The Grateful Vine

I haven’t been writing recently or working on the house. I’ve been studying for my WSET L4 – a wine diploma that I have been dragging out for years. This is my final half of a unit to complete and it will be the second time I’m sitting the tasting exam. 

It’s a blind tasting of 12 wines split into 2 written papers and lasting 3 hours.  

_{Wine study……}

The fear of failing made me almost give up on the entire thing. Despite the fact I’ve passed 4.5 out of the 5 units (first time) and not to mention the time and money spent on copious amounts of wine over the years. I was so close, but the idea of not passing on my first try was more nauseating to me than all the hangovers from all the wine tasting practice I’ve had to do, combined. 

This fear of not succeeding has been something with me from a young age. The overwhelming anxiety that if you can’t do something perfectly the first time, then don’t even bother showing up. This unfortunately meant that I spent a lot of time in my 20s rooted to the spot and not doing anything. You can’t be bad at something if you don’t attempt it in the first place, right? 

Except that we’re not meant to stand still. When humans get stagnant we don’t grow. We’re meant to try things, mess things up, dust ourselves off and carry on. Sometimes we figure out a better way and sometimes we realise that honestly, perhaps competitive dog grooming was never for us, and maybe extreme ironing would be a better fit to our skill set anyway. (Both actual hobbies by the way …and worth an image search…)

Since turning 30, failure is something that has become a lot more familiar to me. And a lot less scary in the process. I think once you stare it in the face, you realise that the horrendous monster you’re picturing making all that noise in your closet is actually just a moth, trapped between the dusty shoe boxes filled with Pokémon cards and old charging cables that you ‘just might need one day’. 

Failure often forces us to look inwards and self reflect, and from this introspection we can actually learn how to succeed. When most people are asked about their failures and whether they would change them, surprisingly, the majority of people say no. It’s losing their job that forced them to evaluate what they wanted in life and finally start their passion project or the end of a relationship that led them to an incredible new partner, 10 failed businesses that pushed them to their million dollar idea. Our failures don’t define us but they keep urging us forward and making us better.

 Failing has probably taught me my greatest lessons in life and, in turn, pushed me closer to embracing a better version of myself. A few years ago I didn’t recognise the person staring back at me in the mirror; I didn’t know her, let alone like her. But now I’ve learnt to accept my own mistakes and imperfections and realise that without them I wouldn’t be human, or uniquely me. We all experience failure differently, but, we all experience it. Coming to terms with our shortcomings allows us to be more empathetic and understanding of others and in doing so, become more understood ourselves. A lot of us are often left feeling isolated by our failures but in actual fact they are the thing that connects us the most.

In a modern world where we see a constant stream of ‘perfect’ people smiling at us from our phones from the instant we wake up, to beyond a time when we should have gone to bed (except we just can’t tear our bloodshot eyes away from the screen) it’s no wonder that people can feel alone in their mistakes. It’s important to remind yourself over and over that ‘It’s. Not. Real.’. It’s one big advert to make you feel like you’re failing “but don’t worry, we have a cream for that and it’s only £10.99….!(…per month for a lifetime subscription and your firstborn child T&Cs apply…).”

_{….me wine tasting….or an AI generated image of a ‘perfect’ influencer wine tasting..?}

Unfortunately, there is no cream for that. There is no quick fix and there’s certainly nothing that you can buy off a shelf that can move you through failure. When it comes to failing, the only thing you need to invest in is your time and yourself. You also can’t escape it by burying your face in your phone or putting off the inevitable by just doing a Van Wilder and extending your studies every year by the way. Sometimes you just have to face it head on and ‘eat the frog’, no matter how scared of the, often imagined or perhaps even certain, failure you may be. 

Thankfully my great friend Abi, urged me to ‘eat the frog’, book the exam and just go for it. And I’m so grateful that she did. Learning that it’s okay to fail at something makes me even more proud of myself for attempting it anyway. Which is lucky as my second attempt at the tasting exam did not go well and there will for sure be a third!

_{…more wine study….}

Along the way, I’ve learned more than just why not all wine is vegan (cheers to fish bladders and egg whites), or that you don’t need to remortgage your flat to enjoy a decent bottle. I’ve learnt that, like wine, people vary: no two are exactly alike, and our lives are incredibly subjective. Individual opinions and preferences differ, and how we perceive and evaluate our mistakes is shaped by personal tastes, past experiences, cultural norms, and more. Just like the specific taste of wine, it’s hard to define failure: there’s no single, universally accepted standard for it. But I’ve come to believe that from every failure comes opportunity: an opportunity to be better, to grow, and to learn.

Through my WSET L4 Diploma, I’ve certainly learnt a lot about myself. How to survive the pain of realising that your ‘tropical fruit’ and ‘vanilla’ was actually a Chablis, and how ‘structure’ isn’t just a tasting term, but is more accurately describing the fragile scaffolding barely holding up your will to live when you discover your ‘Sauvignon Blanc’ was actually a Riesling.

But just as every failure is an opportunity to grow, every incorrect tasting is a chance to learn more. This time, I am determined to keep failing until I succeed. And when I do finally finish this diploma, I know that it will have been worth all the tannin, turmoil and tears that have gone into it.

‘Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.’ – Nelson Mandela