Ask Sid Heil, Your White Supremacist Sommelier!

As a young boy, Sid Heil decided he wanted to make wine his career. “My Dad taught me that white people had invented wine, and that it was an industry that was still about 99% white. But that was a long time ago, and things have changed. That might not be the case any longer. It’s probably only 97% white now. Bunch of Yao Ming types buying property, which nobody seems to care. None of those on my wine list.”

I have no idea what's wrong with me. This premise occurred to me over lunch with my beautiful wife, but I was very uncertain whether I could make it work. A few minutes later, the name "Sid Heil" jumped into my head, and I knew that the piece was demanding to be written. In a strange way, it's connected to my feelings about how sexist, even misogynist, the wine business is. If it can be misogynist, why not bigoted? And so it goes...

You'll have to jump over to Tim Atkin's award-winning site to finish reading the post. I wasn't sure Tim was going to accept the piece, truthfully, but he loved it. It says much about his character, and his four-year support of my HoseMaster nonsense. I hope I get to meet the man one day.

As ever, please feel free to leave your brilliant comments on Tim's site, or come back here and leave your remarks while disguised under a big tall, white hat.

TIM ATKIN MW

Love Among the Somms

Members of the Sommish People

The Somms are a strange people, only recently discovered by Westerners. Little is known about where they originated, though most anthropologists agree that it was very early in the 21st Century that most Americans became aware of them, rather like radical Islamist terrorists, or the bizarre Butt people from Kardashia. Many speculate that the symbolic changing of millennia is what created the atmosphere for such bizarre cults to emerge. Our fascination for freaks in stressful times, and our fears about the end of the civilized world, may be what nurtures the rise of such strange and self-serving peoples. Pound for pound, only the Somms have bigger asses than the Butt people of Kardashia.


You'll find many interesting observations in my anthropological study of the Sommish people, but you'll have to make the leap over to Tim Atkin MW's award-winning site to read them. While you're there, be sure to contribute to this landmark study of the Somms with a pithy comment. Or, if you must, pour me a small taste of what you have to say, I'll give it the sniff test, and tell you if it smells like shit.

TIM ATKIN MW

The MS and the HMW--The Hair and The Hair Not Apparent

Creating and writing HoseMaster of Wine™ has been a remarkable experience for me. I’ve said this repeatedly—I’m amazed anyone reads this crap. And, truthfully, not that many people do. Not compared to, say, Wine Spectator, or The Wine Advocate, or any other throwaways. But in the tiny pond that is wine satire, I’m not so much the big fish as I am the pond scum. I look interesting, but once I get on you, it’s pretty disgusting. You feel like you need a shower.

Wine has been my career. I take it seriously. But taking wine too seriously is, to the HoseMaster, profoundly silly. Writing is also a lifelong passion of mine. I take writing seriously, too. I’m not sure what bothers me more about wine writing on the Intergnats—the emptiness of the subject matter, or the amazing dearth of writing talent. You have only to glance through the winners of the recent Wine Blog Awards—for the love of God, don’t waste any time on them—to understand my disdain.

Satire matters. I inadvertently created a small niche for myself in the wine writing business by satirizing all things wine. I will not claim to be a great satirist. Relentless, maybe, but far from great. I do try to be equally unfair to everyone. I don’t have an agenda. I’m an Equal Opportunity Offender. A lot of wine bloggers hate me, a lot of wine writers hate me (no, bloggers are not by definition writers—typing is not writing, no matter what marketing folks say), and a lot of sommeliers hate me. It’s the gig. You want to be loved by the wine biz, write praise, propaganda and pap. It’s everywhere. Take a whack at it. I prefer to be slightly feared, mildly admired, and generally disliked. And left alone.

A couple of weeks ago, Geoff Kruth MS, sent me an email asking me if I would engage in an email conversation with him about sommeliers, a conversation that would be published on the Guild of Sommeliers (Guildsomm) site. I confess to being surprised. I've not been kind to Master Sommeliers, sommeliers, or to Mr. Kruth. But that's not what I do here, is it? Geoff offered to pay me for my time. I assented to the conversation, but donated my time. His monetary offer was generous, but I felt that donating my meager talents to the Guild of Sommeliers was a small act of kindness to a group of folks who have provided me with astonishing amounts of comic material. Seemed like good karma.

Anyhow, the conversation was published last week on their site, and since I was too busy to crank out my usual crap this week, I am linking to it as my Monday post. It's like having a week off! If you’re interested in the conversation between Geoff Kruth, Master of All Sommeliers, and the HoseMaster of Wine™, by all means, check it out. If you’re not interested, go on over to Wine Folly and see what mindless crap she’s up to.

Here is the link:

GUILDSOMM

Remembering the Great Sommelier Eradication

Gone, but quickly forgotten

Sure, there were some protests, a few heartfelt complaints. None of that was unexpected. The kamikazes at PETS (People for the Ethical Treatment of Sommeliers) were their usual strident selves. A handful of women openly wept, but they were mostly mothers of sommeliers, and people understood. A few ethicists wondered if it was the right thing to do. But now that it’s over, it seems everyone agrees it was the best course; indeed, it was the only course. There were simply too many. And an overpopulation calls for the simplest and most direct answer. They had plenty of warning. It took years before the decision to cull the sommelier herd became official. And now that most of them are gone, I think we can all recognize that the world is a better place.

When we began to produce so many sommeliers, some time around the turn of the century, we didn’t realize how successfully they would thrive in the urban environment. Like the other “garbage species,” opportunists like rats and coyotes and crows, sommeliers soon spread everywhere. We’ve all had the experience of cruising through downtown in our driverless cars and being startled by the sudden appearance of a sommelier darting out from between parked cars, their highly polished tastevin reflecting the headlights, and our car only narrowly avoiding running them down. Yet in many major cities, sommelier road kills kept santitation departments extremely busy. It became a huge problem. Let’s face it, most dumps won’t accept sommeliers. Well, most dumps aside from hotel restaurants and major wine conglomerates. Too many road kill sommeliers ended up piled on the side of the road like so many waterlogged mattresses, Serta-fied sommeliers. They were eyesores, a public nuisance, and proud of it.

Maybe we should ask ourselves why we allowed the sommelier population to get out of hand in the first place. By 2020, we knew there was a problem, yet we continued to turn a blind eye to it. More and more certification programs appeared, nearly all of them morally bankrupt and useless, aimed at creating more sommeliers. There was a time not so long ago when a sommelier was a rare sight, akin to spotting a whooping crane, or an attractive wine blogger. Suddenly, seemingly overnight, they were everywhere. You couldn’t go to a wine bar without the server being a sommelier. You couldn’t attend a wine tasting without the room suddenly filling with sommeliers, who, in a weird parody of cockroaches, would quickly fill the room when the lights came on. Maybe we ignored the trend because they were so harmless, and relatively odorless, at least compared to the liquor reps. Or maybe we thought that once everyone realized that there just wasn’t room for any more sommeliers, they’d stop growing in number. Whatever the reasons, we shamefully ignored the sommelier pestilence, and we all bear some responsibility for the end result. Thousands of sommeliers humanely eradicated. Admit it, now that it’s over, it felt good. 

The shelters worked for a while. Rounding up starving and inbred sommeliers, the newly minted and deranged sommeliers, and housing them in temporary shelters hoping that they’d be adopted was a grand idea. The goal was for restaurant owners, wine shop owners, winery owners, anyone who had some need for a pet sommelier, to adopt one from the Sommelier Shelters rather than hire a new one. You could walk into a shelter and pick one out, one with the cutest eyes, or one that might have been a mongrel, perhaps rabid for natural wine and destined for a short life, but who spoke to you. But soon the shelters overflowed. Sommeliers by the dozens were just dumped on their doorsteps by disappointed owners who had found they just couldn’t live with their sommelier any longer, the constant yapping late at night, their bottomless need for attention, becoming just too much. Sommelier Shelters began surreptitiously releasing sommeliers back onto the streets under the cover of darkness, giving them a few dollars and a bottle of orange wine to live on. It became a national disgrace, the worst since Donald Trump was the Republican nominee for President. Something needed to be done.

Of course, a majority of the self-proclaimed sommelier population weren’t actually sommeliers. They were pretenders. They asked each other, “What level sommelier are you?” as though sommeliers were practitioners of kung fu, or were parking garages. They took class after class to learn facts about wine, as though facts were knowledge, as if knowledge were wisdom. A First Level Sommelier, the thinking went, is still a sommelier. The same reasoning applies in cultures who think 13-year-old girls are ready to be wives. But it didn’t matter if they were actually sommeliers, any more than it matters what species of rat is taking over your apartment. You just want them gone. They’re a nuisance, and it’s embarrassing to be with friends and everywhere you turn there are sommeliers skulking about. You feel like you need a shower.

When the Sommelier Shelters didn’t solve the problem, and hunting down the last of the Master Sommeliers with drones targeting Le Paulée tastings, and destroying countless bottles of fake Burgundy as collateral damage, didn’t seem to end the infestation, the inevitable started to become reality. It was time to cull the sommelier herd. They’re not hard to catch. Sommeliers are nocturnal, shunning actual sunshine where others might see their jaundiced skin, and not particularly intelligent. In fact, even faced with growing unpopularity, they are blind to it, and will just walk right up to you and tell you they are a sommelier, and usually in the first sentence. They learned this behavior from doctors, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, to which they are closely related—all three species believe they know more than you do despite evidence to the contrary. Their behavior made them especially easy prey for the people hired to cull their numbers. Maybe the most challenging part of the Great Sommelier Eradication was administering the lottery to choose the people who would cull the sommeliers. Some estimates put the volunteers in the tens of thousands.

Many people demanded that all sommeliers should be eliminated. A radical view, but one that is easily defensible, especially if you know any. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and sommeliers who actually worked as sommeliers—didn’t just have letters after their names, or had lowered themselves to actually make wine, a crime in most states—were left undisturbed. A few hundred now remain around the world in their natural state. More than enough.

Except for their immediate families, and natural wine producers, no one misses sommeliers. Sommelier Shelters are now filled with baristas, yet another national shame. Their “time” is coming. We can only vow that we will never again allow the population of sommeliers to overrun society. We can insure that there are never again countless phony wine accreditation schools that rob our young people of a real life. And now that it’s legal to shoot anyone who claims to be a sommelier, any fucking level, who doesn’t actually work as a sommelier, the arguments over gun control have also vanished. Culling the Sommelier herd worked.

The SOMM Old Shit

Hair Kruth

SOMM looks to become yet another Hollywood franchise, along the lines of Star Wars, James Bond and Gidget. The original film, SOMM, was actually the last in the Francis the Talking Mule series, with nothing but jackasses mouthing off. SOMM: Into the Bottle, the second in the SOMM series, answers the timeless question, “If you won’t stop the fucking car, where do I piss?” And just like that situation, the sweet relief comes when the film is over.

The writer/director of the SOMM series, Jason Wise, recently released a list of the next several films he’s planning in the SOMM series. He also announced that he has signed the most important actor in the films to a long term contract. That actor, Geoff Kruth’s hair, was not available for comment.

SOMM: Death to the Salesmen

In SOMM: Death to the Salesmen, Wise focuses on the relationship between sommeliers and the people who sell them wine. Fresh from achieving the Master Sommelier credential, these young somms now realize their power over ordinary wine salespeople. Wise masterfully builds the suspense so that we wonder, along with the salespeople, whether or not the somms will ever return a phone call, treat them with some respect, or even acknowledge their existence. “Calling on most sommeliers,” one saleswoman remarks, “is like having unprotected sex with Charlie Sheen—you expect to get screwed, and then the cocktail is expensive.” In another scene, we watch while Geoff Kruth’s hair keeps a salesman waiting for two hours. His hair always has a nice part.

SOMM: Schwindler’s List

Jason Wise spent months in camouflage gear capturing footage of a phenomenon rarely seen by humans, Master Sommeliers working the floor! The film’s title refers to their uncanny ability to squeeze restaurant clients for money. In a memorable scene, an unwitting guest asks the sommelier if there’s a corkage fee for the wine he’s brought in for his 50th wedding anniversary. He’s told the corkage fee is $150. “To open a bottle of wine?” the man asks, obviously astounded and angry. “No,” the somm says (Geoff Kruth’s hair, in a wonderful performance), “it’s ten bucks to open it. The other $140 is for product.” Wise also shows how restaurant wine prices are decided. “We take the price we paid for the bottle and multiply it by how many years it took me to pass the Master Sommelier exams—so, six. That seems fair.” There’s also a look at how by-the-glass programs work. “It’s pretty simple,” our sommelier tells us, “we serve you obscure wines that an average person doesn’t know, which disguises the price, then we pour a fifth of the bottle, and charge for that glass what the bottle cost to begin with. You know, really, we’re just trying to make movie theater concessions look cheap.” Soon you’ll see why every restaurant wine list is a Schwindler’s List.

SOMM: Thing About Mary

A lighthearted and occasionally crude look at the wine business. Theatergoers won’t soon forget what ends up in Geoff Kruth’s hair. A little Châteauneuf-du-Spunk.

SOMM: Like It Hot

A couple of sommeliers inadvertently witness a crime at Jackson Family Estates, yet another Banke robbery, and decide to dress as women in order to avoid being hired in the business. Hilarity ensues when the sommeliers go on a wine junket to Portugal in the hot summer and end up with Dry Sack. Geoff Kruth’s hair provides comic relief as the love interest for a muskrat.

SOMM: Namblaists

A strange tale of sommeliers who sleepwalk and fondle boys. Jared Fogle stars. Sponsored by Subway—Eat Freshmen!

SOMM: Breros

A fascinating inside look at the immigrant work force that actually harvests the grapes in California. While our intrepid band of Master Sommeliers travel the world drinking and debauching on junkets, and basking in the admiration of wine lovers, Juan and his crew spend harvest working long hours in the vineyard performing back-breaking work while looking forward to being scorned by the people of wine country. It’s heroes and zeroes—yeah, you decide.

SOMM: Left Behind

Jason Wise’s vision of a world without sommeliers. One morning, Geoff Kruth’s hair awakens to discover that every sommelier in the world has suddenly vanished in the long-predicted Sommelier Rapture. Except him. Kruth’s hair realizes that now he is the only sommelier on the planet—so, in his mind, nothing has changed, really. Wise poses the question, in a world without sommeliers, who will make wine seem unapproachable? Can wine survive without the people who spend their lives studying its trivia? Will ordinary people ever be able to remove a cork from a bottle and make it seem an act of courage? SOMM: Left Behind is a frightening look at a world where sommeliers have vanished. It will remind you of your last visit to French Laundry. Yes, it’s that scary.

SOMM: Goddame Losers

Wise tells the stories of the men and women who fail to pass the Master Sommelier exam. These Goddame Losers (their God is Fred Dame MS) have spent thousands of dollars and wrecked their personal lives in a vain attempt to become a Master Sommelier. Without the MS after their names, these poor souls must learn to live as mere mortals, holding down actual jobs and having healthy relationships. Losers. Imagine. They could be working for Southern Wine and Spirits, or Jackson Family Estates, where they’d earn the undying respect of salesmen. It just doesn’t seem fair. But we can't all be Geoff Kruth's hair. The Goddame Losers, it turns out, can't handle the Kruth!

America's Next Top Somm!

“Good evening, and welcome to America’s Next Top Somm Live! Here’s your host, Larry Anosmia MS!”

(Applause)

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight is the season finale to America’s Next Top Somm. One of our finalists will be named America’s Top Somm. He or she will receive $25,000, and a prestigious contract with Jackson Family Estates, our generous sponsor. Yes, that’s Jackson Family Estates—Where People with Important Wine Credentials Go to Die™. And now let’s meet the judges!”

(The three chairs onstage, each in the shape of a giant tastevin, revolve to reveal the three judges, to a thunderous ovation.)

“First, he’s often referred to as America’s greatest chef, mainly because it’s one of his job requirements. Known for underpaying sommeliers because he knows they want his name on their resumés, he’s a hero to restaurant owners everywhere, it’s Thomas Keller!” (Applause) “How are you, Thomas? Are you ready to go?”

“I am Larry! I’m kinda choked up. I can hardly breathe. I feel like a force-fed goose that will make amazing foie gras! I’ve sold so much foie gras, Larry, I have a three-car gavage.” (Laughter, and applause)

“Classic, Thomas! Our next judge is the publisher of the world’s most influential wine magazine, and something of an overstuffed goose himself!” (Laughter) “Each year, his magazine allows restaurants all over the world to pay him to declare their wine lists excellent. They’re not called the ‘Grand Awards’ because they’re cheap! Let’s hear it for Mahvelous Marvin Shanken!” (Applause) “Marvin! Ready to do this?”

“I’m so excited to be here, Larry. I’ve never done a show like this before. I feel like Mark Cuban cigar!” (Laughter) “Put me in your mouth and smoke me!” (Applause)

“I would, Marvin, but I’m trying to quit. It’s how I got my MS. Though I’m thinking Thomas might! Or our third and final judge might, too. She’s famous for being famous; the perfect judge for America’s Top Somm because she understands and embodies Narcissism, Kim Kardashian!” (Applause) “Kim, are you ready?”

“I’m ready, Larry. Oh, and Marvin, I don’t know about cigars, but I’m big on butts! Mine can disgorge Champagne!” (Laughter, as she demonstrates it.)

“I’ve got news for you, Kim, you’re the third biggest ass on this panel!” (Laughter)

“OK, judges, over the past weeks you’ve narrowed the field for America’s Next Top Somm down to three. Tonight, those three sommeliers will compete for your votes, and for the votes of our live television audience out there! Those of you watching at home will be able to vote for your favorite somm at the end of the broadcast. Your votes will count! And we’ll crown America’s Next Top Somm at the end of tomorrow's show. The winner gets a check for $25,000, a job with Jackson Family Wines, and, listen to this, their very own MS!” (Cheers, and applause) “Yes, Master Sommelier—the Myspace of Wine Diplomas.”

“Our first sommelier is from Las Vegas, Nevada, where she runs the wine program for Las Vegas’ hottest steakhouse, Meat Compass. Let’s hear it for Annie Oakchips!” (Applause) “Annie, tell the judges, and the audience out there, what you’re going to do for us tonight.”

“Well, Larry, I’m going to identify all six of the wines in these glasses in front of me blind.” (Audience gasps) “In sixty seconds.” (Applause) “While you grope me!” (Cheers!)

“Wow. So, Annie, this simulates what it’s like for you to work in a Las Vegas restaurant, is that right?”

“Not just Las Vegas, Larry! I’m a woman!”

“OK. Are you ready? Let me get behind you. Now, when I say, ‘Start the clock,’ Annie, you have sixty seconds to call out the variety of each wine in the glasses in front of you. The audience at home will see the correct answers, as will our three judges. OK. Start the clock!” (Larry grabs her ass.)

“OK, the first wine is, uh, Viognier, probably Virginia. Hey, that ass is not on the list for sale, buddy. The second wine is…Zweigelt. Pretty sure. Touch that again and I’ll Coravin™ your leg bag. The third glass is, oh, hmm, this is hard, maybe Meiomi Pinot Noir? Smells like God gave up. And, listen, touch those again and I’ll make you drink this crap. Number four is, wait, I can’t smell anything, it’s gotta be Pinot Grigio. Don’t stand so close or I’m charging you a porkage fee. Five smells like…oh, wait, is that Ruché? Is that a .187, or are you just happy to see me?” (Ten seconds!) “Six is, oh, oh, wait, six is…Pignolo!” (BUZZER) (Applause)

“That was amazing, Annie. Now, judges, tell us what you think. Thomas, you go first.”

“Very impressive, Annie. I liked how you handled Larry groping you. Larry, you can stop now. Though I was surprised you got the Viognier wrong.” (Audience moans) “That was shampoo. But you did great, and, if you want to work for me, not a problem. And minimum wage will soon be $15/hour in California!”

“Thanks, Thomas. Tough about the Viognier. But let’s move on to Marv. Marv?”

“If I’m not mistaken, Annie, didn’t Meat Compass receive a Wine Spectator Grand Award? That’s quite an honor. So I know you are comfortable with ridiculous prices and customer intimidation, which is important. And I liked that you pegged the Meiomi. It fooled Laube. So I think you did great, and you’d be a great America’s Next Top Somm!” (Applause)

“OK, Marvin, well said. Now, Kim, what did you think of Annie?”

“I like your dress. It shows off your ass, and that’s really important for women.” (Applause)

“Thanks, Kim. Our next finalist is from Los Angeles, California, where he runs the wine program at the restaurant for Cedars Sinai Hospital, The I.V. at the Shore, by night, and is practicing ventriloquism by day, please welcome sommelier Price Gouge!” (Applause) “Welcome, Price. Now how are you going to top Annie and become America’s Next Top Somm?”

“Well, Larry, I’m going to present each of these remarkable judges with a wine list I put together that doesn’t have a single wine the judges will recognize!” (Oooh) “And, while they’re trying to figure out which wine to order, I’ll disappear!” (Applause)

“That’s astonishing, Price. Those of you who have never been a sommelier may not understand how hard it is to actually create a wine list that makes no sense to anyone, yet, for many new restaurants, that’s the current trend. It’s important that the sommelier be far more important than the guests, I think we all agree about that. Alright, Price, go ahead and give Thomas, Marvin and Kim their wine lists.”

“Now, Price, I…wait, where did he go? Judges? Anyone seen Price? Well, when it comes to wine lists, I guess Price is the hardest to understand. So? Marvin, what do you think?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what to make of Price’s list. There are, like, 80 wines, and I don’t recognize a single one. Wow. That’s unbelievable. And Price isn’t here to help. I don’t know what to say, Larry. I’m deeply impressed, and I think that’s what people are looking for nowadays from their sommeliers. In the old days, I’d look at a wine list and see dozens of wines I wanted to try. That seems selfish of me in retrospect, but it was just the way service worked. I think it’s great that so many young sommeliers are more focused on their own taste, on fooling the customers into ordering their pet wines, their Pet Nats as it were. If I were at I.V. on the Shore, I’d definitely have to spend a lot of time talking to Price about what wine to order—time I’d otherwise have to spend with my wife and friends. It’s all about him! Price is the epitome of America’s Next Top Somm!” (Applause)

“Thomas?”

“He’s pretentious, he’s self-centered, he’s all about being the star of the show…he’s perfect, Per Se!” (Cheers)

“Kim?”

“I like that he was staring at my ass. That’s important for a woman.” (Applause)

“OK, judges, so far we’ve had Annie blind taste and identify six wines while I groped her, while Price dazzled us with Narcissism. Let’s move on to our third and final contestant. He’s from New York, where he just recently returned after a short time serving with ISIS, and is the sommelier at New York’s hottest spot, Tavern on the Landmines, please welcome Hugh G. Markup!” (Applause) “You’ve got two tough acts to follow, Hugh. Dazzle us!”

“I’ll try, Larry. Those ISIS guys didn’t know much about wine, but they taught me a thing or two about sales techniques!” (Applause) “I’m going to ask each judge to look at my wine list. When they’re ready to order, I’m going to intimidate them with a few choice words into spending more money than they intended.” (Applause)

“That won’t be easy, Hugh. These are experienced wine professionals with four large breasts between them. Good Luck. Let’s start with Thomas.”

“OK, Hugh, let me have a bottle of Spottswoode Cabernet, the 2009.”

“And six glasses?”

“Yes. There are six of us.”

“Very well. I’ll bring the smaller stems.”

“Oh, I meant two bottles of Spottswoode.” (BUZZER. Applause)

“Nicely done, Hugh. Now, Marvin, see if you can outsmart our somm.”

“No problem. So, Hugh, I’d like to order two bottles of Montelena Cabernet 2001, please.”

“You’ve had the Screaming Eagle, yes?”

“Of course, many times, Hugh.”

“And your guests?”

“Well, I, uh, don’t think, I, uh…I doubt it. Let’s start with that, then.” (BUZZER. Applause) “Oh, BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP you, you BLEEEEEEEEEP. You got me.” (More applause)

“That leaves it up to you, Kim.”

“OK. Bring whatever damn wine you want, Hugh. My ass is paying.”

“Nicely played, Kim! You win, and Hugh wins. Spending other people’s money is what a great sommelier learns to do. Hugh, that was fantastic.”

“There you have it, folks. Now it’s up to you. You have the rest of the evening to phone in your votes for America’s Next Top Somm. Be sure and tune in again tomorrow when we’ll find out which sommelier will win $25,000, a job with Jackson Family Estates—Where People With Important Wine Credentials Go To Die™, and an MS. MS! The Myspace of Wine Diplomas! This is Larry Anosmia MW wishing you a good night, and reminding you that it’s not important to drink the wine you like, it’s important to drink the wine we like. GOOD NIGHT!”

Corky Taint, Terrorist Sommelier

It wasn’t the first time Corky Taint had run away from home. But he’d always returned before. Gotten scared, or corraled by a cop, or hungry. Except for a few months ago, when Corky suddenly vanished one night, leaving no clues behind for his desperate family. Months later his family learned the horrible truth. Corky had been recruited online. Hours and hours spent on a website chatting with older males pretending to be his friends, and he had decided to leave everything he knew behind, his friends, his family, his dignity, to join a radical group of misanthropes whose sole aim is to intimidate and brutalize everyone who doesn't agree with them, who doesn't follow their path. Corky had left home to join a highly secretive and dangerous group of people, a group that has systematically and successfully recruited large numbers of young people from across every economic background to terrorize modern society, to intimidate ordinary citizens, people like you and me, in such a way that we are frightened to do something as basic and simple as go out to dinner. Corky had left home to become a sommelier.

Corky’s story is not the least bit unusual now. All over the United States, young men and women are joining this terrorist organization. Where once the United States was home to but a few dozen sommeliers, experts now believe there are tens of thousands. “Sommeliers are proliferating like cockroaches,” says the FBI’s Counter-Terrorism Chief Noah Clue, “cockroaches that can spit.” Many, if not most, of the new members are recruited online, at seemingly harmless websites and chat rooms that turn out to be radicalizing young men, and the occasional woman, into believing that they know everything about wine, and that those who don’t agree with them, or aren’t as knowledgeable, are beneath contempt, and deserve overcharging. Once recruited, these young people are subjected to further brainwashing, as well as tests of endurance and training in the fine arts of oenological torture. Let loose on an unsuspecting world, these radicalized fundamentalists of wine spread chaos and misunderstanding, intimidate hundreds of people every week, extort large sums of money to fill their organization’s coffers, and just generally degrade society. And yet there are many who say there’s little proof this is happening, that there aren’t really more sommeliers than there used to be—these are the microclimate change deniers. Time has proven them wrong. One can no longer lift a seat without seeing a sommelier floating in the bowl.

FBI forensic computer specialists were able to track Corky’s online whereabouts before he disappeared. Without his parents’ knowledge, Corky was haunting a particularly subversive website, a website known for its subtle but persuasive propaganda and dick-wagging. The site is WineBozerkers, a male-dominated forum where women are allowed only if they swear to God they’re wearing a veil. Corky’s first post, dated September 11, 2012, was commented on by most of the iMams (so called because they love Apple and mammary glands), who profusely welcomed Corky to their online world. This is how it usually starts, according to Noah Clue. “Women who comment are usually universally ignored, or asked if they like blush wines, or Randall Grahm. This is a way of making them feel isolated and unwelcome. Young men are embraced, and made to feel that their comments, though often as naive and as uninformed as their female counterparts’, are intelligent. Acceptance into this secretive world makes the young men feel important. It doesn’t take long before an insecure guy like Corky, and this is a terrorist group that personifies insecurity, feels like part of the group; and soon he begins to preach and believe the basic tenets of the iMams. He’s fucked. And not long after that, he tells everyone he’s a 'sommelier.' The two things together make perfect sense.”

Criticism of the iMams of WineBozerkers is forbidden. In the guise of “civility,” members are slowly brainwashed into conforming. From there, it’s a short road to believing you’re always right, incredibly insightful, and one of wine’s chosen people. Most leave it at that and waste their lives on the chat room. But many young men, believing their own press, convinced of a superior palate, feeling invincible and drawn to the mysterious mystique that surrounds sommeliers, take the next step. They move to a different Internet site, lured by the promise of fame and money and a hundred virgins in the afterlife, most of them wine bloggers (almost all of whom, judging from their About photos, are clearly virgins). Corky took that next step. He moved over to the website of the Court of Master Sommeliers. It is every parent’s nightmare.

Each year, hundreds of young people register on the site to try to join the Court. Simultaneously enriching the Court and providing it with young, disposable meat, these young people give up their free time pursuing what for most of them is a completely unreachable goal—becoming a Master Sommelier. In reality, they fall under the spell of a handful of that terrorist organization’s most famous and powerful members, including the ironically named Fred Dame. “If he were a dame,” says Clue, “he’d never have made it past the first test.” The FBI has a list of Master Sommeliers it watches. I wasn’t allowed to view the list, but one assumes it also includes men like Geoff Kruth, thought to be at large as a Jay McInerney impersonator, but without the humility, and Larry Stone, one of the men most responsible for Master Sommelier plots to terrorize the public. “We sent a drone to watch Stone,” an FBI man who wished to remain anonymous for fear of having Stone send him some of his crappy Oregon wine in retaliation, “but it couldn’t find the little bugger. Or, we think maybe the drone felt a kinship to him as another little machine and purposely threw us off the track.”

Master Sommeliers believe their time has come. Their websites are filled with delusional proclamations telling their members to be prepared, that they are the new arbiters of wine, that the old men who have been running wine for years now are impotent and disgraced. Their diatribes tell their followers to take every opportunity to declare “Death to Parker!,” “Death to Shanken!,” “Death to Asimov!” They urge followers to be prepared for war, be prepared for doubters, but to rest assured that sommeliers will conquer, sommeliers will rule, sommeliers will dictate, all at 300% higher than cost. And the Court just doesn't care how many young lives are ruined along the way. The ruthless leaders of Master Sommeliers seem to truly believe their tastes are the future, that they, and they alone, will determine what the public will buy. This is always the way of nearsighted and misanthropic zealots.

Corky Taint, some time in the year 2014 (everything about the Court of Master Sommeliers is shrouded in secrecy, except how often they mention they’re Master Sommeliers, which is more often than Elton John mentions he’s gay, only louder) passed Level One of the Sommelier exam. They all do. The Court makes sure even the dumbest among them pass. Corky was hooked. From a young man with a passion for wine, with a great future and a supportive family, Corky’s online path had led him to the shady underworld of the sommelier. No one knows where he will surface. But when he does, when yet another sommelier infiltrates our society, slips through our complacency and our underfunded security measures to keep them away from vulnerable civilians, who knows how many people Corky will make suffer. And then expect a tip.

How to Be a Successful Sommelier

Having the letters “M.S.” after your name doesn’t mean you’re a sommelier. A sommelier works in a restaurant. From the several dozen I’ve met, judging by their occupations, I was pretty sure “M.S.” stood for “Master Shill.” I, also, have letters after my name, letters I awarded myself for my particularly vast knowledge of wine, and who better to recognize that vast knowledge than me?, but the letters, “H.M.W.,” are often misunderstood. Most people assume “H.M.W.” stands for “HoseMaster of Wine.” I can understand the confusion. But, in fact, they stand for “His Majesty of Wine.” It’s only my humility that keeps me from pointing it out more often. Though I’ll thank you all to address me properly in the future. It’s a bit pretentious, but I don’t make the rules. So from now on it’s, “His Royal Highness, Commander of Wine, HoseMaster of Wine the First.” I love titles!

For the rest of my sage advice on how to be a great sommelier, you'll have to jump over to Tim Atkin's award-winning wine site. Leave plenty of witty comments, and a small gratuity for the busboy.

Tim Atkin, MW

My Little Wine Snob™

When we were children, around eight or nine years old, most of my friends liked to play Cowboys and Indians, or Cops and Robbers, or Priests and Don’t Tell Anybody. But there was a group of us who spent a lot of our free time playing Wine Steward and Customer. Man, that was so much fun. We couldn’t wait to get home from school and set up the tables to play, and then we’d play until our mothers called us for dinner, or until one of the stupider kids ordered Chardonnay to go with his loogie.  Everyone knows Riesling always goes with loogie.

I think all kids idolize wine stewards. (We couldn’t pronounce “sommelier” very well, and it seemed like a dirty word, so we wanted to. Once, in a fit of childhood rage, I called my sister a “slutelier," and my mother washed my mouth out with Blue Nun.) We’d see a wine steward on the bus on his way to work, maybe, and we’d steal glances at him, admiring his shiny shoes, and being amazed at his ability to tell the homeless guys apart just from the way their urine smelled. I never had the courage to go up to a wine steward and talk to him (in those days, only men were wine stewards—women weren’t allowed to wear a tastevin in public and were thought to be queer if they did), but my friend Frankie did one time. He walked right up to a wine steward who was waiting at the bus stop and nervously asked, “Are you a sombullyay?” When the wine steward looked at Frankie, I think he peed a little. Not Frankie, the sombullyay.

“Yeah, Kid,” he said, “I’m a wine steward. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Are you a MS or a MW?” Frankie asked. I was tongue-tied with fear at Frankie’s audacity.

“MS” the wine steward said.

“Oh,” said Frankie, “that’s too bad. My dad says an MS is basically the Learner’s Permit of wine.” And then Frankie took off running, the wine steward chasing him until he stepped on his own self-importance and fell down. That Frankie, man, was he fearless.

I was the oldest of the kids who played Wine Steward and Customers, so I mostly got to be the Wine Steward. Plus, I had the toys to be one. I’d relentlessly begged my parents to buy me Hasbro’s “My Little Wine Snob™” kit. I can still remember how badly I wanted it from the first time I saw it. Other kids wanted cowboy outfits or Army uniforms or their own Wham-O Asbestos to play with, but I had to have “My Little Wine Snob.” It had everything—a shiny little tastevin you could wear around your neck (which was also part of Hasbro’s “My Little Sammy Davis, Jr” kit, complete with glass eye), a little corkscrew, a wine list with imaginary prices (just like real ones!), a little lapel pin with the words, “Sommelier in Training” on it, and, best of all, a sweet little three inch marble tube you could shove up your butt, which really made the Wine Steward illusion complete. I begged and begged my parents to buy it for me, and, finally, my dad let me earn it by spying on my mom when all my uncles came to visit and writing down their license plate numbers. When I had ten, he’d buy it for me. The next day, it was mine.

I’d never been to a restaurant with a wine steward, so I had to make up what a wine steward would do. My parents didn’t take us kids to nice restaurants. In those days, parents just didn’t take their kids to nice restaurants unless it was to put us in a wheelchair in front of the restaurant and panhandle. I wasn’t very good at this, but my brother could make ten bucks in no time by tying his chair to a customer’s car bumper and asking for a pull home. One time a drunk said OK instead of giving him money to go away, and we didn’t find my brother for a couple of days because going 60 miles per hour in a wheelchair, he’d missed the offramp. My dad was pretty pissed at how messed up the chair was though. Anyway, I had a good imagination, and I acted like I thought a real sommelier would act.

Frankie was the best at playing customer because he was such a jackass. So he’d sit at the table with one of the neighborhood girls, usually Ellen because he had a crush on Ellen and was always playfully banging her head into a fire hydrant, as boys like to do, and act like he was reading my play wine list. I’d improved the Hasbro “My Little Wine Snob™” wine list by adding my own selections. I added my own categories of wines to drink, like “Cat Pee,” and “Girl Parts” and “Orange Wines.” I had so many wines on my list that I gave myself a Wine Spectator Grand Award, and just like the real restaurant winners, I also didn’t really have most of the wines!  Frankie would pretend to read the wine list, and then ask Ellen what she wanted. Ellen, however, didn’t speak much any more.

Then I’d approach the table and say, in my most serious voice, “Good evening, sir, may I help you select a wine to go with your dinner tonight?” Frankie was supposed to say Yes, but sometimes he would just throw food at me to make me go away. I later learned to do this as an adult when I was at an industry wine tasting and a lot of sommeliers were around.

“Yes,” Frankie would say on cue, “I’d like you to choose a wine to go with my steak. What do you suggest? I was thinking maybe Silver Oak.”

“Silver Oak?” I’d say, simply aghast, “I’m out of that.” I wasn’t, but I’d pretend I was because I knew wine stewards hate to open Silver Oak because it’s popular and not hard to get. “But how about this wine?” And I’d point to a cult wine I’d put on my wine list for Eleventy Hundred Dollars, which, really, was a bargain since I’d seen the same wine at an auction price of way over a Gazillion.

“OK,” Frankie would say, and I’d go into the wine cellar, which was this old refrigerator box we had in the backyard, and bring out my one bottle of wine that I used no matter what one of my friends ordered. It was empty, and it had a screw top because I couldn’t really work the “My Little Wine Snob™” corkscrew, but I’d unscrew it and pretend to pour Frankie a little taste. Ellen was usually asleep by then and had her head in the food.

One time, Frankie yelled, “A fucking screwtop! Eleventy hundred bucks and I get a goddam screwtop?! Stupid wine steward, I hate you.” Apparently, Frankie had been to dinner with his grandfather and that’s what his grandfather had said. We laughed so hard. Even we knew that screwtops are for crappy wine. Even now Stelvins give me the giggles. Which is embarrassing when I’m peeping into my neighbor’s windows.

Frankie would swirl the empty glass (we used Hasbro’s “My Little Pretentious Asswipe” Riedel stemware), and then say, “I don’t know, I think it’s corked.”

I’d grab the glass from his hand, swirl it very dramatically, take a deep, snot-filled whiff, and exclaim, “It’s not corked, you poophead, it’s got terroir! You’ll drink it and pay for it.”

And before he could object, I’d hear my mother screaming in her happy voice and I’d have to run home to write down another uncle’s license plate.

The Sommeliers' Last Wish Foundation

I recently received a solicitation for a worthy new cause in the mail from our old friend Larry Anosmia MS. I've posted the letter over at Tim Atkin's site. In the letter, Larry makes an emotional plea for our dying sommeliers. I know I was touched, and I count myself lucky that I never contracted the deadly disease now silently annihilating our treasured sommeliers. At least, I don't think I did. Though, come to think of it, I have been craving Sicilian wines lately--one of the early symptoms. And I'm thinking of starting my own label, featuring wines made from heirloom grapes. I'm calling the label "Heir Brain." Oh my God, I think I may be dying. And not just in the comedic sense.

To read Larry Anosmia's letter, please click on over the pond to Tim's place. As ever, feel free to comment over there, or, if you must, leave your comment here, in a jar, on Funk and Wagnall's porch, since noon today.

Tim Atkin

Somm In Your Pants™!

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Blind Movie Review--"Somm"

“Somm” is probably the worst movie I haven’t seen this year. Though anything with Morgan Freeman is a close second. That guy will do anything for a paycheck. Hell, he’d be a perfect somm. In fact, now that I think about it, all “Somm” needs is Morgan Freeman, perhaps as Andrea Immer-Robinson, to whom he bears a passing resemblance. I made a point of not viewing “Somm” for this review, and I’m glad I did. Too much emphasis is placed on actually viewing a movie before you review it, discovering what the movie is about, its subject matter and plotlines, its story development, its director and its stars. Reviewing a film blind is far more objective. It removes any prejudices I may have brought to the screening. I think you’ll agree that blind movie reviewing is the best way to get to the core of the film, and the best way to evaluate it. Hard to imagine a sommelier could disagree, at least.

Let’s begin with the title. Why “Somm” and not “Sommelier?” Were they worried about the number of letters on the theater marquee? Hell, it won’t be up there more than a week. Or is it because Americans are incapable of pronouncing “sommelier?” Well, that’s the truth. I used to hear “som-lee-ay,” and “som-a-lay” and “prik.” But I always think "somm" is a bit derogatory, a bit diminishing. And it’s not consistent throughout the film, from what I made up in my head. For example, no one calls Fred Dame simply, “Dil.” Is he even in the movie? If he is, I loved Linda Hunt’s performance as the old M.S.

“Somm” follows a bunch of guys as they attempt to pass the legendarily difficult Master Sommelier exam. It seems few women attempt the exam, which explains the absence of stirrups. The film has the obligatory time-lapse shots of clouds passing over vineyards (a symbol, I suppose, of the fleeting nature of time and the irrelevance of what these bozos are doing—either that, or the clouds look like ponies), as well as more time-lapse photography of vineyards going from dormant, to sprouting leaves like the Jolly Green Giant’s pubic hair, to being laden with grapes and, finally, to being harvested by Jolly Brown Dwarves, who wouldn’t know a somm from la migra except the somm’s shoes are dirtier. What this has to do with four dweebs cramming their pickled brains with wine facts escapes me. It’s said that maybe only 1 in 50 manage to pass the M.S. exam. So it’s exactly like the Miss America Pageant, only these guys don’t need to have a talent or a Brazilian.

If you don’t know that much about wine, much of what is discussed by the four candidates may seem like gibberish to you. It is, actually. I mean, look at those dorks, you know English is their third language, after Elvish and Klingon. The boys talk in short hand about the general character of a variety of grape varieties. This might come in handy the next time you feel like a dinner guest has overstayed his welcome. For example, we learn that Viognier has the characteristic smell of “Nathan Lane’s Wet-Nap.” Zinfandel can be pegged to “I threw up a little Pop-Tart in my mouth.” Seyval Blanc reminds the boys of “Melissa McCarthy’s landing strip.” A round of Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noirs yields the descriptor “Don Knotts.” And Syrah is given away by its distinctive aroma of “Bev-Mo 5¢ Sale.” There’s way too much of this kind of babbling in the film, but it does accurately reflect the kind of secret lingo that prevails in the wine world. When it comes down to it, it isn’t knowing wine that really matters, it’s knowing how to speak the language of wine that fools people into thinking you’re a wine expert. Con men always learn to talk the talk first.

But along the way, as we watch the guys sit around and drink thousands of dollars worth of wine, spit profusely, and expect their wives to clean up (are they becoming sommeliers or Arab princes?), we start to fall in love with them and their obsessive pursuit of an M.S. They’re likable enough guys, in the way all self-absorbed, narcissistic men are--think Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson with tastevins. The filmmaker, pity that guy who had to sit through endless hours of tastings with those bores, manages the nearly impossible task of making the audience root for these guys; though it’s to fail, of course.

The M.S. exam consists of three parts. The service exam is perhaps the easiest of the three. The boys have to learn how to smoothly upsell a wine list (“Really, domestic sparkling wine for her birthday? Planning on riddling yourself later?”), pour just enough wine in the first three glasses so the host’s glass is only half-full, remember to not take phone calls from annoying wine salespeople (“Remind her I only taste with winemakers or other M.S.’s”), and show up drunk for work. No one fears this part of the exam, or the second part, which entails a scholarly essay on some esoteric part of the wine business. One of the boys fails when he states that “Phylloxera is the capital of Pennsylvania.” It’s Harrisburg, moron.

It’s the third part of the exam that the boys spend the film fearing—the blind tasting. A candidate has to taste six wines blind in 25 minutes and identify them with no other clues besides how they smell and taste. The wine could be made from any of the thousands of grape varieties, and could be from anywhere in the world. Passing this portion of the exam is the most difficult part, and, as with any good exam, it’s a gift a sommelier will never make use of again. In what other test is the passing grade dependent on a party trick? You only have to do it once to get the result you want. Basically, it's like erotic asphyxiation done right. It's at this point in the film that the suspense builds. We’ve watched our heroes taste countless wines, crack endless wise, cry, wet the bed, call Jancis Robinson and breathe heavily, dance with Chaz Bono for good luck, stick pins in their Larry Stone voodoo doll (actual size), and swordfight with Erectile Dysfunction victims. All that for those two letters after their names.

Yeah, that seems worth it.

The Old Sommeliers Home

I’m not sure when I first noticed the problem. It only slowly worked its way into my conscious mind. I think the first incident was an old guy I saw standing along Highway 29 just in front of Opus One holding a sign that said, “Homeless Somm—Looks of Disdain 25¢” I was being tailgated by a limo filled with a bachelorette party, Feels on Wheels, so I couldn’t stop. But the sight of him, unshaven and dirty, like a nominee for a Country Music Award, extending his empty tastevin pleading for quarters, stuck in my mind. And once that happened, I began to notice them everywhere.

Leaving the grocery store parking lot a few days later, there was another old somm, distinctive in his worn tuxedo, looking more like an attendant at a funeral parlor in Appalachia than a sommelier (he should be working at French Laundry, I thought), pushing an old, wobbly dessert cart filled with his last earthly possessions—a few corkscrews, a copy of the 1984 edition of Parker’s Buying Guide, several logo hats from varied wineries around the world (I noticed one that said, “Chapeau Souverain”), and an autographed and well-worn photo of Robert Lawrence Balzer. He was clearly mad. I walked over to him and, as inconspicuously as possible, dropped a dollar bill into his tastevin.

“Thanks,” he said, “that’s usually where I urinate.”

Why, I wondered, were homeless old sommeliers turning up everywhere? It’s understandable that they’re unemployed. They got old. Their senses of smell and taste had abandoned them, all the bluffing and prevaricating in the world can’t stop the march of time. Old umpires go blind and live off their pensions. Lame ballerinas open dance schools and torment young anorexics. What does an old guy who’s lost his sense of smell and taste do? All the major wine critic jobs are already taken. But I thought there was a Home for Old Sommeliers. I was sure there was, but why, then, was I suddenly seeing the poor old wine stewards out on the streets begging for food, work, shelter and the latest issue of Mutineer Magazine (apparently, very absorbent)? I decided to find out.

In San Francisco one breezy afternoon, I spoke to an older gentleman who was approaching strangers and trying to sell them old corkscrews for a dollar apiece. “I must have had a couple of hundred of these when I retired from the restaurant,” he told me, “but now I’m down to about twenty. That doesn’t auger well for me.” He chuckled at his own pun. Asshole. So I kicked him. You know, no matter how many times you do it, it just feels right to kick a sommelier.

I asked him how he ended up on the streets after a lifetime of service. “I spent twenty-five years as a sommelier, worked in some of San Francisco’s best restaurants, talked down to its wealthiest residents. In fact, I was the guy who first marked up wine list prices 400%! That was me. Before that, hell, you could pay a few bucks above retail for a wine in a nice joint. I should have trademarked the idea. Everybody stole it. And do you know who created the first wine-by-the-glass? ME! Listen, I told my boss at the time, you’re screwing ‘em on the cocktails, we can do the same damn thing with wine. It doesn’t even have to be good wine! If I tell ‘em it’s good wine, they’ll believe me. I used to sell White Zinfandel for eight bucks a glass. Then it was Chardonnay with residual sugar. Now it’s Moscato. The public doesn’t get any smarter, you know.”

He was very articulate, and, at first, didn’t seem at all mentally ill. But then he told me he’d been married to both Jancis Robinson and Jay McInerney. McInerney I believed. He also claimed that he loved orange wines. I wondered how a guy with mental issues like that could survive on the streets.

Had he ever tried to get into the Old Sommeliers Home? “Oh, for Parker’s sake,” he told me, “yeah, I was in that loony bin for a couple of years. Have you ever been around a bunch of old sommeliers? Hell, man, they can outbore Michel Chapoutier. You fart and they all start to chant, “Mercaptan, O My Mercaptan.” That they can smell. They endlessly bitch about the wines they serve at the home. Like you really need Sancerre to wash down lung oysters. It’s horrible there. And the nurses treat you like crap. Taunting you all the time. ‘How’s your worm workin’ now, old man?’ I just up and left one night. Besides, I hear they closed the place. Ran out of money. Turned ‘em all out into the streets to fend for themselves. Bunch of old guys with no usable skills at all. Sommeliers don’t have skills, they don’t do anything useful. They get people drunk and take their money. Know what we used to call that profession? Father O’Reilley.”

I decided to check on whether the Old Sommeliers Home had been closed. He was right, it was gone. No one had noticed. But I guess there just weren’t that many sommeliers to put there. There just weren’t that many sommeliers in the United States thirty years ago. Americans didn’t buy wine in restaurants, not unless it featured some sort of colored person—a Blue Nun or a Green Hungarian or a Zeller Schwarz Kat. Yet it won’t be long before the need for an Old Sommeliers Home will be desperate. In recent years, there has been a huge infestation of sommeliers. Where will they go when their noses fail, their tongues become as tasteless as Verdicchio?

There are more sommeliers now than ever before. More degrees, more letters to append to your otherwise worthless name, more hubris walking the restaurant floors than a stadium filled with Grammy Award winners. You have a “well-chosen” list of 20 Italian wines in your wood-fired pizza joint—you’re a sommelier! You took an online test and passed the fifth time, you’re a Level One sommelier! You work in a wine bar with eleven different wines that you buy from a different broker every month because you owe all the other ones money—you’re a sommelier! The world crawls with them now. They have Journals and conventions, they’re rock stars and gatekeepers, they’re winemakers and tastemakers. They’re this generation’s deejays.

I asked the old sommelier in the park if he had any advice for all the new, young sommeliers out there. Any words of wisdom from all his years being a sommelier.

“Being a sommelier is like a Riedel wine glass—it’s beautiful and clear when you first pick it up, but everyone can see through it, and, eventually, you can be sure, you will be a victim of  planned obsolescence.”

Sommeliers Without Borders

I was watching a piece on 60 Minutes a couple of Sundays ago about a group of Christian doctors and nurses, and other personnel, who spend their lives on a medical ship that travels up and down the coast of Eastern Africa tending to the medical needs of poor Africans. They do this for free. It reminded me of the Doctors Without Borders charity, and that inspired today's post which is over at Tim Atkin's blog. After nineteen years as a sommelier, and 35 years in the wine business, I can honestly say I've done nothing worthwhile for humanity. And yet so many of us think wine is inspiring and mystical and magic, and that we possess a kind of knowledge that has actual value. So here's where satire steps in. And how Sommeliers Without Borders came to be.

And, as ever, please feel free to comment here, or over at Tim's.

Tim Atkin, MW's Blog

The Secret Official Sommelier Manual--Leaked Again!

Wow, this is a short piece, you're saying. Yeah, it is. But it's packed with wit. OK, not really.

On the first Monday of every month, from now until he gets either sick of me or sued, I'll be publishing my usual foolishness on Tim Atkin, MW's blog. So go there and read it.  Really, this is cool! My post there today consists of more excerpts from the The Secret Official Sommelier Manual. Tim recruited me last month, even before I became the first wine blogger to become Parkerized, which undoubtedly means there will soon be hundreds of HoseMaster lookalikes, created using micro-oxygenation and spinning cones, and I'm thrilled to be part of his site. And I get some loot for writing this crap. So today's post is here. Tell Tim I said Hello.

And if you want to comment here, gang, I'm all for it! Or comment over at Tim's place. Or both.

I'm an international star now...like Charo!

The Secret Official Sommelier Manual--Leaked!

I’m not supposed to do this. I signed a document when I became a full-time sommelier that prohibits me from revealing the contents of the Official United States of America Sommelier’s Manual. But I think every restaurant patron should read it. I sent it to WikiLeaks, but Julian Assange wouldn’t touch it. “Too incendiary,” he wrote to me, “and, besides, I only accept secret documents from gay servicemen, or members of the Village People.” To which I say, “I like to stay at the WHY EM SEE AY.” Everybody now! So, at great personal risk, I am publishing excerpts here on HoseMaster of Wine™. I think you’ll find that everything you long suspected about sommeliers is not only true, but a requirement of the job. Failure to live up to the standards outlined here is punishable by significant fines, or, in the case of the worst violators, by mandatory attendance at Evan Goldstein lectures.


From Chapter 1 “Creating the Wine List”

The wine list is your personal fiefdom, a reflection of your bizarre taste in wine, and in no way is it meant to offer customers wines with which they might be familiar. The crap they drink at home has no place in a fine dining establishment. The reason for this is twofold. First of all, if no one needs your assistance in selecting a wine, you’re out of a job. Secondly, if a customer knows a wine, he is also likely to know its normal retail price. The wine list is the one vulnerable area of the restaurant where people can see that you are gouging them. And, boy, will they bitch. Sure, they’ll pay six bucks for ten cents worth of coffee at Starbucks, but mark up your wine to four times cost and they just won’t shut up about it.

Always try to offer wines from off-vintages. When a winery gets a big score on their 2009 vintage, make them an offer on their lousy 2008’s. You get a big discount. Then “accidentally” list the 2009 on the wine list at its normal gigantic markup. When a guest orders a bottle, simply bring out the 2008. They won’t notice. If they do, act surprised at the “typo,” and offer to bring your incomprehensible wine list back for them to select a different bottle. Guests will simply accept the 2008, and, BANG, you’ve got a big profit.

Never arrange the list by price. It’s best to arrange the list under annoyingly cutesy categories meant to reinforce the neurotic guest’s pathetic self-image. “Adventurous Whites,” “Powerful Reds,” “Sexy Alternatives,”—crap like that. Be creative. Try “Big Girth Imports,” or “Remarkable Stamina Whites,” or “Penetrating Deep, Dark Aussies.” People will pay anything to feel better about themselves.


From Chapter 2 “Attitude”

You’re a god. No, you’re God. You’re Karl Rove with a tastevin. You’re Rush Limbaugh with breast reductions. You’re Paul Ryan with a boner. You’re Barbra Streisand with replacement rhinoceros hormones. You’re Larry Mathers as The Beaver. You’re Michel Chapoutier with lifts. You’re God with a Robert Parker complex.


From Chapter 3 “Wine List Pricing”

Always remember that wineries make up prices haphazardly and without any sort of rational reasoning, and that you’re entitled to do the same damn thing. This is just how the wine business works. It doesn’t have to make any sense. You can’t fix it, don’t even try. Being known for a reasonably priced wine list only attracts the sort of people who really should just stay home and eat dinner.

When calculating prices, always round up to the nearest hundred.

White wines should be marked up higher than reds. No one orders white wine in a restaurant anyway. The chumps that do need to pay for it.


From Chapter 4 “Stemware”

That Riedel crap breaks like old people’s hips, and costs damn near as much to replace. Use knockoff brands in various sizes. The more expensive the wine, the larger the bowl of the wine glass you bring to the table. Ideally, you want to empty the bottle into four glasses equally and have it look like each glass is virtually empty. The optical illusion leads to sales of a second bottle. Especially if the fourth person poured, the host, gets less than everyone else.

Never offer to bring fresh glasses for the second, or third, or any other, bottle of wine. Remember, dishwashers are on your team, the clients are the opposing team. Remind the offending customers that they wouldn’t use fresh glasses at home, would they, and your job as a hospitality professional is to make them feel at home.


From Chapter 5 “Service”

Flunkies are attentive and eager to serve. Professionals make you wait and give the impression they are doing you a favor by taking care of you. Which are you? Take the wine order, open the bottle, then stay the hell out of the waiter’s way.

It’s always best to appear with the bottle of wine when the meal is half-eaten. It just tastes better.


Oh, there’s more…if I live long enough to publish another installment.