When sommelier no longer means sommelier

From the chapter: Think like a somm

The author as a young sommelier, 1979.

In 2014, while doing a wine judging alongside a well known Northern California sommelier, out of the blue he turned to me and said, “You know what I don’t get? Master Sommeliers who jump to other businesses as soon as they get their pin. Especially when they go into sales. I hate it when an MS calls on me—it seems almost demeaning to the profession.”

I didn't respond with an opinion, but my immediate thought was that he wasn’t being totally fair. We all know how hard it is to attain an MS; and if, once the goal is reached, there are rewards of more decent salaries and benefits working in sales or distribution, then c’est la vie.

A few weeks later, W. Blake Gray, a Roederer Award winning blogger, came out with a post entitled “Most Master Sommeliers are somms in name only.” Citing a page in Nation’s Restaurant News listing 55 Master Sommeliers, Gray wrote: “Of the 55, I can see only 8 who regularly worked the floor when the article was written. Another six might have been on the floor sometimes. That’s just 25% combined. And at least 3 of those 14 have moved away from those on-the-floor jobs since the article was written.”

I like Mr. Gray, and the way that he often says things others won’t say (it helps to have no skin in the game). But again, is this being fair? I think not. Out of the 21 most recent American Master Sommeliers when Gray wrote his article, for instance, 11 were still working for restaurants or hotels. I counted four who had gone into some sort of sales (distribution, supplier or retail/merchant), and three working for wineries. The final three appeared to be between jobs; in all likelihood, transitioning to wine-related fields outside a restaurant’s four walls.

While many wine professionals self-identifying as sommeliers do not work in restaurants, they contribute to the profession in other ways.

As it’s often said, though, restaurant floors have always been about younger people, stronger legs, youthful energy. It’s physical, and in a lot of ways menial (try polishing 200 glasses a night). I was a full-time sommelier for ten years, and quit the restaurant business altogether after 28 years when, quite honestly, I could no longer hack it.

Of the first five American Master Sommeliers—beginning with Eddie Osterland in 1973—four left their restaurant floors long before anyone can remember. Only Richard Dean (an MS since 1975) plied his trade well into his 60s, finally leaving his San Francisco restaurant post in 2018. I spoke to Dean (who has since passed away) shortly before his retirement. His advice to sommeliers considering a lifetime of table-side service? “Get yourself a good personal trainer.”

Everyone, it seems, now wants to be a sommelier, whether they’ve ever walked a restaurant floor or not. It’s gotten to the point where the word now means “some-sort-of-wine-expert,” rather than its original meaning tied specifically to the everyday drudgery of restaurants.

I may be old school, but I’m not opposed to the new definition. Anything that stimulates interest and consumption of wine cannot be bad—especially for the actual working sommeliers. Anyone who has ever walked dining room floors during the days when Blue Nun was a top seller, or when Zinfandel was mostly pink, would have to say that it’s infinitely easier to sell good wine today than it ever was before. A lot of it is because many of today’s “sommeliers” who may not actually do the work of sommeliers are contributing just as much to the profession.

When you look at the most consistent, highest performing restaurants in the country over the past 10, 20 years—I think of Frasca in Boulder, the Union Square Hospitality Group in New York, a French Laundry, Boulevard or Spago in California—anyone can see what they all have in common: They employ sommeliers, and lots of them. Successful sommeliers generate their own success. But when you think of it, it would be a lot harder if not for a groundswell of interest in wine generated by everyone’s efforts—even that of the sommeliers who are not actually sommeliers.