Endangered sommeliers

So you think Bengal Tigers are a grave concern? Almost on the verge of extinction and what not. Pish tosh. Alligators and foxes? Humbug I say. Pandas and koalas? Okay, them I am partial to so I feel it too.

But don’t distract me, and not with intelligent stuff anyways. I am concerned about the near-extinction of a species of even lesser value — the sommelier. Soon we shall be extinct and I don’t mean liver degeneration. There are bigger things that plague us — the non sommeliers. While I can still nose the dying pepper in my Claret, let me elucidate.

Recently I received an invite from a rather posh (or till that point, posh) fancy fusion outlet which claimed to be organising wine nights and then mentioned the presence of a ‘noted sommelier’. Now I can count the qualified sommeliers in India on the fingers of one hand of a man with third stage leprosy, so I made a few calls to myself and my alter ego to check whether they had agreed to do any such.

All of us concurred that this circular had neither been received nor approved by anyone of me. I even called a few quasi-sommelier types but drew a blank. It wasn’t till someone informed me that it would be some un-sommelier posing as one and that’s when it dawned upon me: to wipe out a species you don’t have to kill them all. Instead you can infest the market with a million cheaper-than-Chinese rip-offs and nip them at the roots by killing their livelihood. Welcome then, I guess, to the art of un-sommellerie.

The problem is not that the average public is caught unawares. That is but a small facet of this multi-edged malady. The bigger ire for us is that sommellerie isn’t defined well enough as a metier for people to know what it entails and how do you become one.

Just like recipes for Dal Makhani and Chicken Tikka Masala abound in multitudes as there are chefs, sommeliers too get painted with this ignorant brush of indifference. Are there formal courses? Do you need to have worked in a restaurant where you knew how to buy, stock, sell, and pair wines? Do you need to wake up with the breath of Bordeaux and the stains of Syrah on your breath? The answer to all these are yes, yes, and sure, why not.

That would then constitute an average day in the life of a sommelier. But like any rare species, sommeliers aren’t cheap. In any case, I am not, I can barely afford my own self. So step in the un-sommelier. S/he plays the role of one without the actual knowledge and intelligence.

Nevermind that they couldn’t taste their ass from their elbow, but they swirl the stuff professionally, throw in the technical jargon, even let their tasting commentary hang mid-air as ponderous pensive pointers. And of course they claim to love the wine at hand, often because they stand to gain from it. Much like Bollywood then: dazzling performance is more pertinent than content or quality.

So let’s say you are middle-aged and know it’s too late to be a qualified professional or are young but just too unbothered to study to be a sommelier. Here then are a few quick ways to become a sommelier, and I am not even peddling IWBS.
Tips for becoming a sommelier will follow in the next column
Email: s_magandeep@dnaindia.net