Why sommeliers matter more than wine scores

Thursday, 2 April, 2015
Eater, Robert Sinskey
Why you should ignore wine scores and listen to your sommelier.

The era of wine arrogance is over. It was slowly dismantled by a chorus from the ether. Unlike the recent past when an ex-attorney could anoint himself the palate of America, a new generation of wine professionals seized control by embracing the Old World discipline of the sommelier. Since they are young and cool, they call themselves Somms.

The good ones take their craft seriously and have developed finely tuned BS meters. Instead of a singular voice, they talk amongst each other in public internet forums, at wine seminars and gatherings. They challenge preconceived notions, kill sacred cows, encourage, question, prod … but the biggest difference between the new communal voice of wine and the past wine critic is that these professionals rose through the ranks of cuisine and service. Their loyalty is to their patron’s palate and, hopefully, not their own ego.

A brief history of American wine is needed for perspective.

At one time, wine was utilitarian. Fermentation was a way to preserve fruit while creating a safe beverage free of the water-borne pathogens that plagued pre-chlorine civilizations. As new frontiers were settled, John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, planted apples for hard cider while missionaries planted grapes for sacramental wines. These beverages were fermented in wood vats with no refrigeration. They were riddled with harmless bacteria that imparted a gamut of non-fruit flavors from mustiness, to leather, to horseshit.

Though safe to drink, they would never be confused with fine beverages. They satisfied the need for calories, sated thirst, cured boredom and killed pain … and every once in a while, the weather would cooperate and someone would make a sublime wine—but that was the exception.

In the mid-1800s pioneering winemaker Agoston Haraszthy, a man considered the father of California viticulture, imported hundreds of varieties of European vinifera (or grape vines) and attempted to make wine on par with the great beverages of the Old World. But, in doing so, he inadvertently created the first known infestation of phylloxera (a microscopic louse that feeds on the roots of grape vines thus killing the plant) in California that proceeded to wipe out his Sonoma vineyards, and even traveled all the way to Europe nearly destroying all the vineyards there as well.

To read more, click HERE.

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