The love of a good Sommelier
May 2008 - Tonya Lailey

Today’s sommelier isn’t the portly gent sporting a tastevin (that little silver saucer of bygone days used for tasting wine in the cellar) and gazing down at patrons from behind his ruddy nose. Rather, she’s typically funky and young and besotted with the sensual beauty and academic substance of wine, beer and spirits. What’s more, she grooves on personal tastes and unconventional detours rather than the intimidating dictums of food and wine traditions.

So what is a sommelier? At a restaurant, she’s charged with buying wine (and often spirits), storing it properly, creating the wine list, training the staff in wine service, working with the culinary team to keep the wine relevant to the menu and working the floor.

It seems that more and more people in this country – perhaps naïve or misguided, but certainly passionate – are choosing to make wine service their profession. The presence of this keen and educated vinous set is vitalizing wine lists and wine service. Colleges and educational institutions nationwide are responding to the demand and helping to create it by launching sommelier certification programs in conjunction with the Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers (www.capsontario.ca).

Restaurateurs are getting smarter, too. They’re understanding that there’s an art to creating a distinctive, compelling and profitable wine list, and that selling wine doesn’t consist of simply handing a wine list to patrons.

A good sommelier can guide you gently through the wine list while offering narrative notes along the way, fleshing out mere liquid with history, geography and a cast of characters. This same person, because she’s a professional, can also be a quiet, efficient presence, getting the bottle you ordered and serving it with such aptitude that you’re surprised to find there’s wine in your glass awaiting your approval. A good sommelier can also make ordering wine and drinking it nothing short of blissful because she so accurately gauged your mood and preferences.

And these women and men don’t have it easy. It’s very seldom that they get to serve the wine they think is best suited to the dishes patrons have ordered. Usually, the sommelier must find “a really good wine” to go with duck liver paté, oysters, wild boar carpaccio and smoked trout. It’s here that knowledge, experience and compassion must cooperate within the good sommelier for her to lead the patrons through this treacherous pass.

Compassion is indeed relevant. For the love of a good sommelier is also the love of people. Though I can’t guarantee that all of your experiences with a sommelier will be good ones, I can assure you that many will be. Consider that you’re more likely to receive the love of a good sommelier if you give yourself over to her. Let her be your guide. Unless, of course, you think that a glass of wine is only ever just a glass of wine.
I happen to think otherwise.

Bouchard Pere et Fils Petit Chablis (France)
LCBO 51466 / 750 ml bottle
France
$19.10

A crisp, dry lean chardonnay with lovely little notes of pear, apple mineral and citrus.

Find a good source for oysters. Shuck them, drizzle them with lemon and go to town.

Trapiche Reserve Malbec
LCBO 614651 / 750 ml bottle
Argentina
$12.05

A somewhat simple but lively and satisfying red full of dark cherry and plum aromas and flavours nicely complicated with a little spice.
Get some steaks from your favourite local butcher and some local morels from the market. Grill the steak to pink perfection and sauté the morels in a little garlic and olive oil. Crack open
the bottle of Malbec and you’re in business. Salud!