10.5 Grid Mechanics, Conclusions & the Sales Pitch

Grid Mechanics, Conclusions & the Sales Pitch

Sections 10.1 to 10.4 taught the sensory content of the Deductive Tasting Method. This section teaches the exam — how points are actually awarded — and it is the difference between candidates who taste well and candidates who pass.

CMS-A states the failure mode explicitly in its own Exam Guide:

Often, candidates do not pass the exam even when they get the wines correct because they do not fill in all the boxes and lose too many points.

Read that twice. Identifying all four wines does not pass this exam.

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1. The Workflow

The tasting exam is taken on Examplify, on the candidate's own laptop or iPad, but CMS-A provides a blank paper copy of the grid for each wine. The suggested system is a three-step transfer:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                    CMS-A SUGGESTED TASTING WORKFLOW                         |
|                                                                             |
|   STEP 1   Enter the sensory evaluation on the PAPER grid provided          |
|            (colour, fruit, non-fruit, structure)                            |
|                            |                                                |
|                            v                                                |
|   STEP 2   TRANSFER the sensory evaluation from paper into Examplify        |
|                            |                                                |
|                            v                                                |
|   STEP 3   Enter the CONCLUSION and the SALES PITCH into Examplify          |
|                                                                             |
|   *** Only what is IN EXAMPLIFY is graded. The paper grid earns nothing. ***|
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Budget the transfer time. This is the single most under-rehearsed element of the exam: candidates practise tasting and practise writing grids, but never practise typing a completed grid into a tablet under time pressure. The transfer is not free, and it must be built into your 11 minutes per wine.

Timing

Candidates are responsible for tracking their own time using the timer at the top of each Examplify screen.

2. The Scoring Rules That Decide the Exam

CMS-A publishes these rules directly. They are not guidance; they are the mark scheme.

The Yes/No discipline, illustrated

CMS-A's own worked example is a Gewurztraminer:

A Gewurztraminer may have some Apple/Pear, but Tropical is both VERY APPARENT and KEY. So, "NO" for "Apple/Pear" without any descriptors and "YES" for "Tropical" with descriptors such as "Pineapple, Mango, Banana."

The instinct of most candidates is to hedge — to mark Yes on everything they can faintly detect, hoping to catch marks. That instinct loses marks here, because it produces a grid that describes no particular wine. The examiner is testing whether you can identify what is key to the wine's identity, and a grid that says Yes to everything says nothing.

[!TIP] Work the grid in one direction and never revisit a line until the final review. Every line gets an answer on first pass. If you are unsure, commit and move on — there are no deductions, and a blank line is the only guaranteed zero on the paper.

3. The Conclusion — and the Six-Variety List

On the practice grids the Primary Grape line under Conclusion is blank. In the actual exam it is not:

Six grape varieties will be listed for you to choose from in the actual exam. This list will change depending on the exam. Candidates are responsible for naming the country of origin.

This changes your strategy in two ways.

1. The variety is a multiple-choice question with six options, drawn from the published examinable list of 8 white and 12 red varieties. Even a candidate who cannot name the wine outright can reason towards it by elimination against the structure they recorded.
2. The country of origin is free response. Nobody hands you a list. If you conclude Chardonnay, you must still decide between France and the United States — and your grid must support that choice.

The three justification lines

CMS-A asks candidates to practise writing reasons for three separate questions, and each has a defined evidence base:

Memorise which evidence supports which conclusion. Citing minerality as evidence of climate, or alcohol as evidence of Old World origin, is the sort of mismatch that costs the justification mark even when the conclusion is right.

The self-consistency check

Does the wine you described match your conclusion and vice versa? For instance, if you called the wine off-dry and chose Sauvignon Blanc, it might be worth looking back to where things went off-track.

Before committing, read your grid back as if you were the examiner and ask whether it describes the wine you named. Trust structure above all — as CMS-A puts it, "look at structure and trust structure; it's a significant indicator of certain grape varieties." Aromatics can mislead; acid, tannin, alcohol and body rarely do.

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4. The Sales Pitch

The grid ends with a line that is not a tasting note at all. CMS-A's own completed sample grids show what is expected:

"A delicious crisp and refreshing wine perfect with oysters, fresh seafood, and sushi!"

"This is a delicious, plush, rich, fruit-intense wine with flavors of black cherry and black pepper. This wine is an excellent pairing with grilled beef or rack of lamb."

Note the register. These are not analytical notes — they are guest-facing sentences, warm and enthusiastic, that pair a short style description with a concrete food suggestion. This is the Deductive Tasting exam quietly testing the same salesmanship the Hospitality and Service exam tests directly.

A reliable formula under time pressure:

1. One or two style adjectives — crisp, refreshing, plush, rich, structured
2. One or two concrete flavours taken from your own grid
3. A specific food pairing — name dishes, not categories
4. Enthusiasm — CMS-A's samples both end in an exclamation or a clear recommendation

Write it in a single sentence and move on. It should take under thirty seconds.