Some of the trade’s biggest names turned out last night to celebrate the induction of a record-breaking number of diploma students into the Wine & Spirit Education Trust’s (WSET) alumni hall of fame.
Among the 600-strong gathering at yesterday’s Guildhall ceremony were the WSET’s honorary president, Steven Spurrier, who hosted the awards, while The Wine Show presenter and WSET alum Joe Fattorini opened with a keynote speech.
Along with the WSET’s chief executive, Ian Harris, the two were presiding over the largest ever graduating class of Level 4 Diploma students.
This year, 665 graduates were awarded their WSET Diploma – a 25% jump on the previous year. Graduates came from 30 different course providers across 18 countries worldwide.
According to Harris, the large graduating class forms part of a larger number of around 10,000 WSET students who now graduate around the world every year.
“With our largest ever class of Diploma graduates this year, we now have over 10,000 WSET graduates globally…Over the last 50 years more than one million students have taken a WSET qualification across 70 countries. With over 800 Approved Programme Providers, WSET’s global presence is stronger than ever,” he said.
As well as awarding the diplomas, a number of ‘outstanding candidates’ were also recognised for their work over the 2018/19 academic year.
This included this year’s Vintners’ Cup recipient, Tim Clark, who achieved the highest overall mark across all units of the diploma in his year.
The WSET Outstanding Alumni Award, sponsored by JancisRobinson.com, went to Ferran Centelles, the Spanish wine specialist for jancisrobinson.com.
The title of Educator of the Year went to three WSET providers.
These were AccademiaVino, Italy, the leading provider of WSET courses and qualifications in Italy, Napa Valley Wine Academy and Taiwan Wine Academy.
Top photo shows Outstanding Alumni of the Year, Ferran Centelles, with Jancis Robinson and Steven Spurrier