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Sommeliers are professionalized, with courses & exams. But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designi

Sommeliers are professionalized, with courses & exams. But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers. Instead Sommelier exams are subjective - candidates are judged by another Sommelier on subjective criteria rather than objective measurement. In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours? How does the candidate present themselves? Sommeliers dress in fine suits, but this should have no impact on actual wine tasting ability. Yet I am sure if I showed up in a draggy old t-shirt I would fail regardless. The whole industry seems allergic to objective scientific measurement. I am sure Sommelier's do have some ability to identify varieties, but are they actually tasting all those subtle hints they list off? I doubt it.

woeriud 5y ago
What is this comment based on? To me it feels like this is what you imagine the exams are like. The MS exam (the highest and most famous one) has three parts: theory, service, and tasting. The service part is all about presentation, absolutely (that's the whole point). The tasting part is not. In particular... >But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers. That is exactly how the tasting portion of the exam works. And >In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours? This isn't really how it works, especially the "high class" language comment. Actually there are a variety of different things that they are supposed to identify about the wine, known as "the grid" [1]. You can take a look at it yourself. They are essentially judged based on how well their grid matches up with the consensus grid from the master sommeliers. [1] https://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/wp-content/uploads/Deductive-Tasting-Grid-Dec-2016.pdf https://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/wp-content/uploads/D...

woeriud 5y ago

What is this comment based on? To me it feels like this is what you imagine the exams are like. The MS exam (the highest and most famous one) has three parts: theory, service, and tasting. The service part is all about presentation, absolutely (that's the whole point). The tasting part is not. In particular... >But I don't believe they are actually judged on their ability to taste wines and detect flavours. Designing such tests would be simple - rate of successful flavour identification based on data from other Somemeliers. That is exactly how the tasting portion of the exam works. And >In my opinion they judge it as a dramatic performance: how quickly can the candidate rattle-off various flavours? How "high class" is the language they use to describe the flavours? This isn't really how it works, especially the "high class" language comment. Actually there are a variety of different things that they are supposed to identify about the wine, known as "the grid" [1]. You can take a look at it yourself. They are essentially judged based on how well their grid matches up with the consensus grid from the master sommeliers. [1] https://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/wp-content/uploads/Deductive-Tasting-Grid-Dec-2016.pdf https://www.courtofmastersommeliers.org/wp-content/uploads/D...