Blame it on Rioja

After years of dawdling, I finally decided to begin the long and uncertain road towards attaining the title of Master Sommelier, an accreditation administered by the American chapter of the Court of Master Sommeliers and the top recognition for wine (and spirits) knowledge, service abilities, and professionalism in the hospitality trade.

At present there are 96 Master Sommeliers in the U.S.–including, of course, my mentor and colleague, Roger Dagorn–and 187 worldwide, according to a February 20 Business Wire article announcing the nine wine professionals most recently awarded the prestigious title, Jesse Becker, Chris Blanchard, Drew Hendricks, Geoff Kruth, Joseph Linder, Joseph Phillips, Steven Poe, Sean Razee, and Emily Wines. (You might recall that two MS’s, Jason Smith and Juan Gómez, joined us last fall in Rioja, while we were filming our educational documentary.)

There are four distinct levels of examination, the Introductory course and exam, the Certified Sommelier exam, the Advanced exam, and the Master’s Diploma exam. Each level of exam is more rigorous than the last, as what you’re expected to know becomes more detailed and arcane, and the less forgiving judges become in assessing your service abilities and deductive blind-tasting assessments. Pass rates for the first level hover around 85% or so; by contrast, only 5% of candidates pass all three components of the Master’s diploma exam. Candidates for the Master Sommelier title get three chances to pass all three, otherwise Master’s candidates lose credit for those components they did pass and are obliged to start the level from scratch. The top scorer at each Master’s exam, who manages to pass all three components in one go, is awarded the Krug Cup. The most recent Krug Cup winner was Emily Wines.

Last Friday, I passed the first level, after two days of sitting with 77 colleagues in the private dining room of Gilt Restaurant in the Palace Hotel, reviewing viticulture, vinification, and the world’s major wine regions. We also reviewed and practiced the Court’s Deductive (”blind”) Tasting Format–also known as “building the grid”–a fascinating and surprisingly reliable means of drawing conclusions about a wine only after systematically assessing its color, viscosity, and likely age, and identifying at least three fruit associations, all of its non-fruit aromas and flavors (flowers, spices), and its degree of earthiness (a category further subdivided into organic–mushrooms, for example–and inorganic–wet stone, for example).

It was cramped and chilly and jam-packed with minutiae, list making, and map gazing–and I loved every minute of it. I am also happy to report that I missed only two of the 70 questions on the exam, and along with one other candidate, was singled out at the reception on Friday for having the top score.

It ain’t no Krug Cup, but it’s a start.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm and is filed under General, New York City, Master Sommeliers, Wine education, CIA Rioja DVD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.