and if nothing else, studying for it has made me realise what an appalling wine snob I am. The questions on France and Germany and sherry I can answer with ease. I’m also reasonable on Italy, Spain, New Zealand and California.

As regards Australia, I can just about cope with Barossa Shiraz, but that’s about my limit.

As for Chile and Argentina, I’m hopeless! I’d never heard of the Rapel Valley before taking this course, and I’ve never tasted wines made from Carmenere or Torrontes and can’t honestly say that I’ve felt any the worse for it. But they come up all the time in the questions! I begin to suspect the Wine and Spirits Educational Trust is somewhat biased!

The examiners don’t seem to be very interested in South Africa which is fine by me although in her latest column Jancis said there are some gems there, and it entertained me this afternoon to get my lovely South African super-minion to say “Vergelegen” in the correct manner which involved a lot of hacking up of phlegm (the difficult person was out of the office at the time, otherwise that would just have been too much phlegm for one office to handle).

There is also a disturbing absence of questions on Madeira, which is a specialist subject of mine. Perhaps I should write in and complain.