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FeedTasting Excellence
We take a look inside the daunting quest to become an expert wine professional.
"Time!" interjects the sommelier with the stopwatch. "Final conclusion "¦ I'm going to say Sangiovese. Chianti Classico from Tuscany. It has that strong, earthy, classic style," the taster systematically drones in his final quiet moment before the room erupts in response. "Look at the color, that ruby-garnet," suggests the Master in the room. "Bordeaux. The Cabernet tannins are long and noble," interjects a sommelier. "Fifth-growth Pauillac," says one of the salesmen. "Saint-Julien, 2000," counters another with perfect French pronunciation.
The sommelier who brought the wine in question can't wipe the smirk off his face. He stands up from the table to retrieve his bottle and rips the tinfoil from it "” a 1999 Ribera del Duero Tempranillo. He'd stumped every one of them, even the Master Sommelier.
It's a recent Saturday afternoon, and nine Denver-area sommeliers and wine salesmen have gathered around a table at Barolo Grill. For going on two hours now, they've been finding sauerkraut, Slovenian oak, Gala apples, cantaloupe and vulcanized rubber in covered bottles of wine. They are prac-ticing their blind-tasting skills, many in preparation for the Court of Master Sommeliers' advanced-level exam.
The advanced exam is the third of four testing levels on the road to achieving the court's namesake title of Master Sommelier. The most prestigious honor in the wine business, the MS designation is one held by a mere 167 people worldwide, 10 of whom work in Colorado at last count. This is more Masters per capita than any other state, making Colorado a somewhat unexpected hotbed for preparing for the exam. Candidates from Texas, Chicago, Florida, even California flock here to train with our Masters, and local wine professionals are taking advantage of their access to this talent by pursuing the honor in surprisingly high numbers "” 25 percent of the 2008 MS candidates were from Colorado.
The court's four testing levels are introductory, certified, advanced and master with a mind-blowing number of hours, pages and spit buckets involved in preparing for each. The introductory level is exactly as it sounds, a two-day overview of wine regions around the world, production techniques, labeling regulations and other wine theory, culminating in a multiple-choice exam. According to Scott Thomas, sommelier at the Greenwood Village Del Frisco's, who received a perfect score on his introductory exam in 2008, the test can include anything from Italy's chaotic wine-labeling system and multitude of native varietals to up-and-coming wine regions in South America to the 1855 Classification of Bordeaux.
At the second tier, the certified level, the exam includes not only a written component but also the blind tasting of two wines and a service role-play, where a candidate performs Champagne or decanting service, and everything from his attire to the cleanliness of his fingernails is considered. During his certified exam in 2007, Ryan Fletter, wine director at Barolo Grill and host of Saturday practice sessions, successfully brought the Champagne bottle to the right of the guest, displayed it label-forward, removed the foil, extracted the pressurized cork and served the sparkling wine properly, so it didn't erupt out of any of the flutes and was
evenly poured into all eight glasses. For many candidates, the most challenging part of this service component is the nerve-wracking pressure of performing for existing Master Sommeliers. But "the shaky-hand syndrome has some true application," Fletter says. "If the owner of the Denver Broncos is in, and you are asked to serve $1,000 bottles, there is no lenience because of your nerves. The best of the best are expected not to shoot the cork across the room."
The court's advanced level includes the same three components as the certified "” a written theory exam, a blind tasting and a service exam "” but each is more in-depth and unpredictable. Here, the blind tasting is of six wines in 25 minutes (hence the stopwatch during the study sessions), and the service component can be about any topic that falls under a sommelier's purview: aperitifs, food-and-wine pairings, even cigars. One is admitted to the advanced-level exam by application, which must include letters of recommendation and documentation of at least five years of wine service experience.
At the advanced level, candidates have to pass all three sections by 60 percent and an average of only 25 percent of those who attempt it are successful, meaning that most take the advanced exam numerous times over the course of a few years before passing. Just ask Brandon Tebbe, sommelier at Crú Park Meadows, or Kevin Arndt, wine director at Restaurant Kevin Taylor, both of whom have attempted it before and plan to try again in 2009.
Following a successful advanced exam, the court invites some sommeliers to sit for the Master title. At this level, there is again a service component, a blind tasting and a theory exam, only "” much like defending a doctoral thesis "” the theory component is now oral. "You have to know it, know it well, and know it right now," says the Boulder Wine Merchant's Wayne Belding, MS, who is the exam coordinator, sits on the court's board of directors and tastes some 3,000 wines a year. At the master level, a candidate must pass each of the three sections by 75 percent and only an average of 10 percent pass.
The oral theory component at the MS level is not the only thing that's been compared to obtaining a doctorate. The years of training, studying and sheer dedication that go into the entire path from the introductory tier to the title of Master Sommelier are often likened to obtaining a Ph.D. "You spend most of your life going for it," says Max Ariza, associate instructor at Denver's Johnson & Wales who has attempted the master exam and will try again in Healdsburg, California, in mid-February.
By the time a person is studying for the advanced- or master-level exams, he might be spending one to three hours a day studying theory. For Mizuna and Osteria Marco's Ryan Gaudin, who applied for the April advanced exam, this means lugging around the Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia, a stack of flash cards and a journal of study notes. Many at this level are also participating in weekly blind-tasting groups such as Fletter's and, for well-located Denver somms, maybe even tasting one-on-one with an area Master.
While it may be fair to compare this level of diligence and perseverance to a doctoral degree, the subject matter is not lost on our city's sommeliers. Let's face it: Their topic of expertise is wine, something that is synonymous with good times, family and friends. Appropriately, the tasting sessions going on in restaurants around Denver are filled with as much laughter and joke-cracking as mystery Tempranillos. "I can't wait until I can shit-talk and taste at the same time," says Sian Nagan, wine manager at the Capital Grille who is applying for the October advanced-level exam. "You are studying something that people have been enjoying for 4,000 years," says Ariza, who stands to complete the pilgrimage and become Denver's next Master Sommelier this month.
