Female Power at WSET Vintner’s Cup

The Vintners' Cup is awarded every year to the WSET Diploma candidate achieving the highest aggregate marks. Known formarly as the Rouyer Guillet Cup, the Award was started in 1946 (one year before India became independent). Men had a monopoly over this cup till 1976 when the late Penelope Mensell MW became the first woman to lay hands on the prestigious cup in the wine industry. She went on to get her MW later. But for her, Jancis Robinson MW would have been the first woman, winning the Vintner’s cup in 1978. Since then the glory was shared more by women who had two thirds of the Cups in their hands, till 2006 when the women-winning streak started.

Winning streak of Women for Vintners’ Cup

Here is the list of all-women Vintner’s Cup Awardees during the last 10 years:

Understandably, there are no Indian women (or men) in the list of Vintner’s Cup awardees or even DipWSET (with effect from October 1, 2015 Diploma Holders will be designated as DipWSET-this should help remove a lot of confusion with Certificate holders –WSET3 and Diploma holders WSET4). It is our prediction that there will be many additions to the DipWSET certified wine professionals from India, initially from the pool of Indians living in the USA and UK (even Jingwei studied in Hong Kong and apparently now lives in the US). Indians are known to excel in academics along with the Chinese, as one observes in the American universities. As more and more Indians are attracted to wine, one will see more and more of them aspiring to become DipWSET.

China is currently the third biggest market for WSET with about 6,600 students enrolled in the programme last year. UK continues to be the biggest market followed by the US.

The WSET is the only wine & spirit education organization approved by the UK government as a national awarding body of vocational qualifications. WSET Awards also co-ordinate the annual selection of outstanding candidates to be presented with industry sponsored scholarships. This is an area that should be of special interest for the Indians aspiring to become wine experts.

According to the DrinksBusiness magazine, there were 61,452 candidates who appeared in the WSET exams in 2014-15 and 316 individuals received WSET Level 4 Diploma in Wines and Spirits. One has to clear the WSET 3 (earlier known as the Certificate) exam, before aspiring to be a DipWSET.

For further details, visit http://www.wsetglobal.com

Subhash Arora

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Tags: Vintners' Cup, Jingwei Sun, Rouyer Guillet Cup, Penelope Mensell MW, Jancis Robinson MW, DipWSET, WSET