WSET Glossary: Every SAT Term the Exams Actually Mark

The Systematic Approach to Tasting

Systematic Approach to Tasting (SAT). WSET’s fixed method for assessing wine in a set order: appearance, nose, palate, conclusions. Every tasting mark at Level 2 and above is awarded against its printed lexicon, which is why the exact words matter.

Appearance. The first section of the grid: intensity and colour, assessed with the glass tilted against a white background. It carries few marks but sets up expectations the nose and palate should confirm or contradict.

Intensity (appearance). How much colour the wine shows, on a scale of pale, medium, deep. Judged at the core of the wine, not the rim.

Colour. The named hues the SAT accepts: lemon-green, lemon, gold, amber, and brown for whites; pink, salmon, and orange for rosé; purple, ruby, garnet, tawny, and brown for reds. The exam wants one of these words, not “straw” or “brick”.

Condition. Whether the nose is clean or unclean. Unclean means a fault is present, and at Level 3 you are expected to suspect which one.

Development. Where the aromas sit in the wine’s life: youthful, developing, fully developed, or tired and past its best. It is a nose call, made on the balance of primary against tertiary character.

Conclusions. The final section of the grid: an assessment of quality and, at Level 3, readiness for drinking. This is where the tasting paper is won, because conclusions must be justified from the observations above them.

Readiness for drinking. The Level 3 ageing call, with four accepted answers: too young; can drink now, but has potential for ageing; drink now, not suitable for ageing or further ageing; too old. The justification must cite structure, such as tannin and acidity that will sustain development.

Structure terms: sweetness, acidity, tannin, alcohol, body

Sweetness scale. Dry, off-dry, medium-dry, medium-sweet, sweet, luscious. It describes perceptible residual sugar on the palate, and the exam expects most still wines to sit at dry or off-dry.

Dry. No perceptible residual sugar. Not the same as bitter or astringent, a confusion the multiple choice papers exploit regularly.

Acidity. The mouth-watering freshness of a wine, called low, medium, or high, with medium(-) and medium(+) available at Level 3. The reliable test is how much your mouth waters after swallowing, not tartness of flavour.

Tannin. The drying, grippy compound from grape skins, stems, and oak, assessed for level (low to high) and, in a good note, texture: ripe and soft against unripe and astringent. Tannin is detected by feel on the gums, not by taste.

Alcohol. Assessed as low, medium, or high. For still wines the Level 3 bands are commonly taught as below 11% abv for low, 11% to 13.9% for medium, and 14% and above for high; fortified wines use their own higher bands.

Body. The overall weight and mouthfeel of the wine, from light to full, produced mainly by alcohol, sugar, and extract. Body is a conclusion your palate reaches, not a single measurable component.

Mousse. The texture of a sparkling wine’s bubbles: delicate, creamy, or aggressive. Only assessed for sparkling wines, and easy marks if you remember it exists.

Finish. The sensations that persist after swallowing or spitting. The SAT measures its length, from short to long, and length is one of the four BLIC quality criteria.

Balance. The integration of sweetness, acidity, tannin, alcohol, and flavour so that nothing protrudes. The first and most quoted of the BLIC criteria.

Nose and palate: intensity, clusters, primary to tertiary

Aroma and flavour intensity. How pronounced the aromas or flavours are: light, medium, pronounced, with medium(-) and medium(+) at Level 3. Intensity on the nose and intensity on the palate are separate calls and can legitimately differ.

Primary aromas. Aromas from the grape and fermentation: fruit, floral, and herbaceous characters. A youthful wine is dominated by them.

Secondary aromas. Aromas created by winemaking after fermentation: oak (vanilla, toast, smoke), malolactic character (butter, cream), and lees influence (bread, biscuit). The exam loves asking which process produced which smell.

Tertiary aromas. Aromas from ageing, whether oxidative (caramel, coffee, toffee) or from time in bottle (dried fruit, mushroom, forest floor, petrol, honey). Their prominence drives the development call.

Aroma clusters. The SAT groups descriptors into families: floral, green fruit, citrus fruit, stone fruit, tropical fruit, red fruit, black fruit, dried fruit, herbaceous, herbal, spice, fruit ripeness, and so on. Marks come from naming the cluster with a specific example inside it, such as black fruit: blackcurrant, plum.

Youthful. Development call for a wine still dominated by primary character.

Fully developed. Development call for a wine whose tertiary character is now the point; further ageing will not improve it.

Fault. A defect that makes the nose or palate unclean. The exam’s usual suspects: cork taint (TCA, wet cardboard), oxidation (browning, bruised apple, loss of freshness), volatile acidity (vinegar, nail varnish), brettanomyces (plastic, animal, farmyard), reduction (struck match, rotten egg), and excess sulfur dioxide.

Quality assessment: BLIC

BLIC. Balance, length, intensity, complexity: the four criteria the SAT uses to justify a quality level. The mnemonic is unofficial, the criteria are not.

Length. How long the desirable flavours persist on the finish. Long length is one of the strongest single indicators of quality.

Intensity (as a quality criterion). Concentration of flavour on nose and palate. Pronounced intensity supports a higher quality call, provided the wine stays in balance.

Complexity. The range of different aroma and flavour characters, especially across primary, secondary, and tertiary layers. A simple wine can be good; it is rarely outstanding.

Quality levels. The Level 3 scale is fixed: faulty, poor, acceptable, good, very good, outstanding. Choose one, then defend it by naming which BLIC criteria the wine shows and which it lacks.

Outstanding. The top of the scale, requiring all four BLIC criteria convincingly present. Examiners reward a well argued good far more than an unargued outstanding.

Winemaking terms the exams love

Fermentation. Yeast converting grape sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Temperature and vessel choices here explain half the style questions in the theory papers.

Malolactic conversion (MLF). The conversion of sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid by bacteria, standard in reds and optional in whites, where it adds buttery aromas. Often still called malolactic fermentation; the exam accepts the process either way and asks what it does to acidity.

Lees. The dead yeast cells left after fermentation. Ageing on the lees, sur lie, adds body and bready, biscuity character.

Autolysis. The breakdown of yeast cells during extended lees ageing, the source of the bread and pastry notes in traditional method sparkling wine. A favourite Champagne question.

Bâtonnage. Stirring the lees in barrel or tank to increase their influence on texture and flavour.

Carbonic maceration. Whole-berry fermentation inside the grape in a carbon dioxide filled vessel, extracting colour with little tannin and giving kirsch, banana, and bubble-gum notes. The Beaujolais question, nearly every sitting.

Maceration. Contact between grape juice and skins, extracting colour, tannin, and flavour. Its length and timing separate rosé from red and light red from structured red.

Botrytis (noble rot). A fungus that dehydrates ripe grapes and concentrates sugar and acid, adding honey, apricot, and citrus zest character. The engine of Sauternes and Tokaji, and the exams expect the named conditions: misty mornings, dry afternoons.

Chaptalisation. Adding sugar to must before or during fermentation to raise final alcohol, legal only in cooler regions. It does not make wine sweeter, which is exactly why examiners ask about it.

Oak. Vessels or additions that give vanilla, toast, clove, and smoke, with new oak giving more than old, and barriques more surface contact than large casks. Know that oak can also mean oxygen exposure, which softens tannin.

Oxidative and protective winemaking. Deliberately exposing wine to oxygen (fino to oloroso Sherry, Tawny Port, Rancio styles) versus shielding it to keep primary fruit. Asked as a compare and contrast at Level 3.

Fortification. Adding grape spirit to stop fermentation or stabilise a finished wine, fixing sweetness and raising alcohol. Timing of the addition is the whole Port versus Sherry question.

Label and law terms

Appellation. A legally defined and protected wine region whose rules govern grapes, yields, and methods. The umbrella concept behind most label law questions.

PDO and PGI. The EU’s two quality tiers: Protected Designation of Origin, the stricter and smaller, and Protected Geographical Indication, the looser and larger. Every national system below maps onto one of the two.

AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée). France’s PDO tier. Smaller named areas generally mean stricter rules, the pattern the exams test with village against regional Burgundy.

DOC and DOCG. Italy’s PDO tiers, with DOCG the stricter, guaranteed level above DOC.

Prädikatswein. Germany’s ripeness-ranked category, its levels running Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Eiswein, Trockenbeerenauslese. The order is a perennial multiple choice question.

Reserva and Gran Reserva. Spanish ageing categories with legal minimum time in oak and bottle, most famously in Rioja. Unlike many countries’ “reserve”, in Spain the words are regulated.

Cru, Premier Cru, Grand Cru. French terms ranking vineyards or estates, with meanings that differ by region: vineyard sites in Burgundy and Champagne, classified estates in Bordeaux. Saying which region a cru term belongs to is what earns the mark.

Vintage. The harvest year on the label. In most regions it must represent the stated year within a legal tolerance, and in non-vintage sparkling wine its absence is a style statement.

Varietal. A wine labelled by its grape variety. Labelling laws set minimum percentages, another favourite of the multiple choice papers.

Brut and demi-sec. Points on the sparkling wine sweetness scale, running roughly brut nature, extra brut, brut, extra-sec, sec, demi-sec, doux. Brut is dry; demi-sec is medium-sweet; the counterintuitive ordering of sec is a classic trap.

Terroir. The complete natural environment of a vineyard: climate, soil, aspect, altitude. Not an SAT word, but the theory papers assume you can connect it to what is in the glass.

Put the vocabulary to work

A glossary read passively is forgotten by Friday. Fill in the interactive Level 2 tasting sheet or Level 3 tasting sheet with a real glass in hand, drill the terms with the WSET flashcards, then sit a free WSET Level 2 mock test or WSET Level 3 mock test to see which sections of the grid still leak marks. The cheatsheets compress each level’s syllabus onto one page, and if the sommelier route is also on your mind, the deductive tasting grid shows how the Court of Master Sommeliers names the same observations differently.