Becoming A Sommelier

By (author) Schaap, Rosie
Description
“If you are curious about life as a sommelier, this charming book makes an easy, nutritious appetizer.” —The New York Times

An illuminating guide to a career as a sommelier written by acclaimed food and drink writer Rosie Schaap and based on the real-life experiences of experts in the field—essential reading for anyone considering a path to this profession.

Wine is a pleasure, and in its pursuit there should be no snobbery. The sommelier is there to help, to teach, to guide. Acclaimed food and drink writer Rosie Schaap profiles two renowned sommeliers to offer a candid portrait of this profession. Learn the job from Amanda Smeltz, a poet and wine director in New York, and Roger Dagorn, a James Beard Award–winning Master Sommelier. From starting in the cellar, grueling certification exams, to tastings and dinner service, Becoming a Sommelier is an invaluable introduction to this dream job.
Biographical note
Rosie Schaap is the author of Drinking with Men: A Memoir. She is the former “Drink” columnist for The New York Times Magazine, and has also contributed to Lucky Peach, Saveur, The New York Times Book Review, Travel + Leisure, and This American Life. She was previously and variously employed as a community organizer, an editor, a manager of homeless shelters, and, for many years, a bartender.
Excerpt
Becoming a Sommelier INTRODUCTION


There’s a story in my family that dates my connection to wine to an early age. I must have been three or four years old. My parents took a quick vacation and left me in the care of their friend Pat, a glamorous and indulgent honorary aunt whom I adored. Imagine a sort of Mary Poppins type—if Mary Poppins had been a patrician Back Bay Bostonian with expensive taste in wine, who drank a lot of it.

When my mother and father returned from their trip, Pat greeted them at the door to our apartment with me in her arms. In the telling of the story that they passed down to me when I was old enough to appreciate it, I looked up at my parents and earnestly asked, “Bordeaux?”

Since then, I have sometimes wondered: How formative was that long weekend with Pat? Was it a defining moment? Did it set the rest of my life on an irreversible course? Who knows?

Until now, I’ve written more about spirits and cocktails than I have about wine, but the truth is that where drinking is concerned, I have always been a wine drinker and wine lover above all else. Of course I love a beautifully made, ice-cold martini—and I suspect that there are some people in my life who might never want to talk to me again for saying this—but I’d be okay if I never drank one again.

That’s not how I feel about wine, which I regard as a more essential, everyday pleasure. At the end of a long day, like many people I know, I pour myself some wine—not a shot of tequila. It’s not often that I crave a cocktail with my dinner, but I almost always want a glass or two of wine with it.

However, none of this makes me an authority on wine. The absolute barest essentials of how wine comes into being (grapes are picked, they are crushed, they are fermented, the alcoholic juice produced by fermentation is aged and bottled) may have not changed dramatically over its long history, but it is nonetheless a vast and ancient subject, one that takes years, maybe a lifetime, to master, if mastery is even possible. More than sixty countries produce wine for consumer markets. California alone makes more than seventeen million gallons of the stuff every year. According to the most recent statistics on the website of the Wine Institute, an advocacy and public policy organization representing one thousand California wineries, Americans consumed 949 million gallons of wine in 2016—a significant increase fro