Who are these men – and occasionally, women – dressed in black who hover in the corners of the smartest restaurants? They are slightly mysterious, somewhat detached figures who long to be called into action to show off their unrivalled knowledge of all things alcoholic.
Certainly, they can be imposing and often come across as intimidating but they are nothing like as terrifying as they might appear. Like the rest of us, they are just trying to do their job. So, let’s hear it for sommeliers.
Sometimes, that job is so exhilarating that they must feel like clenching their fists and shouting, “Yeees!” as a customer opts for a particular wine – at a particularly high price – but they must celebrate alone, within themselves. There must be no hint of triumphalism.
Livio Italiani felt like this recently at Luciano, Marco Pierre White’s restaurant in St James’s Street, where he has been head sommelier since it opened two years ago. A Russian had reserved a table for three and it wasn’t clear if it was for business or pleasure. The Russian’s guests included an attractive woman in her 30s – possibly his wife, perhaps his mistress, maybe his boss. It was hard to tell.
“One thing about this job is that you have to read the messages coming from the table,” says Italiani, 38, who hails from Pescara on Italy’s Adriatic coast and has lived in Britain for more than 10 years. “But, with the Russian man, I didn’t quite know what was expected of me. Sometimes you feel that your advice is appreciated and sometimes you sense that it’s not.”
No worries on this occasion. The Russian called him over and uttered the golden words: “I would like you to recommend a really special wine.”
“Every sommelier will work slightly differently but what I do in a situation like that is offer the customer three choices at three price levels and talk about each of them,” says Italiani. “I thought he was going to choose a wine costing £120 but, in fact, I was able to persuade him to choose something even better. He ended up with a Château Lafite 1997 costing £500.”
Of course, you want some theatre to accompany a bottle of Château Lafite worth that much. And a sommelier worthy of the name is only too happy to oblige.
“I showed him the wine and then I decanted a small amount, which I poured into one of the glasses. Then I poured the contents of that glass into a second one and then the third one and then into a tasting glass for myself. The reason I did all that was to cleanse the glasses and prepare them to receive such a great wine.”
And the outcome? “The gentleman said it was one of the best wines he has ever tasted and he seemed interested to learn all about it,” says Italiani.
What I found myself worrying about on hearing this story was how much time the Château Lafite had to breathe? Or, indeed, whether all this breathing business is a nonsense? Does it really make a difference if you open a wine a few hours before drinking it? Should you always decant fine wine?
“Absolutely,” says Italiani, who also runs the Associazione Italiana Sommeliers, one of several sommelier organisations that bind together this exclusive world within a world. “I believe that 45 minutes is enough to make a difference, which is about as long as you get if the customer is having white wine during the first course. It’s just like going into a room where the windows have been closed for several months or years. The smell is dead but as soon as you open the windows, the room begins to breathe and takes on a whole new personality.”
Personality is important in the sommelier firmament – but knowledge is crucial. The place to show off that knowledge is the annual UK Sommelier of the Year Competition, sponsored by Champagne Ruinart and organised by the Academy of Food and Wine. The finals were held this week in London and I was one of the many judges – mainly because, as a food critic, I have long been fascinated by sommeliers and their ability to have so much information at their fingertips. And because I like my booze.
This was the 27th such competition but it has only recently attracted much public attention because it is only recently that sommeliers in Britain have been afforded the respect they deserve.
“In Britain, you have tended to have wine waiters rather than sommeliers,” says Stéphane Baschiera, chairman of Ruinart, the oldest champagne house in the world, founded in 1729. “But this is changing and I would say that some of the best sommeliers are now working in this country. That is partly because British people know a lot about wine and want to increase their knowledge all the time.”
The 15 finalists – 13 men and two women who have survived several regional heats – are about to be whittled down to three after a gruelling morning of written tests, blind tastings and other challenges on stage at the De Vere Holborn Bars in central London. With the noisy audience and a series of judges seated behind a table, it’s a cross between The Weakest Link and The X-Factor.
Of the final three chosen, two are French, one Irish – Nicolas Clerc, from the Milestone Hotel in London’s High Street Kensington; Cyril Thevenet, from Hotel du Vin, Henley-on-Thames; and Belfast-born Gearoid Devaney from Tom Aikens in Chelsea. They are all immaculately dressed in formal wear, all nervous, all desperate to claim the crown.
Two dining tables have been set up on stage. The past winners seated at them are sporting stern, difficult-to-please faces. The trio’s first task is to decant a bottle of red wine at one of the tables while keeping an eye on the diners at the other. Everything they need is there: a candle to judge how much sediment is in the bottle, matches, tasting glasses, wine cradle, decanter. They have five minutes to do the job.
Then they are confronted by five glasses, each carrying some liquid but not necessarily wine. They must identify each one, discussing what they find on the nose and on the palate. All three think the first glass contains a French wine but, in fact, it comes from Chile. They all realise that glass three is vodka and glass five is tawny Port. The sake hakutsuru swishing about in glass two also has them stumped.
Tension rises as, one by one, they return to the hall and are confronted by a wine list of six champagnes, seven whites and seven reds. There are several deliberate errors on the sheet, which they must point out to the judges. For example, there’s a Château Pétrus 1991 and they are expected to know that Pétrus did not produce a 1991 vintage.
As I listen to the conversations around the room during a break before the two final tasks, it’s apparent that the majority of sommeliers working in Britain are French. And while most of us could list at least a dozen famous chefs, not many could conjure up the name of one sommelier.
“Fifteen years ago, there was no such thing as a celebrity chef and look what’s happening today,” says Paul Breach, chairman of the Academy of Food and Wine, which merged with the Guild of Sommeliers in 1988. “One of our roles is to get a similar profile for sommeliers because they are truly talented and many of them have larger than life personalities.”
But not many are British. Why is it that the job of sommelier in this country is not regarded as a serious career?
“Because the British still don’t like to do service – perhaps we are just too proud,” says Breach. Which does seem strange, given that, at the top end of the market, a sommelier can earn between £80,000-£100,000 a year and many will also be on some form of commission in relation to the amount of wine they sell. In addition, someone like Livio Italiani visits the wine regions of the world and is responsible for buying all the wines at Luciano. He’s not just there to remove the corks.
On stage, the lights are back on and the cameras are rolling. Two past winners are seated as diners in the centre of the stage. Clerc, Devaney and Thevenet enter the room and are told that the diners have chosen a “Terrine of Foie Gras, Menu Dégustation”, comprising three courses of foie gras – a terrine with a Riesling jelly, pan-fried on a bed of French beans and millefeuille of foie gras with black truffle. They must suggest a wine to match each course and they must be from different countries and of differing styles. We are to judge them on their choices and by the way they present themselves to the diners.
Quite honestly, it’s difficult to hear what they are saying. Sommeliers tend to speak too fast and, in my experience, assume that customers know a great deal about wine. Once you get a sommelier fired up, it’s hard to extinguish the passion – by which time you might have committed yourself to a bottle costing twice as much as you had originally planned. The finalists clearly have the gift of the gab. These three could persuade any of us of the merits of Mateus Rosé on a warm day.
All three appear on stage together for the final task. In front of each of them is a magnum of champagne and 18 glasses. They must open the bottle and pour its contents. That might seem simple enough but we are judging them for everything from how they remove the bottle from the ice bucket to the consistent height of the champagne in the glasses – a task made that much harder because they are not allowed to revisit any of the glasses once they have started pouring.
The judges go into a huddle in an adjoining room. I like the general demeanour of the Belfast boy but Thevenet has a way with a champagne bottle like nothing I have ever seen before. Clerc, meanwhile, who is only 29, could be a male model and his knowledge of wine is extraordinary. The scores are counted. It’s close but Clerc just comes out on top. When the winner is announced, he bursts into tears of joy.
“You are under so much pressure all day,” he tells me as his fellow sommeliers plant kisses on his glowing cheeks. “But, for me, I have been under pressure for eight months preparing for this. I am so proud of my achievement. To be a sommelier is a beautiful thing and I believe that soon it will a job that many people in Britain will want to do. Now, you must excuse me because I need a drink more than I have ever done in my life before.”
Essential sommelier skills
■You love serving people
■You have a nose for business as well as for wine, because you are there to buy as well as to pour
■You like to dress smartly
■You will never bridle when a customer says a bottle is “corked” when you know it isn’t
■You are unfailingly polite
■You don’t mind being overlooked when it comes to tipping
■You have strong biceps because a lot of your time is taken up by moving cases of wine around the cellar
■You have easy-going communication skills
■You have a strong head for alcohol
■You are arrestingly descriptive in a flowery sort of way
■You move effortlessly and silently about a room
