On April 13, I sat for the Introductory Sommelier Exam provided by the Court of Master Sommeliers (more about this august body below!). The course was a two-day intensive instruction administered by five certified Master Sommeliers, followed by a written exam that surveys the entire world of beer, wine and spirits. The exam consists of 70 questions, so the survey is brief and selective, meaning that if you do not have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of wine, beer, sake and spirits, it would be very difficult to excel on the examination. There were 80 students in my class, and I would say that all but a very few of us were actively working in the wine industry or in a restaurant. Needless to say that while I had spent a lot of time preparing and felt ready for the exam, I was still nervous!
The first level course and the first level exam are about very different things. While the exam itself is a survey of the world of wine, beer and spirits, the class focused much more on blind analyses of wine. The Master Sommeliers teaching the course told us that the theoretical lecture portions of the course are but the briefest of reviews, and that if you have not previously learned what would be required to pass the exam, it is unlikely that the lectures will put you over the top.
There were nuggets they taught that helped with the exam, but the vast majority of the first level course consisted of blind tasting/analysis of 22 different wines. The purpose is to introduce the candidates to the Court’s five-step deductive tasting method, consisting of sight, smell, taste, initial conclusions and final conclusions. It is a hi-intensity introduction to a method that will help the individual Sommeliers understand how their theoretical knowledge of viticulture (grape growing) and viniculture (wine making) can help them better perceive, understand and explain to a customer the characteristics of the wine in the bottle.
One of the greatest benefits of the method is that it is systematic. There are many people who pick up a glass of wine and drink it, and if they have a thought about the wine at all, it is along the lines of “Oh, that’s pretty good,” or “I don’t really like that.” Others, amateur wine geeks if you will, look at, smell and taste wines, and think about what we have perceived, but we do not have a method or a structure to organize those perceptions in a way that tells us much about the wine.
Each of the blind tastings in the class is conducted by a team of five students, with one student each responsible for reporting on the sight, smell, taste, initial conclusions and final conclusions. The evidence gathered through looking at, smelling and tasting the wine is used to deduce initial conclusions, identifying several possible alternatives for the type of grape or grapes in the wine, where it was grown and how it was made. For the final conclusion, the alternatives are compared again to the evidence with the outlying facts eliminating the incorrect alternative conclusions.
The students simply do not have the experience with the method to use it without guidance, and the Master Sommeliers provide that guidance, probing at the evidence cited by the students or leading them to a better understanding of the intensity of certain characteristics, a comparative analysis that requires much more experience than the students have at this point. In my case, I was responsible for sight, and several other groups had worked through the process before us, so I was relatively confident that the wine we were analyzing was straw in color, for example, as opposed to pale yellow.
The Court’s deductive method, in which the multiple data points build on each other, leading first to a broader inclusion of possible wine types and styles, and then one by one eliminating possibilities until only one is left, provides that structure and helps organize our thoughts about a specific wine in ways that allows us to categorize, remember and compare different wines over time. The tasting exercises lay a foundation that the students can use to build a knowledge base, permitting them to advance their ability to analyze a wine. Those are skills that are tested to differing degrees in the second, third and fourth level exams in the four-tiered certification program.
There was one other fundamental teaching point emphasized by all of the Master Sommeliers. The profession of Sommelier is fundamentally about serving the customer. There is a somewhat widely held belief that those of us who know a lot about wines like to pick apart a wine sometimes to the exclusion of enjoying the simple tasting. There is also some sense that we like to lord our superior knowledge over others, to tell them their tastes are wrong and instructing them on what they should like. Nothing could be further from the truth about what a Sommelier aspires to be.
In my experience, even the wine-geekiest among us enjoy sharing their wines with others. I know very few people who would prefer to sit alone, drinking a fine bottle. Most of us believe that wine was meant to be shared and enjoyed with others. In the class, the Master Sommeliers were so far beyond any of the students in terms of wine experience and knowledge, yet there was not a single hint of condescension.
First and foremost, beverage service is about raising the bottom line, selling beer, wine and spirits to the customer. That is not done by telling a customer something they ordered is in some way wrong, and trying to sell them something else instead. It was, in fact, stated repeatedly that whatever the customer wants, it is the Sommelier’s job to serve it in the most professional manner possible. Provide advice when asked, yes, but there are no wrong choices when it comes to personal tastes.
The Master Sommeliers went even further. In one session during which the Master Sommeliers were demonstrating the proper technique for serving champagne and for decanting a wine, another lesson was being taught, as well. They made the point that we need to fight against that perception that we care more about the minutia of wine than its enjoyment. They made the point, rather, that when the customer walks into the restaurant, they are entrusting to the entire staff their very happiness. It is the responsibility of the staff, including servers and the Sommelier, to do everything in their power to ensure that the customer enjoys their experience. That, the Master Sommeliers said, was the higher calling and the true nobility of this profession.
What is the Court of Master Sommeliers?
The Court was established in 1977 but its roots go back to the first awarding of the Master Sommelier Diploma in London, England, in 1969. The Institute of Masters of Wine, the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Great Britain, the Wine and Spirits Association and the Tobacco Association came together to proffer an examination for the Master Sommelier Diploma. Their intent was two-fold. First, to encourage Sommeliers to engage in extended professional study and to approach the beverage profession in a systematic manner.
Second, Masters of Wine were largely engaged in importation and distribution of wine, not in the promotion of an end-market. They were relying on the cadre of Master Sommeliers to jump start the creation of a food and wine culture, and to promote the sale of those products.
After several years, a cadre of Master Sommeliers had formed, but it was very slow going because so few people were passing the exam. The Masters of Wine asked the Master Sommeliers to put together a course to prepare people for the Master Sommelier Diploma exam, and eventually to take over administration of the entire exam process. In 1977, the Court of Master Sommeliers was founded by 17 members who had passed the Diploma exam. In 1987, the Court came to the United States, and has since been spreading to other areas of the world, most recently China, where the wine culture is exploding. The Master Sommelier Diploma Exam has been offered for over four decades, and today there are only about 220 Master Sommeliers in the world.
Judgment and What Comes Next
As I said previously, the vast majority of the people enrolled in the class worked in the wine or restaurant industry. Wine retailers can be exposed to dozens, if not hundreds, of different wines every week as distributors provide tastings, trying to get the retailers to stock their wines, and many restaurant servers and bar staff also have opportunities to taste and learn about many different wines each week. That experience, in addition to the time many of them spent studying prior to the course, resulted in a passing rate of about 90 percent. I felt pretty good about how the exam went, and I am very pleased to say that I, too, passed! The Master Sommeliers read out the names of those who passed, so it was a bit nerve-wracking until I heard “Wayda” and could breathe easily again (although I am still pissed I forgot that the region of Salta in northern Argentina has the highest altitude vineyards in the world!).
Some of those who passed the Level 1 exam were planning to move right into studying for the Level 2, which is the point at which the Court of Master Sommeliers is certifying the individual’s fitness to serve wines and other beverages according the Court’s formal standards. It is fair to say that much of the class was younger, perhaps considerably younger, than myself, and some of them may be seriously considering the ten-year or more commitment necessary to join the ranks of the Master Sommeliers.
For me, I am giving some thought to the Level 2, but that in itself is no small commitment. On the other hand, there are other organizations providing different certifications in the wine and beverage field, the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, the International Society of Masters of Wine and the Society of Wine Educators, to name but a few. I am looking into what is required to earn the Society of Wine Educators Certified Specialist in Wine (CSW) certification. Because I have not worked as a wine professional, I think a second, but different, study and examination in the theory of viticulture and viniculture around the world would be of significant benefit.
Keep an eye on these pages as my personal journey continues to unfold.
So Excited to Pass Introductory Sommelier Exam