Like a fine wine, good sommeliers take time
How many years does it take to become a master sommelier? Photo: Duane Storey / Flickr
It happened again. The greying hack asked the innocent question about somebody’s son and got the smug return fire: “Oh, he’s a master sommelier now.”
Master sommelier? He’s 24 years old.
It’s a wonderful thing that sommeliers’ associations are blooming around Australia, and that so many enthusiastic people are holding structured tastings, learning about the lure and lore of wine, and checking each other’s progress.
It’s a tribal thing. It helps build a profession. It will be better for the diner. But 24 years of age? The hack quotes his own mantra, something which took years to develop in itself. It could be read as a mouldering has-been constantly re-inventing his self-importance in order to stay alive, but it goes like this:
“Until you’ve watched several great wines, from several great regions, vintages and varieties, develop from the flowering of their vines, through their ferments and delinquent juvenility, to their prime, and on into the nether regions of the twilight zone, then you cannot possibly speak with a master’s authority about such wines.”
Of course, a younger critic can write in an opinionated, entertaining way about wine; or a young sommelier can reliably recommend and properly present good wines or reasonably judge their condition before presenting them to customers in the correct manner. But how long does it take to understand pinot noir? Good Burgundian pinot, for example?
Thirty years? Forty?
The S-word originates from the old Greek sattein, which means to pack or stuff. The old French used sompter or someter for the truckie of the day: the driver of a pack horse, camel, mule or ox. The four-legged prime mover was the sauma or somier. Given the life expectancy, a 24-year-old truckie was probably halfway through his working life then. A master sompter, at that age? Possible.
Just how this term changed its shape to become the dude who pours your wine in a restaurant is a very important progression.
This old sompter, his mule loaded with scribble, was a baby once. He committed evil tricks, like maintaining a good set of empty Grange bottles of different vintages, so he could fill a flight with Kaiser Stuhl Bold Red, a non-vintage blend from a flagon, to listen to the sophists explain the different years.
He was so bold as to pull tricks on great men like David Wynn, who invented modern Coonawarra, and Max Schubert, who invented Grange.
In 1980, he attended a luncheon with these intensely competitive sages, and a spunky Pam Dunsford. Each guest was obliged to bring a mystery bottle. The young White took a bottle of Blue Nun, a cheap, sweet, German megablend, and a bottle of Yalumba’s Brandivino, a mixture of young brandy and sweet rosé. In the bathroom he blended half a bottle of Blue Nun with a fifth of a bottle of Brandivino, sprinkled it with some of Mrs Potter’s perfume, which reminded him of something floral from Poland, filled it up with tap water, gave it a shake, poured it into a decanter and served it.
The sages agreed it must have been a pale Chilean rosé. After all that deliberation, the culprit was terrified to think how he would excuse his scam. Honesty worked. He may have just gotten away with it; there were giggles at the table. But the memory lingers, and if those men were alive, they may remember, too.
Were he to take that long, strange haul all over again, this bullocky thinks he could slowly, through human discourse and experience in his trade, learn to discern which great house would prefer which product, how and where to find it in the market, how best to contain it and transport it, and maybe even stow it in the cellars of his client. He would, by necessity, be first a farrier, animal husbandry expert and wheelwright, just to keep his truck serviced and willing. He would no doubt be faced with the problem of diminishing quality usually meaning larger volumes, greater difficulties and lower profits. And he’d learn that a little lugubrious fulsomeness earned the better tip here, and some respectful austere distance the same thing somewhere else.
If he were a wine trucker, the task might eventually also involve him developing a refined, reliable palate, so he could never be tricked by a vendor flogging him Blue Nun, Brandivino and Mary Potter’s perfume. He might also work out a vocabulary to enable him to discuss his purchases more fluently and reliably.
He could also, very easily, become addicted to alcohol. If he managed all that with elan and respect, he would be a sommelier.
If he became a master of that craft, he might be called a master sommelier.
But he could also be stuck in the mud somewhere, trying to extract a team of oxen without busting one keg. Even if they were digital oxen, the rest takes longer.
Philip White is on leave. This column was first published by Indaily in November 2009.
