Ómós Digest #46: Lessons from a sommelier.
Written by Cathryn Bell.
This week’s newsletter is brought to you by sommelier Cathryn Bell. Cathryn is the creator of Wine Rover, consultant sommelier service. Cathryn has previously worked as head sommelier of 2* Aimsir restaurant in Celbridge and junior sommelier at Ashford Castle in Co. Mayo. Let’s hand it over to Cathryn…
I have a kanga cloth from my time in East Africa inscribed with the Swahili saying, “Kipendacho moyo, ni dawa” – “That which the heart loves, is medicine”. I’ve always interpreted that as “do what makes you happy” and so here we are, a girl from an ex-mining town in South Wales, with a degree in Swahili and Development Studies, working as a sommelier in Dublin. It’s not a conventional background into the field, in fact, it’s been gloriously maverick, surreal, hard work and a hell of a lot of fun and I’d recommend it to anyone! So with that in mind, I thought I’d share a few lessons that I’ve learnt along the way!
Unlikely beginnings
I was 26 when I made the move to become a sommelier – before that, I didn’t even know such a profession existed. I came across the concept during my research on a dial up computer in the mesh-windowed office of the eco-lodge that I was managing at the time, on the very northern tip of the island of Zanzibar. I had been involved in hospitality training with the local Muslim workforce in the context of a Western clientele. We had been exploring and explaining the function of wine within this context and it was here that I had my first dabblings into food and wine pairings.
The more I learnt and experienced myself, the more I loved it. So, when I found out that you could actually do this for a living, my fate was sealed! I packed my bags and flew to Cape Town to do my first wine studies. I travelled down to Hermanus and stayed in a shared dorm in a hostel which is all I could afford (absolutely petrified!) and walked at night to the “Wyn Skool”. The first night it rained torrentially and I navigated the streets as best I could, darting from street lamp to street lamp, heart in my throat, constantly checking around me for any followers. I arrived at the gate of the compounded address and buzzed the intercom to get in. The gate opened and as typical in South Africa to such properties, I was met by a huge guard dog barrelling towards me in the rain, teeth bared, shouting all sorts of profanities and threats (I shan’t repeat them here). Unfortunately for Rambo over there, I grew up with big dogs with bad language and so stood my ground. I felt the full force of a squashed muzzle against my shins, as my would-be assailant realised all too late that I didn’t believe a word he said and tried in vain to put the brakes on.
As this poor dog was trying desperately to explain the misunderstanding by way of animated licks and professions of wet paws, the door to the house opened and I met my first wine teacher. Bedecked with pearls and a toy poodle under each arm called “Pinot” and “Grigio”, she gave a half-hearted muttering to the dog to leave me alone, before making an equally half-hearted attempt to hide her disapproval as she looked up and down at my rain-soaked, wet dog covered state. The tone was set and I spent the next few days in the classes feeling “less than” and ashamed. It was my first taste of the snobbery that is associated with wine and with instances such as this, no wonder! I hated it. That said, everyone starts somewhere and about a month later, I had moved to Ireland and was on the floor of the George V Restaurant as junior sommelier at Ashford Castle. Needless to say, this was a very steep learning curve and it wasn’t easy. I was bullied incessantly for the first 6 months by a colleague who would go on to become my manager. He deeply resented my newness, my inexperience in the game and took it as a personal affront to his own position as a sommelier next to me. This leads me to my first lesson from the wine world.
Lesson 1: It is not a crime to be new to wine or to be learning about wine (and let me tell you, we are ALL still learning about wine!).
Wine and your relationship with wine is something you grow into through experience and curiosity – none of us gain this knowledge through sheer osmosis, (not even the French!). There’s no shortcut for it; you start with knowing nothing and you gradually learn through exploring wine, drinking wine and studying wine (if you want to) and the more you learn, the more comfortable you become with the fact that there is so much more that you don’t know.
Being comfortably open to learning something you didn’t know about wine is a really useful vulnerability I think, in fact, it’s your superpower in this business because it slices through bullshit like a hot knife to butter.
I got that first job as a junior sommelier in Ashford Castle based purely on my beaming enthusiasm to learn. I was fresh out of the packet and it was not something I hid. When the story of my unlikely provenance was invariably revealed to the guests during our conversations over dinner, they were incredulous (as I was) and moreover, equally delighted at my luck of getting to start this career where I was. Now, don’t get me wrong, being a brand spanking new sommelier in the context of a 5 star hotel, with one of the best cellars in the country (and not to mention some of the most “discerning” guests) was a baptism of fire to say the least! But I had my superpower, I knew what I didn’t know, everything I had to learn, and looking back, my ignorance until then of what a sommelier was, was a blessing in disguise.
With no idea or experience of how I should realise the role, I was free to make it my own. I learnt pretty quickly that the word ‘sommelier’ came with some pretty stifling connotations of intimidation and some sort of tacit status warfare, (I’m just giving you the wine list pal – I’m not here to insult you or your family, so stop growling at me please). It just wasn’t for me, in fact, I wanted to be the opposite. Obviously I wasn’t exactly opening bottles with my teeth on the floor of the George V (I do have some sense of decorum!) but I did make sure that I conveyed what I saw as the duty of my role in the way that was authentic to me and the professional that I was becoming in it. Friendliness, warmth, willingness to serve, a love of wine and wanting to give that to others, all the while getting better at not pouring the wine on the tablecloth whilst I was at it. I’ll always remember one guest at the Castle saying to me, “Isn’t it wonderful that in a place like this, they let someone like you work here!” Er, thanks – I think!
Carpe Vinum!
My next lesson is based on a curious phenomenon that I have encountered in a variety of contexts no matter where I have served people wine. It’s this weird thing of entangling drinking wine with our sense of worthiness and natural ability, dipping it in a dose of self-deprecation for good measure. If you’ve not said it yourself, you’ve heard it…
“Oh no, that would be wasted on me.”
“I’m sure it’s lovely but I just don’t have a very sophisticated palate.”
Or my mother’s personal favourite (panicked), “no, no, no, it’s ok, I know what I like and that’s good enough for me!”
Lesson 2:
To paraphrase Sartre - you are free to drink any wine you want, how you want - and moreover, you don’t have to have satisfied any qualification requirements to do it!
Why is it that when it comes to wine, we are indoctrinated to believe that we have to earn the trust and validation of our own experience? Why do we correlate our choice of wine with a statement on our status? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been given an order for a house wine by a customer with the opener “I’m really sorry”. Nobody apologises when they order the soup (nor, for that matter, when they try to refashion the dish with their omission and substitution requests) – but pray, mercy and forgiveness for ordering the house wine! Why?!
I think wine is a highly personal experience, a form of personal hedonism and escapism that can be as profound or as superfluous as you want. Life is tough, we should take all the kicks we can get and wine, in my opinion, is one of the highest forms of said kicks available to us. It’s just magic isn’t it? First of all, it’s delicious, second of all, it’s intriguing, intoxicating, transportive and transformative. In a sense, tasting wine engages more of the brain than any other human behaviour. It engages our sensory and motor pathways, as well as our central brain systems, including our memory, emotion, motivation, reward and language centres – no wonder it’s been the centre of all things divine for millennia! Holistically, wine is a product of a context, of places, people, stories. Heritage, legacy, future. Drinking wine on your sofa, in a field, in a restaurant is to be connected to somewhere else and to share it is to be connected to someone else – and don’t even get me started about what happens when you bring food into that equation! So why do we let any barriers of intimidation/judgement – self-imposed or otherwise – get in the way of enjoying all that? My job, as a sommelier then, is to break down those barriers. My job is to be the connector, the enabler, the matchmaker and the storyteller of these wines and their contexts - all of this is yours for the taking and my job is to help you get it.
Values
With that in mind, perhaps now you can see that the jump from development worker to sommelier isn’t such a big one after all. The basic underlying values are the same – it’s about making people happy, bringing some alleviation to the grind that is everyday life, living life in the good moments and bringing joy to the bits that you can. I can’t save the world, but I can create genuine moments of conviviality, sharing, connection and happiness. As I said, life is short and tough, being able to bring kindness and enjoyment to that is the best thing I want to do.
A huge part of my work is making those personal connections for people with wine and food and wine experiences. It’s incredibly fulfilling to be able to do that through so many different mediums, online and in real life and in so many different contexts – customers shopping for wine online, staff in a restaurant learning about wine and being able to serve their customers better, chefs being given a different dimension to their food through wine pairings, customers in a restaurant having the time of their life doing a food and wine tasting menu (possibly my fav) and all the while I get to learn and absorb learning from all these experiences so that I can keep doing it better. And you know what, I shall drink whatever I want whilst I’m at it!
So that brings me to Lesson 3: Kipendacho moyo, ni dawa.
All your posts have been wonderful. What struck me about Cathryn's was how frank she was, refreshingly so.
Really enjoyed that post.