Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers knew what they were singing about in 1981.  The waiting is the hardest part.  It’s been 71 days.  And TODAY I got the great word about passing the exam for Unit 5 of the WSET Diploma.  It takes awhile, apparently, for tasting notes and essay questions to be sent to London and then hand-graded.  Being that Unit 5 is on Sparkling Wines, naturally I want to pop a cork!

The exam consisted of a practical tasting paper, where I analyzed three unidentified sparkling wines and submitted a detailed description of each according to the WSET Level 4 Systematic Approach to Tasting Wine.  Immediately following the tasting, I wrote three brief essays, answering a random selection of questions on knowledge related to sparkling wine.  Time to complete the entire exam was an hour.

Earlier in the day, I completed an exam for Unit 2 of WSET’s Diploma program covering Wine Production.  Because this exam was strictly theory, those delightful results came back more quickly – 39 days.

Back to Tom Petty.  The chorus of The Waiting goes:

The waiting is the hardest part

Every day you get one more yard

You take it on faith, you take it to the heart

The waiting is the hardest part

Yep, every day I was one yard closer to results but it seemed a million miles.  Guess I’d better decide what I’m opening tonight – so many options would be appropriate: Champagne, Cava, Prosecco, Sekt, Crémant, Blanquette de Limoux, Franciacorta, Lambrusco, Asti, Sparkling Shiraz, Clairette de Die…choices, choices.

I’m grinning ear-to-ear, thinking of the song’s opening lines:

Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now,

Don’t it feel like something from a dream?

All I can say is:  Santé!