Job: The Moonlighting Sommelier
by Clarissa Wildwood
What are three of the most ridiculous things people have asked you at restaurants (or in otherwise sommelier-appropriate settings)?
A) Are you like a wino? (To which I invariably answer, “Only on laundry days, man.”) B) One of the most common types of questions is that of the “wine forensic” type: “My husband and I went to this little restaurant in Emilia-Romagna and it was so beautiful and we tried this wine that went so well with the meal. I think it had like a picture of the winery on the label and the label was in Italian. Do you have it?” I always ask whether the wine was red or white, and ofter they answer, “I don’t remember. But it was so good!” And C) “Can you recommend a wine that my wife hasn’t tried yet?” (To which I want to reply, “Yeah, hold on, let me do the Vulcan mind meld.”)
Did you like the other people at sommelier school? Also: sommelier school! What’s that about, and how much does it cost?
Sommelier programs do indeed exist and are usually ensconced in a larger cooking school scenario like this. The cost for this particular program is $9,500, which I can’t even. What I did is formed a group of like-minded servers/academics who studied together every week for about three years; part of the night was given over to talking about wine regions, geography, and grape varietals, and the rest of the night was spent blind tasting wines. For the blind tasting, we put our wines in a bag and poured from those rather than actually wearing a blindfold, which is what I originally thought would happen, ha ha, naivete! Each one of us would have to identify the grape varietal, the region in which the wine was made, and the approximate age of the wine, among other signifiers. It was pleasantly stressful and very competitive. So, for brevity’s sake, one can absolutely become a somm through self-study, but a tasting group is pretty much mandatory for the not-super-rich because of the prohibitive cost of tasting wine on your own.
If you had to pick a wine stopper, which one would you pick? Or does it matter?
Do you mean functional or cute? Because you can get those cute knobs from Anthropologie and glue them into corks for cute! For functional stoppers, some people use the vacuum stoppers, and while I have heard good things about them, I just take a cork from my rather enormous collection of used corks. I never keep plastic or synthetic corks, though, because they are nigh-impossible to get back into the bottle. One of the best ideas is to buy a bottle of Madeira (this a fortified wine and shouldn’t set you back more than $15ish), use it for cooking or cocktails (or sipping!), and then keep the nifty lid-topped cork that many of them come with. I have a ton of these around for any bottle since any larger of a stopper will mean that the bottle can not stand up in my fridge and I hate cleaning up old, spilt wine from my fridge/floor.
I had a bottle of white wine in my refrigerator for a month while I tried to avoid drinking, and I told myself I’d throw it away or maybe cook with it or something, and then in a low moment when I was drinking again . . . I drank it, obviously. And it was fine. Or, it seemed fine. Which was sort of sad. How gross and/or potentially unhealthy was that scenario? Alternately: how long does white wine last in a refrigerator?
When you ask about the potential health-related consequences, are you talking about physically or mentally? Ha! Sometimes, with a basic white wine, all that happens is the flavor fades. Nothing bad will happen, per se, but the experience will not be as pleasant as it would with a fresher wine. When wine “goes bad,” it never means that it will hurt you; the worst is that it will make you pull a face and throw it out. Pro tip: if the wine is cheaper, go ahead and toss it in the freezer. It won’t be revelatory when it thaws, but it totally works. I do this with wine for cooking since I’m pregnant now and for some reason my husband offered to quit drinking along with me and thus we never kill a bottle any more. Another option to keep in mind is using a half bottle. Buy a half bottle of anything, drink it, wash the bottle thoroughly, and then have it handy when you have a wine that you want to keep. Fill the bottle up to the brim, cork with one of your million corks you now keep as “decoration,” and stow in the crisper drawer in the fridge. I have a friend who kept a wine that way for several months, and she says it was perfect. To answer the second question, unless the wine is particularly well-made, I make sure to kill it the next day. If you wind up not being able to get to it because of a self-imposed and futile prohibition, mix the old wine with peach liqueur (for whites) or pomegranate liqueur (for reds) and you’ll wonder why you ever stopped drinking.
Three strange wine facts people can impress their friends with?
I kind of took liberties with this question because I’m not sure what’s impressive, because I think that that might be relative to what your friends know about wine, you know? So I have a couple things here that I feel very earnest about re: wine. Use what might seems useful, maybe? A) Many people complain about headaches either from wine or tannins. Fun fact: sulfites and tannins occur naturally and as a preservative in many foods (like anything from canned foods to tea), and many fewer people are sensitive to these compounds than they suspect. I have found, after questioning people who say that they’re sensitive, that usually one of two factors is at play. The first is that, as grapes are not washed before they are pressed, there’s often material other than grapes (MOG) in the wine, especially if it’s not fined or filtered (and MOG can be in the wine even when it has been filtered!). This might mean that there is pollen . . . and bird poop . . . in the initial juice. Beyond that, many wineries add all sorts of extra stuff to the wine and tweak it in order to achieve the house flavor.
What it boils down to, basically, is that if the wine is carefully harvested and carefully made, the wine will be better quality. If the winery does not indulge in tweaking the wine, then it is generally better quality and better-tasting. These wines are not necessarily expensive. The second factor that might be contributing to headaches is that many of the people I question, besides drinking cheap wine, are not drinking water and eating alongside the wine. Woe betide those who drink without additional sustenance! After a while, however, this method loses its charm when one is confined to bed for two-day epic hangovers. It only took about five years before I got tired of it! So, drink a lot, sure, but drink some water and eat a pastrami sandwich soon, too!
B) Pretty much my favorite food-and-wine pairing that is achievable on a slim budget is sparkling Shiraz and pizza. Sparkling Shiraz is not super cheap ($15ish), but that and a pizza with spicy toppings is the best, especially if you’ve just moved and are eating off of cardboard boxes.
If you could tell everybody one thing about wine, what would it be?
Try to drink the best quality wine possible for your budget; if you’re worried about not getting the buzz you need, that’s why you should begin the night with a gin or something else that tastes pretty neutral, so as not to cloud your palate.
But what about the fun of genuinely enjoying cheap wine?
So let me clarify: when I urge people to buy the best wine that your budget allows, I mean even under *serious* budget constraints. For example, I was pretty broke last summer, so I wanted to find something I could afford that still tasted good. I happened on a rosé by a Chilean producer who makes good, value wine and tried it out. At six bones a bottle, I was impressed and wound up buying a couple cases of it. I have never let poverty stand in the way of a decent drink!
Related: what are your thoughts about that “most of us can’t taste the nuances in high-priced wine” piece?
I heard this story in the car this morning! I’ve read a lot of conflicting evidence about supertasters; I am one myself, but instead of enhancing my palate, it might have hobbled me, because I was slow to really try more bitter, tannic wines.
Many people can’t taste the nuance in more expensive wines — either that or they flat-out dislike the wine. A common phenomena for n00b wine drinkers is to start cheap and sweet, and slowly work their way into more challenging wines. As for the expense, I’ve moved from being a quantity-over-quality gal to drinking much less, but much better wine. I spend the same amount, but the better-quality juice satisfies my palate and is overall much more worth it. Plus, that approach makes me feel like an adult, rather than just faking being an adult.
As far as the info in the article about shelf-talkers, (or as we call them, “the silent salesman”!!!) finding wine reviewers is like finding film reviewers you like. Just as it takes a few movies to decide whether you think the reviewer has similar tastes and looks for the same qualities in a movie as you do, it might take a few wines for you to see whether you agree with the reviewer’s palate.
Can/do you make a full-time living as a sommelier? Is that someone a sommelier-wannabe can/should aspire to? And what kind of ballpark salary could they expect (over the course of a career)?
Since I only moonlight in the industry, and because of the lack of full-time sommelier positions in my city, I’ve never tried to leave my main job. I also have a big thing for health insurance, and I wasn’t sure if that would be available if I were strictly working in service. However, I have a couple friends who started around $35,000 a year and one of them topped out at around $80,000. The lack of job security scared me, especially when one friend got canned because she was making too much and the restaurant didn’t want to pay for her anymore. Another option for people who know a lot is on the supply/distribution side, which is of course more business-oriented. There are a variety of different jobs available in the wine industry, which is nice, but you definitely have to spend time in the trenches at first. I kind of went the academic route and wound up teaching wine education classes, which beat folding sweaters in a clothing store, my previous moonlighting gig. Overall, it took about five years of lump-taking, punch-rolling, and hard work to get to that point.
What’s the last glass of wine you drank, and when exactly was it, and with whom, and was it good?
The last wine I drank the night before I realized I might be with child (oops! That’s a whole ‘nother story right there!) was with my family over Christmas. My dad likes big, assertive California wines, so I bought him a powerhouse type: Shafer Relentless, a Petite Sirah/Syrah blend that looks like squid ink, it’s so dark and concentrated. Luckily, it was pretty well-made, so even though I can’t drink, I can still taste the finish.
Clarissa Wildwood is pioneering the emerging field of cryptooenology.
Photo by Chiyacat, via Shutterstock