Serious Sommeliers
OK, I’m a simple soul. I love simple food that’s tasty, and wine that doesn’t pretend to be anything but wine. Occasionally we visit a trendy wine bar in town, where sommeliers practice their solemn craft in serious outfits that laugh at their silly haircuts, beards and tattoos.
What do you have for us today? A Vin Jaune from some unknown corner of the French Jura? A Clay Amphora wine from Georgia perhaps? Or just a plain old Teraldego from a boutique in the Northern Territory on the edge of Kakadu? How much for a glass? And it’s not even half full?
‘Their job has no English word,’ says Dom Knight in Daily Life, ’the wine-snob industry prefers just to use the French term, which I would argue speaks volumes about their profession.’ Here’s his advice:
‘Whenever I’m confronted by a sommelier in future, I shall fix them with my most intimidating gaze, and say “Everyone says you should just order the second cheapest bottle on the menu. But I’m a bit of a connoisseur in these matters, so why don’t you bring me the third-cheapest?” ‘
Master Sommeliers
Image Source: Wine Searcher
Ron Washam, the satirist known as the Hosemaster of Wine, wrote about a scandal that rocked the fine dining world of New York last year, ‘a cheating scandal run by a now disgraced Master Sommelier, as if there were any other kind. The wine world moves on, unconcerned with ethics and truth, as well it should. Ethics and truth are Roundup for the wine business. You don’t want to use them liberally, or at all, they pretty much destroy the ecosystem.’
The New Yorker tells us that ‘the chairman of the Court of Master Sommeliers (which administers the Master Sommelier exam) announced, over raised glasses of champagne, that a record twenty-four candidates had passed.’ Five weeks later, the court revealed that one of the test’s supervisors, a Master Sommelier, had leaked details about the blind tasting to an unknown number of examinees. The leaker was stripped of his Master title, and 23 newly anointed Master Sommeliers were stripped of their titles.
‘The revelation of deceit in fine wine’s most sacrosanct circle has rattled the tight-knit world of sommeliers,’ reports the New Yorker, ‘who pride themselves on presenting a decorous, unflappable face to those outside their ranks. Sommeliers have entered a period of mourning for their defrocked colleagues. (“Friday tasting group felt a little heavy this morning,” one wrote on Instagram.) … Master status comes with the industry’s top bragging rights, plus a hefty raise. But for many sommeliers it is an honor imbued with almost spiritual significance—the oenological equivalent of running a marathon, winning an Oscar, and being canonized, all rolled into one. “For some people,” one sommelier told me, “this test is life.”
Trendy Trattorias
Years ago, before sommeliers became a guild of masters in down under eateries, we were meeting some friends over in Bondi, so I asked a wine friend for a restaurant recommendation. Sean’s Panorama, he said without hesitation. We made a booking and found a hole-in-the-wall place with the menu spread over various wooden slabs up near the ceiling, tiny tables with tinier stools, and we were all squashed together like passengers on a peak hour bus.
The food was awful, conversation was impossible, and I can’t remember the wine we had. We were embarrassed, our friends were gracious to a fault.
My good friend Jeffrey put it better than I could, when I shared the experience with him recently. He said: ‘Oh, Sean’s lovely panorama over at Bondai! Yes, a friend took me there once, years ago. I had a terrific time … I looked around, saw the trendy folk all around, got thoroughly pissed to antidote my trauma, and had a lovely time. Cockroaches there too. Think I even ate one … and the bastards charged me for it. Loved the wine I bought.’
Hi Guys!
Jeffrey shared a more recent experience at BENTLEY, – ‘those wankers. Gee they pissed me off.’
I can only add that Jeffrey is one of the most polite and gentle men I know. He is also kind, and this is what he said to me in a recent email:
‘My dear Kim,
You are the only clear breath of practicality in a storm of farts, in today’s world of wine & food. I don’t get these open factory trendy inner city – fringe suburb wine bar restaurants. You would have to keep the rats down with a whip! Rats arm wrestling with cockroaches over dropped crumbs.
The food is too trendy bullshit (just reading what’s in a dish makes me impotent) and the wine is equal in the disappointment – at exhorted prices. A glass of Nose-bleed Rose made from ‘non irrigated old vine, organic, non sulphur added natural wines’ that smell of rancid jock-straps; ‘pan seared rooster- cock served with jus on blinis, tapas’ – “that will be $50.00 x two please sir!” Oh, forget “Sir” it’s “Guys!!!”
“Hi Guys” is the only term of greeting obnoxious young bearded trend-oids know how to address the collective male/female diners in these trendy places now … SPARE ME FROM F—ING “HI GUYS!!!”
I can’t improve on Jeffrey’s take, but here’s a pictorial review from Adventures with a Gourmand that will fill in more blanks.
Avagreatweekend, guys.
Kim