Plenty of people rag on pompous sommeliers, but is the rest of the white wine world any better?
© Shutterstock|The gap between the image and reality of the average sommelier is plain.
Sommeliers– they’re the worst, aren’t they?
I follow a lot of them on social networks. You need to see it. Balling like rap artists of yore, breaking open the Pétrus, publishing videos of all the terrific red wines they’ve opened, a well-lit Instagram picture of a great label they have actually just received, whingeing about shipments being late or orders not being fulfilled, going on trips to taste red wines at Vega-Sicilia, stogies at the club and after that, the final twist at the end of the put: bragging about the ridiculous hours they do.
For a group of people whose job it is to bring red wines to the table of the more upscale (who, be honest, would rather be sat at the table?), it’s a bit much to then go and boast about those wines. Envision, for instance, the Insta account of somebody working at Maranello Sales in Egham, Surrey (a popular UK Ferrari dealership), publishing “It’s the brand-new yellow F8 Spider, bitches” with a photo of themselves climbing up into the driving seat. Okay, however that’s not your cars and truck is it? You’re doing the equivalent of posturing on the bonnet of a cars, pretending its yours.
You took a bottle of wine to a table, you opened it and poured for the table and, if you’re fortunate, you evaluated it ahead of time for cork taint or oxidation– like a decadent Roman emperor’s food tester, a praegustator– there to ensure TCA does not sully the tastes buds of the magnificent. You then took a photo of the bottle (with all individuals drinking it cropped out), published it on social media, and got a lot of likes or follows.
The sommeliers’ world (and this typically chooses the non-interventionist crowd too) is likewise remarkably safe. It’s often the exact same top category of red wines; the best Champagnes (Krug, Hair Salon, DP, and so on); the fantastic labels from Bordeaux to Tuscany to Napa and so on. Likewise, if I see another video of a crowd of grey-suited minions opening an ancient bottle of Port with red-hot tongs and with the long-faced solemnity of a group of veterinarians trying to synthetically inseminate the world’s last panda, I’ll go postal.
It’s like reading a serialized account of Marie Antoinette’s cake decorator’s journal. Just then for the designer to put the cherry on top by pointing out how tough they operated at making that Victoria sponge. Because sommeliers, apparently, work hard. Frequently generating that oft-encountered brag-cum-complaint about long hours, being on your feet all night, taken meals, and so on.
I long for a video of a restaurant after closing time, the somm tipping the Ornellaia, Dalle Valle, Pingus and Grange in the recycling bin, nabbing a ciggy with the bellhop, sharing the lightly corked Corton with the kitchen area personnel and getting a shot of cooking Cognac in return. That’s the truth.
That’s the sort of truth you see all over else in the red wine world, isn’t it? Hang on …
Its not simply somms
Since it’s not just sommeliers, is it? If they’re all that I have disingenuously implicated them of above, what of the remainder of the red wine world? Go look at non-sommelier influencers and there are generally 2 classifications: posts of excellent and excellent bottles of wine (Vega-Sicilia, Petrus, Ornellaia, Dalle Valle, and so on) and advertising for mass-market brand names. You wish to see a development of popular, already reputable red wines being slapped on the internet when they were provided as a tasting sample, or provided as a gift, or on a press trip, take your pick of wine-related occupations.
If sommeliers open red wines for the affluent, what do prominent wine writers do? Taste those white wines to promote and maintain the status of those extremely labels? How many disparaging social networks posts have you seen by our prominent critics? Even at more mass-market levels, very couple of publications are straight-out scathing of any red wines, preferring not to release low-scoring bottles.
And talking of positioning next to a Ferrari, sommeliers aren’t the only ones captured on cam (after how many efforts) looking cool by the stone cross outside Romanée-Conti. The number of label shots are of unopened white wines in wine shops, or at market tastings? They’re not the only ones guilty of my pet peeves of the endless barrage of sabrage videos and Port-openings.
They’re not the only ones asking, through the medium of Instgram, what they must load for a trip to Madeira or groaning about the service at their local white wine bar. They aren’t the only ones taking simple pot-shots at natural wines while accepting the hospitality supplied by a local body/producer/luxury items brand name (erase as proper).
As for the hard-work-as-brag trope, sommeliers don’t come close to cellarhands. Even I’ve been guilty of this: declaiming to all who would care to listen that I ‘d attained a 100-hour week throughout harvest several years back. It mixes displaying with exploitation in a way that is difficult to outclass.
Somm may state
So what was the point of all that? Well, first of all, thus many locations of human endeavor or activity, there is a propensity to scold one particular class or group within a larger band. Years back, video gamers would hate on television-watchers for their passivity in the face of the screen in front of them. Possibly that’s still a thing?
The publishing sector of the white wine world is currently coming to grips with influencers, but twenty years ago it was bloggers; the production side is facing minimal-intervention wineries; marketing bodies are hating on the “clean wine” thing– in fact, practically everybody in the red wine world is hating on that.
However all of these family pet dislikes truly brighten the problems within our own sector. “Clean” wines just highlight transparency in white wine production and labeling.
The phenomenon of posting photos of inaccessible, fantastic white wines (and their attendant appeal) just serves to highlight the absence of inclusivity in wine, given that the majority of individuals publishing these photos would not be splitting these bottles on a school night anyhow. For the majority of us, they are provided as tasting samples: to be written about, lauded, however seldom emptied. The people really consuming these things aren’t on Insta or the like (they’re on Twitter, if anything).
Influencers too (in similar method as bloggers of old) cause problems to authors and publishers. Some advise us that it would be great to have white wine as a hobby, others that we are less than photogenic, others that discussion can conquer shortages in understanding, others still that there stay concerns around ethics and what makes up advertising or coverage. These are problems as much within publishing as with influencing as with blogging.
I could go on for a while, however hopefully my point is made? Sommeliers aren’t the only ones showing off the crumbs that fall from the table in such nauseating style. If anything, they’re least unpleasant of everybody.
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