I’m just back from the Odney S2 seminar and my brain feels like it’s overflowing!
One of the mandatory components of being a student in the MW program is your attendance and participation in a weeklong residential seminar held sometime in January-February. Options for S2 this year were Napa, Pfalz in Germany, Odney in the UK, and Adelaide in Australia. I chose Odney as it has the reputation of being one of the best- closest to the “mothership” as the MW is a British-based program, and known for offering really strong training for the practical component. It was like living in a Harry Potter film for the week- all of us staying on the same campus at the Odney Club, sharing meals together daily, learning together, and venturing into the local town, Cookham, for half-pints every night to decompress.
The seminar is a week full of mock exams every morning with feedback, theory breakout sessions, tastings, and workshops. It’s an excellent opportunity to network with fellow students and MWs from around the globe.
Here’s a snippet of our schedule….
My biggest takeaways from the week:
The people. I had SO much fun spending time with friends made in year 1 of the MW, and felt like I met another 20+ lifelong friends. There’s great camaraderie and Odney is in the middle of a tiny town called Cookham which had a myriad of pubs for us students to frequent and not think about wine for a few hours each evening. On a serious note, the caliber of people in this program is astounding. It’s always such an honor to spend time with folk who are absolute masters of their craft.
Dry notes. At this point, it’s not really about tasting as much as you can but more about practicing as much as you can. The need for working on method of production notes in particular is a big takeaway I had- particular with fortified/sweet styles.
Our best resource at this point is each other. Other MW students are typically quite specialized in what they do- i.e., while I don’t have any knowledge of how the Chinese market works, an importer from China was there. And winemakers from around the globe, brand managers for big Champagne houses, buyers for big European retailers, etc. All of the examples we need to pass the theory papers could theoretically be found just within the group at the seminar!
The MW program is a lot of work and a lot of rules, but ultimately, if you follow the rules and are willing to do the work- you can get there. It was really inspiring for me to see a clear path forward and feel like I finally understand what is expected of me and how to go about doing it.
My friend Bella brought a Riesling from my birth year for us to share at the BYOB/raid the IMW cellar dinner on the final evening. What a special bottle and friend!
