Certified Sommelier Study Guide: Free Cheatsheet

Certified is three exams in one day: theory, two wines blind on the deductive grid, and a service practical judged while you work. You need 60 percent in each part, and theory will not carry a weak service round. Below: the classifications, aging minimums and markers the exam keeps returning to.

The exam: three parts, one sitting

Grading is per part, not pooled. The examiner interrupts with theory questions mid pour, and the interruption is the test.

Viticulture and vinification

• Pruning: Guyot replaces canes yearly (one single, two double) plus a spur for next year. Cordon keeps a permanent arm cut to spurs. Gobelet is bush trained.
• Noble rot needs misty mornings then dry afternoons. Constant humidity gives gray rot instead: hence Sauternes, Tokaj and the Layon beside water.
• Warm climate acidity rests on diurnal swing, not shade or soil: cold nights slow malic respiration.

France

Bordeaux

The 1855 classification ranked 61 red châteaux in five growths from Médoc brokers’ price lists, amended once, in 1973.

Sauternes was ranked in the same exercise, d’Yquem alone as Premier Cru Supérieur. Saint-Émilion and Pomerol were never in it.

• Graves (1959): one unranked tier, classified for red, white, or both. All now inside Pessac-Léognan, created 1987.
• Saint-Émilion: reassessed roughly every decade. Grand Cru is an appellation, not a rank. Ranks: Grand Cru Classé, Premier Grand Cru Classé B, then A.
• Pomerol: no classification. Clay over iron rich crasse de fer, Merlot led.
• Left bank gravel drains freely and radiates stored heat at night, suiting late ripening Cabernet Sauvignon. See Bordeaux.

Burgundy

Chablis Grand Cru is one appellation holding seven climats on one southwest facing Kimmeridgian slope: Blanchot, Bougros, Les Clos, Grenouilles, Les Preuses, Valmur, Vaudésir. Les Clos largest, Grenouilles smallest.

Rhône

Châteauneuf-du-Pape lists thirteen varieties, eighteen with color mutations separated, including Counoise, Muscardin and Vaccarèse. Carignan is not one. See Grenache vs Syrah.

Champagne, Loire, Alsace, Jura, southwest

• Champagne: the échelle des crus rated villages by percentage, 100 percent grand cru (17 villages), 90 to 99 premier cru. From the 4,000 kilogram marc, 2,050 liters is the cuvée and 500 the taille. Non vintage ages 15 months, vintage three years.
• Loire: Quarts de Chaume, botrytized Chenin in the Coteaux du Layon, became the Loire’s first Grand Cru in 2011. Savennières holds Coulée de Serrant, a one estate appellation.
• Alsace: 51 grand crus, each its own appellation. Vendange Tardive and Sélection de Grains Nobles are limited to Riesling, Muscat, Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer, must weight minimums higher for the last two. Only SGN demands botrytized berries picked one by one.
• Jura: Château-Chalon makes vin jaune only: Savagnin, six years and three months minimum under a veil of yeast, no topping up, in the 620 milliliter clavelin.
• Southwest: Tannat in Madiran, where micro-oxygenation was developed to tame it. Malbec in Cahors, Négrette in Fronton.

Italy

DOCG, then DOC, IGT, Vino. The exam wants the numbers.

• Piedmont: Barolo’s communes are Barolo, La Morra, Castiglione Falletto, Serralunga d’Alba, Monforte d’Alba. Barbaresco has Barbaresco, Neive, Treiso. An MGA is a named vineyard, not a rank. See Barolo vs Barbaresco.
• Tuscany: the 2021 revision took Gran Selezione to 90 percent Sangiovese and excluded international varieties. Brunello is 100 percent Sangiovese.
• Veneto: appassimento in the fruttaio concentrates fruit for Amarone, which ferments dry. Recioto stops sweet. Ripasso referments Valpolicella on Amarone pomace.
• Elsewhere: Etna Rosso is 80 percent minimum Nerello Mascalese, mapped by contrada. Taurasi is Aglianico. Franciacorta Satèn is white grapes only, five atmospheres maximum.

Spain and Portugal

Rioja Baja became Rioja Oriental in 2018: warmest, driest, good for Garnacha. Geographic tiers sit alongside: Vino de Zona, Vino de Municipio, Viñedo Singular.

• Priorat: llicorella, slate and quartz draining sharply, forcing roots deep. Its ladder climbs vi de vila, vi de paratge, classified single vineyards. Compare Rioja and Ribera.
• Douro: the beneficio caps how much of a crop may be fortified each year. The rest becomes unfortified Douro DOC.
• Portugal: Baga in Bairrada, Touriga Nacional in the Dão, Alvarinho in Vinho Verde.
• Madeira: canteiro is slow cask aging in warm lofts, for the best wines. Estufagem heats bulk wine in tanks. Sercial to Malmsey runs dry to sweet.

Germany and Austria

Grosses Gewächs is the dry wine from a VDP Grosse Lage site: capped yields, hand harvesting, delayed release. Sweet wines from those sites use Prädikat terms. An Einzellage is one delimited vineyard, a Grosslage groups many, and both print in the same village plus site format.

• Trocken caps residual sugar at 9 grams per liter, halbtrocken at 18. Slate on the Mosel stores daytime heat and returns it at night, on slopes steep enough to raise the effective intensity of northern sunlight.
• Austria: Smaragd is the ripest Wachau category, named for a lizard, not a sweetness level. Weinviertel was the first DAC, built on peppery unoaked Grüner Veltliner.

The rest of Europe

• Hungary: Tokaji from Furmint and Hárslevelű. Aszú berries are botrytized and picked by hand, and modern Aszú carries high residual sugar and long cask aging, labeled 5 or 6 puttonyos.
• Greece: Assyrtiko on Santorini, trained into basket shaped kouloura against the wind. Xinomavro in Naoussa reads like Nebbiolo blind.
• Elsewhere: England on chalk shared with the Paris basin. Chasselas in Switzerland, Fendant in the Valais. Plavac Mali in Dingač. Georgia ferments in buried qvevri.

USA and the Americas

Labeling law: 75 percent minimum for a varietal name (Oregon 90 percent for most varieties), 85 percent for an AVA, 95 percent for a vintage on an AVA wine.

Hold Walla Walla, Red Mountain, and Canadian Icewine, pressed from grapes frozen on the vine. See Napa vs Sonoma, Willamette, Mendoza.

Southern hemisphere

South Africa nests ward inside district inside region. Pinotage is a 1925 crossing of Pinot Noir and Cinsault. See Barossa, Central Otago, Stellenbosch.

Sparkling

• Lees autolysis gives brioche and a finer mousse as yeast cells release mannoproteins. Riddling gathers the deposit, disgorgement expels it, dosage sets the balance.
• Cava: Cava de Guarda 9 months on the lees, Reserva 18, Gran Reserva 30, Cava de Paraje Calificado 36. See Cava vs Crémant.
• Prosecco: tank method, Glera led, Conegliano Valdobbiadene and Asolo the DOCGs.

Fortified

Wine is drawn from the solera, the oldest scale, in the saca, then replaced from the first criadera and up the line. VOS certifies 20 years average age, VORS 30.

Vins doux naturels such as Banyuls are fortified mid fermentation (mutage), locking in sweetness. Rutherglen Muscat climbs Rutherglen, Classic, Grand, Rare. See Port vs Sherry.

Spirits, beer, and sake

Service and hospitality

• Sparkling: cage loosened, never removed. Thumb on the cork, hold the cork still and turn the bottle beneath it at 45 degrees. No report, no spill.
• Old red with sediment: stand it upright well beforehand, then decant gently off the sediment against a light just before service. Clarity, not aeration.
• Beverage cost is purchase price divided by selling price: bought at 20, listed at 60, about 33 percent. Most lists tighten the margin at the top.
• Pairing: a dish more acidic than the wine flattens it, so match or exceed the sauce. Tannin collides with sharp acidity and salt.
• The practical: greet, repeat the order back, present, open, pour the host a taste, serve from the right. Answer theory without stopping your hands.

The deductive tasting grid on a clock

Two wines, roughly 25 minutes, written. Structure first, name last. Full walkthrough on the deductive tasting grid.

• High acid, lower alcohol, lighter body points cool. Low acid, high alcohol, fuller body points warm. Read structure before fruit: a warm region picked early fakes ripeness.
• Black pepper (rotundone), cured olive, violet and firm tannin reads northern Rhône Syrah. Red fruit, higher alcohol, soft tannin reads Grenache.
• Never call a wine your own grid contradicts.

The week before

• Drill the service sequence daily, out loud, with a real bottle and a timer.
• Blind taste two wines in 25 minutes, written, at least three times.
• Rebuild the aging minimums and ladders from a blank page, not by rereading.
• Cover spirits, beer and sake: cheapest marks on the paper, most commonly skipped.
• Sit a full mock: Certified practice exam, then flashcards. On the parallel qualification too? See the WSET hub.

Study this with Sommo

Reading a cheatsheet once is not studying. Sommo turns it into daily reps: spaced repetition on the classifications you keep dropping, adaptive sessions that hunt weak categories, and a wrong answer bank that returns until the gap closes. Download Sommo free.