And because it is up-to-date knowledge, it will really impress the examiners.

Snippet no. 2:

How it could be used in an exam:?There was a question not long ago about the strengths and weaknesses of Greece; whilst that exact question is unlikely to come up again soon, there could definitely be something about the potential for Greek wine, and a snippet like this is brilliant because it gives you the key statistic without you having to read the whole article. This would be a fantastic piece of supporting evidence for the effectiveness of the ‘promotion’ part of the ‘5 Ps’ of the marketing mix and really great to add in to an answer.

Snippet no. 3:

How it could be used in an exam:?A SWOT-style question in a D4 exam might ask you for opportunities, potential, threats or challenges for the Champagne region, and this is a perfect little statistic to be able to quote when discussing both the opportunities and threats for Champagne when it comes to climate change.

Snippet no. 4:

How it could be used in an exam:?This is an example of one where it is probably useful to click into the article – you could surmise from the snippet that the Languedoc is experimenting with new varieties and still use that in your exam answer, but you’ll probably get more out of it if you skim the article and realise that they’re referring primarily to Assyrtiko (interesting, right?) but it won’t take you a lot of time to do this. I did this in seconds and if I were a student I would definitely add this interesting soundbite to my Languedoc notes.

Snippet no. 5:

How it could be used in an exam: Again this is another example of one where you’ll probably get more out of it if you skim the article. If you just captured the snippet you would still have learned that there is an oversupply in SE Australia, which is useful information, but if you click on the link and skim the piece, you’ll see that this is both a ‘supply and demand’ and ‘consumer preferences’ market story and a viticulture story, with climate change underscoring both. There isn’t enough wine with bright fruit and freshness being made any more from this region due to the intense heat, and so viticultural adaptation is required. Really useful stuff for an exam question on this region.

I hope those have given you some interesting food for thought! If you’d like more tips like this, join my Diploma student email list here .