Yields, rainfall numbers, latitude, elevation, minimum/maximum alcohol, sugars, grape blends. There are numbers everywhere and trying to cram them all into your brain is enough to make any wine student toss their hands up in despair. But fear not! We’ve got a few tips here to supercharge your wine studies and help you nail these numbers on your exam!

Now for a lot of wine certifications, you don’t actually need to memorize every single number in the text. Instead, it’s more important to understand the range and relevance. For example, the maximum yield of Pinot grigio delle Venezie (126 hl/ha, previously 152 hl/ha) is considerably higher than that of a Pinot gris made from an Alsatian Grand Cru (50-55 hl/ha depending on the Cru) and even that of basic AOC Alsace Pinot gris (80 hl/ha). While a lot of climate, terroir and winemaking factors go into the differences between Alsatian and Veneto Pinot grigio, you can understand the context that yield plays in some of those differences even if you don’t have those numbers memorized by heart.

But for those aiming for top marks, we’ve got a few tips.

During our studies, Tony Buzan’s classic book Use Your Memory was a huge help and most of these tips are adapted from that. But the key to success for any memory device is to always make it your own—finding words, phrases and associations that really resonate and are meaningful to you. In fact, it is exactly this dual engagement of both your “numbers & sequence-oriented” left brain with your more creative right brain in coming up with these personal memory devices on your own that will help cement these things into your head.

So let’s put this into practice.

Tactic 1 - The Peg System - Associate Numbers with Images

When you look at the number ‘1’ what does it look like to you? A stick? A baseball bat? A pen?

What about the number ‘2’? A snake? A swan? That weird shape your cat somehow takes curling around the scratching post?

Does the number ‘5’ look like a hook or perhaps the curl of hair hanging from Christopher Reeve’s Superman forehead? Does a ‘6’ look like a putter lining up against a golf ball? or whistle? Could the number ‘8’ look a bit like an hourglass?

And lord knows the things you could think up for zero!

Take all those different images for individual numbers and combine them into one silly image or sequence such as using a stick (1) to chase away a snake (2) onto a golf course, interrupting someone’s putt (6). Have the golfer drinking some Pinot grigio delle Venezie and you’ve got the 126 hl/ha max yield.

Then you can imagine the more superb and premium Alsatian Grand Cru as Superman with his curl bringing some doughnuts (50) to the Metropolis police force to enjoy while Reeve and Henry Cavil (55 for double the Superman) take care of everything (50-55 hl/ha). In fact, you can say the Metropolis PD has infinite time (8) on their hands to enjoy those doughnuts (0) because of Superman—giving us the 80 hl/ha for basic AOC Pinot gris.

Yeah, that’s really silly. But the sillier the better.

Make it fun. Make it naughty. Make yourself laugh, smile or blush and those numbers will be easier to remember. Take them out of the Excel spreadsheet and give them life.

If you need inspiration for image association with numbers, you can Google more about the “The Peg System” I reference here. But, again, we highly encourage you to make them your own.

There are lots of children's books teaching kids their numbers with funny shapes and images you can use. If you’re a parent, you can not only check out those books but also ask your kiddos for their silly ideas. (Now tell me, how often can you find ways to share your wine studies with your kids in age-appropriate ways?) Look around your house. Try emojis on your phone. The possibilities are endless.

For the artistically inclined, adding these images/shapes to your flashcards or wine maps can also be a real game-changer. Try it with things like average rainfall numbers, mean January/July temps, altitude and latitude.

Tactic 2 - The Peg System - Rhyme Words and Numbers

This one is for the poet inside us all. It’s a similar idea as the first approach. Find words that rhyme with each number 0-9 and then combine them together for quirky phrases or stories. With this, you can use websites like Rhyme Zone and just go to town.

Let’s use that to tell the story of the minimum sugar levels for Alsatian Vendage Tardive and Sélection de Grains Nobles. If you go to the textbooks, you’ll probably get a chart that looks like this.

*Image source: WSET Diploma Text (2020-2021)*

Yep. Lots of numbers. How in the world are we going to keep them all straight!?!?

For me, I started first with the grouping. Muscat and Riesling abbreviate nicely to the Mr. honorific which leads me to the story of Mr. Stu (2) Lee (3) who always arrives (5) late (tardy or Tardive). There we have 235 g/l

With Pinot gris and Gewurztraminer, my stories center on Prince George for whom it would be totally taboo (2) to arrive (5) late (tardive) for a session (7) with. Yes, the order is interrupted a tad (and session/7 is more alliteration than a true rhyme) but it still works for me with remembering the minimum sugar levels of late harvest (Vendange Tardive) Alsatian Pinot gris and Gewurztraminer is 257 g/l. Ultimately that’s all it is—finding what works for you.

Now practice yourself with the numbers for the minimums of Sélection de Grains Nobles. In my stories, I use grains of wheat and nobility to be my cues that these are SGN numbers instead of VT ones but do what resonates with you!

Tactic 3 - Exaggerated Images

This follows the theme “The sillier the better” with the idea of coming up with some weird image or frame of reference that you could associate with a whole number. Perhaps you had a traumatic experience on your 6th birthday where the clown made this wonderful balloon teddy bear. Then the moment he handed it to you, in your excitement, you squeezed it too hard making it POP right in your face—painfully stinging and startling you—and since then you not only can’t deal with clowns but also have a petrifying fear of balloons popping.

Anyways….that’s how I always remember that the pressure of most traditional method sparkling wines such as Champagne is around 6 atmospheres.

But your image doesn’t always have to be a painful memory. Sometimes it could be a pleasant memory—like seeing Star Wars when it first came out in theaters in 1977.

Now if you can remember Star Wars and 77 (Saturday Night Fever, Annie Hall, Smokey and the Bandit and Close Encounters of the Third Kind also came out that year), you can associate that with a constellation of wine regions that have max yields of 77 hl/ha like Orvieto DOC, Castelli di Jesi Superiore, Piemonte DOC Dolcetto and Collio DOC in Friuli.

**Now, of course, that’s getting really geeky**

And truly only the geekiest of film buffs can remember all the different years that various films came out.

However, even if you don’t remember the exact year, you probably do have a good idea of the general time frame that certain films came out. For example, you can be pretty certain that the Marilyn Monroe classic The Seven Year Itch didn’t come out in the 1970s or 1990s. And while you might not be able to recall exactly when Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho was released, you certainly know it came several decades before Johnny Depp was the creepiest, most psychotic Willy Wonka ever in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory.

You can use the “Movie Poster Trick” to give context, range and relevance to numbers like maximum wine yield by connecting how long the range was from the release of The Seven Year Itch (55 hl/ha like many Alsatian Grand Crus) to films like Jaws (1975) and Ghost (1990 which can represent the 90 hl/ha for basic AOC Alsace Riesling).

Likewise, the range between the 60 hl/ha max of Germany VDP Erste Lage to the 105 hl/ha max yields of basic Qualitätswein has a kinship to the decades between Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Tim Burton/Depp’s Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (2005).

Even if you don’t memorize these exact numbers, understanding and being able to visualize this range and context will still be extremely helpful in your wine studies.

*Warning - working on this memory device will leave you feeling VERY nostalgic and frustrated that Netflix doesn’t carry many of these films*

So those are our tips! Feel free to play around with them and, again, make them your own. Maybe instead of movie posters, you do this with hit music singles. If you’re a big sports fan, you can have a lot of fun associating yields with championship teams across various years.

We’re not kidding, the possibilities are endless!

Happy studying!

3 Memory Techniques to Nail Important Numbers on Your Wine Exams