ON-TRADE SOMMELIERS: Waiting in the wings

We’ve had celebrity pets and hairdressers, but will sommeliers ever step out of the shadows cast by celebrity chefs, wonders Clinton Cawood

Public interest in celebrity chefs continues unabated; primetime television, press coverage and fascination from the tabloids is ever present for a growing number of the food elite. Yet sommeliers remain in their shadow, far less a target
of the paparazzi, and significantly less likely to make money in showbiz.

Some of the chefs may not like the term “celebrity” but it is undoubtedly fitting. The attention they receive is not only about their professional skill, the limelight extends far into personality and private life.

In practice, however, a sommelier is likely to interact more with a diner in a restaurant than a chef will. The sommelier’s personality arguably plays a more important role in the job than for a chef. And yet something about the multi-faceted, demanding position of sommelier has not captured the public’s insatiable demand for celebrity.

“With food and wine it’s two different things,” believes Ronan Sayburn. “With food it comes a lot more easily and instinctively. That’s the appeal with chefs. They’re artists.” Sayburn would know about these things, working with one of the most famous celebrity chefs. He is head sommelier for Gordon Ramsay Holdings. “With sommeliers, it comes from a knowledge base, from hard study,” he says.

Ready for take-off?
Gearoid Devaney, Tom Aikens’ head sommelier, also believes that the major difference is, “They can go on television and create something, or do a recipe for a magazine. With sommeliers, we’re taking various wines we love from around the world. I’m not sure that’s well suited to celebrity. I’ve been here with Tom for four years. He’s quite often getting paparazzied, and he’s not even a TV chef. With sommeliers, I’m not sure that it would take off.”

More optimistic, Joelle Marti at the Great Eastern Hotel believes that public interest in sommeliers “could happen, but it’ll be a lot more difficult than with chefs”. Marti has been approached three times for potential television programmes on different channels, yet none have been produced. Speaking of the television producers, Marti believes, “They haven’t put their finger on the right idea yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

According to Matt Wilkin, what is specifically needed is to present “knowledge conforming to an image that the public is going to like. If you get too scientific or ‘anorak’ on television, the general public won’t leap toward that individual.” Wilkin, once a sommelier, is now trade sales executive for Genesis Wines, but still runs sommelier consultancy services. He sees potential in “the new breed of sommelier nowadays – younger, open-minded, less starched”.

Matt Skinner is one sommelier that has achieved a degree of media and public attention as Jamie Oliver’s sommelier at Fifteen restaurant. He is an example of this “less starched” sommelier, typically, as Marti describes him, “laid-back, in shirts and jeans”.

Salt and pepper
Wine does not have a noble history on television. As Wilkin puts it, “They’ll talk about a wine, then they bring it out and barely even show the label. ‘And now back to our chef.’ It’s almost like a salt and pepper attachment.” Devaney agrees, saying, “Every time I see wine on television I think, ‘that’s not right – they could do that better’.”

Television is, however, taken for granted as the most likely medium to use to achieve celebrity. Andrew Connor, head sommelier at the Lanesborough Hotel, is unsure that sommeliers will ever be considered celebrities, primarily, he says, “Because I don’t think wine works on TV. There have been various wine shows over the years, but I don’t think it relates well. Mostly, when you talk about wine on TV it comes off as pretentious. There’s an anti-intellectualism, and anti-snobbery about it,” he continues. “The whole sommelier thing seems very posh – people don’t want to be a wine geek. The celebrity chefs are all geezers, or lads.”

As Marti says, the alternative is, “You could do like Oz [Clarke] at the moment and make a celebrity run around a vineyard,” referring to Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure, in which Clarke and Top Gear’s James May take a road trip through wine regions in France. “But does that change the way people buy wine?” she asks. “The purpose of this programme is not to make housewives put a better bottle of wine in their trolley.” This is, of course, a major potential benefit of higher-profile sommeliers – selling higher quality wine.

Thirst for knowledge

Consumers of wine, generally speaking, have an increasing degree of knowledge, and are eager to learn more. And Connor believes that, “Sommeliers have an important role to play in educating, and shaping people’s tastes. Not in a didactic way, but by expanding their repertoire of wines.”

“It is a difficult thing to do,” Sayburn explains. “People want to enjoy wine but not be drowned in facts and figures. You don’t need to be an expert, but you do have to be a really good teacher.” Wilkin agrees. “The public want to know in simple terms. If you’re reaching out to a wider audience you’ve got to go more commercial, and sommeliers tend to go less commercial, more boutique.”

Devaney has experienced this consumer desire for education. “I do tastings for customers – they ask me to do it, and it’s been working very well. They love it, because they’re open to trying. The more you study, the more you realise there’s more to learn, and I think that customers are realising that as well.”

This does suggest that television is not the only option when it comes to wine education. As Connor says, “Wine is just not very visual. I think books could do it, but the guys that write books aren’t usually sommeliers.”

The potential benefits of finding an effective medium for education would probably be worthwhile for the wine trade as a whole. Marti uses the example of a survey that concluded, “The reason we weren’t cooking vegetables in the UK was that young people didn’t know different vegetables or how to cook them. It’s the same way people stick with Pinot Grigio or Rioja.” She goes on to point out, “The only people who are guiding people towards what to buy are supermarkets. They’re making sure that people are drinking more wine, but they’re really pitching people at a lower level.”

Marti is quick to add, however, “People also need to stop thinking that good wine is expensive. From £3.99 to £5 is not such a big step. People could drink so much better.” She envisions a “breaking programme about wine, that everyone will speak about and you won’t want to miss, with wines that aren’t necessarily more expensive”.

According to Wilkin, “There needs to be more emphasis on similarity in products. Like television chefs go out to markets and farms, it’s about bringing it back, and showing people where you can buy the wine locally.”

A greater public interest in sommeliers could have an upside beyond educating consumers, according to Devaney. “If there was celebrity status attached it could help to get people to realise that there is a good career in wine,” says Wilkin. This would lead, he believes, to “more people doing the job on the floor having at least some degree of food and wine knowledge”.

The main problem, then, is finding the right candidates to face the rigours attached to celebrity status. “I wouldn’t have the time to go to every tasting or every time there was a camera flash,” says Devaney. Wilkin agrees: “To be honest, a celebrity chef has got to be out of the kitchen. A real sommelier is always in the restaurant, the cellar, or with suppliers.” Being a sommelier is notoriously time-consuming without including more commitments. Wilkin moved to Genesis Wines “to cut down on 16-hour days”. He does add, however, that he’s “back to working long hours”.

Problems relating
Another aspect of being a sommelier, according to Connor, is, “It’s not very glamorous. Selling wine isn’t something
that people can relate to. Because people cook, they can project themselves into that environment.” Sommeliers do, however, have food knowledge as well, something that could provide the necessary link to successful programmes so far. Marti believes that a wine programme “would have to be integrated with a food programme”.

The benefits of celebrity-status sommeliers are clear – the chance to influence more consumers, to educate about wine on a wider scale and encourage more trial with the added benefit of promoting the career.

The best route to achieving this may not be as simple as endowing a sommelier with celebrity status, but it seems that there is potential in this direction. As Marti says, “It’s been about five years that people have been drinking more wine than beer. The industry is suffering from competition – you’d think that someone would have taken advantage of this.”

Wine+

A number of these sommeliers will be involved with the inaugural Wine+, an on-trade-focused wine event in central London this month.

Gearoid Devaney, for example, will host a seminar with Patricia Michelson, founder of La Fromagerie, about some lesser-known wine and cheese matches. Ronan Sayburn will be joined by Xavier Rousset from Le Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons for a seminar entitled The Sommelier – Friend or Foe?

Wine+, in addition to these seminars, will also provide an opportunity for trade visitors to taste wine from over 80 suppliers. The Taste Zone allows for independent tasting, with food samples available to assist with appropriate matching.

The event will take place on January 17 and 18, between 10am and 7pm, at Olympia in London.   

© db January 2007