Wine Exam Day Checklist: Free Printable for WSET & CMS
A free printable exam day checklist for WSET and Court of Master Sommeliers candidates: what to pack, what to do the night before, and timing on the day.
Nothing on this list will teach you anything. That is the point: the week of the exam is not where knowledge is built, it is where knowledge gets wasted by a missing ID, a bad night’s sleep, or twenty minutes lost to a question you should have skipped.
Print it, work down it, and give the morning back to your nerves.
Two weeks out
- Confirm the exam date, time, and venue in writing, and check whether it is the venue you assume it is
- Check what photo ID your provider requires, and that the name on it matches your registration exactly
- Book the travel, and plan for arriving an hour early rather than on time
- Take a full mock exam under real timing, in one sitting, without notes
- Identify your two weakest topics from that mock and give the next fortnight to them
One week out
- Take a second full mock and compare, not for the score but for which mistakes repeated
- Work only from your wrong answers now, not from the syllabus
- If there is a tasting paper, taste at exam time of day rather than in the evening
- Move your sleep schedule if the exam is earlier than you usually wake
- Print or download anything you plan to read on the journey
The night before
- Pack the bag: ID, candidate number or confirmation, two black pens, water
- Check the venue’s rules on bags, phones, and smartwatches, and plan for the strictest reading
- Set two alarms
- Eat normally, and do not drink
- Twenty minutes of flashcards, then stop. Nothing new after this point
- Brush your teeth well tonight if you have a tasting paper tomorrow
The morning
- Eat something plain and substantial
- No coffee, chili, mint, or strong cheese before a tasting paper
- Rinse with water rather than mouthwash
- Leave early enough that traffic is an inconvenience rather than a disaster
- Twenty minutes of retrieval practice on the journey, on material you know
- Arrive, find the room, use the bathroom, sit down, breathe
In the room
- Read the instructions properly, including the mark allocations
- Note the finish time on your paper before you start
- Multiple choice: answer every question, eliminate before you guess, flag and return rather than stall
- Written papers: read the command word first, then sketch a structure, then write
- Tasting papers: work the grid in order, do not skip back, and never leave the conclusions blank
- Watch the clock at the halfway point, not at the end
Afterwards
- Do not compare answers in the corridor. It changes nothing and costs a week of sleep
- Write down anything you found hard while it is fresh, if another unit is coming
- Then leave it alone
If you are still in the study phase, the study planner builds a schedule backward from your exam date, and the WSET and sommelier tool hubs cover the drilling.
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Common questions
Photo ID matching your registration exactly, your candidate number or confirmation email, two black pens, and water. Check your provider's instructions, since some venues prohibit bags, phones, and smartwatches in the exam room and some supply pens themselves. Bring the ID even if you have sat there before.
Light retrieval only, and only on material you already know. Twenty minutes of flashcards steadies the nerves and warms up recall. Opening a topic you have not covered does the opposite: it manufactures panic an hour before you need to be calm, and nothing learned that morning survives the exam anyway.
Something plain and substantial, and nothing that lingers. Avoid coffee, chili, mint, strong cheese, and toothpaste immediately before tasting, all of which stay on the palate longer than people expect. Brush your teeth the night before, and rinse with water in the morning.
Slow the first thirty seconds down deliberately. Nerves make candidates rush the appearance section, which is where the anchoring happens, and a rushed start compounds through the whole grid. Say the calls out loud in the order the grid asks for them, even under your breath, because the structure is what carries you when the wine is unfamiliar.
Leave it and move on, then come back. In multiple choice, eliminate the two options you are confident are wrong and pick between the rest; an unanswered question is worth nothing while a fifty-fifty guess is worth half a mark on average. In written papers, write the structure of the answer first and fill it in, because partial structure earns partial marks.