Sommelier qualifications: a touch of class

One thing I have been particularly impressed with in our sommeliers’ course is the calibre of the teachers, or lecturers. Most of them have been introduced to wine through sheer passion for the subject and many are not necessarily sommeliers by profession.

While this might indicate a lack of qualification, it actually means that firstly, we get lecturers who understand our position as novices, and secondly the lecturers often have an incredible array of general knowledge and culture.

So far, during our lessons, Dante has been quoted, events in papal history have been touched on and journalists have shared their film watching habits with the group (and it was James Bond, not Sideways, that was quoted). I have been particularly impressed with Matteo Longhi and Guido Invernizzi who are both medical doctors with an incredibly profound expertise in, and passion for, wine.

This proves to me that while it is always good to read anything that’s available on the wine sector, it is also essential to continually cultivate a broad understanding of diverse topics that may enrich our experience of wine. It is a beverage that has fascinated mankind for centuries, and I am certainly undertaking an entire educational experience, particularly in Italian history and culture, and am not just undergoing a wine tasting course.

This is true of my work in our trading company too, as issues that we deal with daily range from the effects of the economic crisis on the wine industry (naturally!), issues in the agricultural sector, including new legislation and vintage quality, import and export law and EU regulations, along with general marketing opportunities and trends in wine consumption (for example which champagne is currently in vogue).

This is only a general overview and doesn’t have much to do with high brow culture, though it’s all linked – I believe especially for anyone whose profession is sommelier. There is something extra that should be required of a specialised wine waiter that has much to with an air of general intelligence and the ability to serve any customer, with confidence that you’ve got a grip on the entire tradition behind the product you’re proprosing.

An interesting footnote to this is the European Sommeliers Association award for best sommelier communicator. This award was inaugurated in 2007 (won by Juan Munoz Ramos) and goes to a charismatic leader in the wine industry dedicated to training, education and communication initiatives.

In Australia in 2008, the Wine Communicator of the Year Award went to Huon Hooke (an appropriate choice) for his work in journalism and wine judging. He has been writing about wine for 25 years, showing that sharing wine experiences is what we’re all about.

Perfumes in wine: how to learn a wine's bouquet, descriptions and a sommelier spice nose

The advice from our first lecturer in our sommeliers course is numerous and varied but one thing she said was that you can never identify a perfume if you can’t recognise it. She gave the example of an aromatic traminer and a group of teenagers that she once had to do a lesson with on wine tasting.

She had chosen traminer for the very fact that its aroma is unmistakable – it’s not called an aromatic grape for nothing. The students probably smelled wine and that’s about it, but one guy said “it smells just like lychees”. To say the audience was floored is to say little. But it was around Christmas time, lychees in Italy are in great supply and it happened to be his favourite fruit. Moral of the story? Know your perfumes.

What does this mean for an Australian in Italy learning wine tasting techniques? First of all, I need to gain some European knowledge, especially about plants. There are certain rules about wine tasting, one of which goes thus: white wine – white flowers and white fruit, red wine – red flowers and red fruit. Which is fine if you know your flowers.

My parents had a modest cottage garden in Australia when I was a child, but it soon evolved into something more native, and certainly didn’t include violets or peonies – just two of the flowers we’ve supposedly smelled in wines this week. My first step will be to learn the flowers in Italian. While some are similar, others are very different – hawthorn, for example, is called biancospino. My second step will be to start recognising the smell of these flowers, as I certainly don’t know what hawthorn should smell like, let alone recognise it in a glass of white wine.

I sometimes wonder if I said something smells like eucalyptus, whether that would be an acceptable and legitimate response. My resolution is to now discover the various wine perfume groups and their components. This will involve smelling and memorising various pices, herbal, vegetal, fruit, flowers, animal and ethereal components.

My first attempt has been unsuccessful as I entered a “drogheria” which is an old-style drug store in Italy, which sells spices, sweets, herbs, oils, salts and the like. I asked if they had a mixed confection of spices and they answered in the negative, saying they only sell various spices by weight. My plan was to sample and smell and memorise. After all I don’t smoke, and don’t really know what pure tobacco smells like. While I was tempted to buy something for home anyway – far more romantic than the jars of Ducros herbs and spices you get in the supermarket – I was somewhat disheartened and far too embarrassed to say I was on a research mission for my sommeliers course.

The flowers beckon, but I think I’m in for a tough challenge.

Photo | Flickr

Italian wine and grape varieties: the indigenous Nero d'Avola

Our sommeliers course is coming along like a house on fire after only two lessons, but then given the second level is all about Italian wine and Italian wine making regions, the material is so rich it’s hard to get beyond just touching on each region.

The first lesson this week was a review of how to taste wine – the descriptions you can give, serious measurements of wine quality etc. The Italian Sommeliers Association has a list of parameters and measurements that include intensity, complexity, harmony, after-taste persistency etc etc. But more on that later.

This week we tasted a Nero d’Avola, and after my father asked me about this wine and its variety, I thought I’d give it some greater analysis myself. Nero d’Avola is a native Italian wine, and an indigenous grape variety of Sicily. It is a red wine and it happens to be one of my favourites (though nothing for me from the shores of Italy will ever beat nebbiolo).

We tasted Deliella’s version, which finished with 88 points for the nero d’avola. It’s a wine that costs about 40 euros at a wine shop and so on my buying a second sample this week (purely to consolidate our lessons, you understand) I unfortunately had to acquire a less expensive wine.

My second nero d’avola shares many of the characteristics of the first, with a little less complexity. I’m drinking it too young, but then it’s difficult to find an enoteca (Italian wine shop) that will have any vintage beyond recent ones.

Deliella’s wine was filled with a bouquet of spice mix – everything from cocoa to tobacco and some under brush in between. Our lecturer that evening said that nero d’avola has a perfume all of its own and is very distinctive when you learn to recognise it – the perfume she was referring to was a brackish, sea-salt air smell. To push your imaginations a little, she’s right. Even my cheaper variety had this aspect, so we’re at least a step towards recognising the variety in a blind tasting. I think it also has a green wood smell – like raw pine.

I have seen this Italian wine in Australia, which so far has gone under-appreciated in Italy itself. I think it could have an export future as it's closer to an Australian palate than some northern Italian wines I've tasted. For being snubbed a little in Italy, I’m not sure if it’s a perception that there is a lack of wine growing tradition in Sicily, or if it just suffers from being a southern wine, but this Italian variety is definitely worth looking out for. Just don’t drink it too young.

Wine courses in Italy: becoming a sommelier and wine tasting Italy's regions

Autumn is going to be a very busy season for me, full of wine tasting events, not to mention the second level of my sommelier course.

I completed the first level of the Italian Sommeliers’ Association course in 2007, which requires more effort than most wine tasting courses in Italy you’re likely to come across. The first is about wine tasting techniques – examining the look, smell and taste of wine and how to analyse it while also learning the language parameters to describe wine.

The introductory level also presents lessons on wine production, oenology, spirits and liqueurs, the role of the sommelier and Italian wine legislation, among other topics. It’s a broad introduction, but effective enough for those who then want to develop their knowledge and tasting technique.

Things are heating up in the second course which obviously presumes a far more evolved student in terms of their theory and wine tasting experience. It must be said this is still a course for amateurs, and probably not recommended for whoever wants to become a fully-fledged professional sommelier.

The second level presents Italy’s wine growing regions and its DOCG, DOC and IGT classifications in depth. In terms of wine tasting, it also introduces a points system to judge the overall quality of a wine, rather than limiting the taster to observations and wine description. This will likely have me brushing up on the vocabulary and theory from the first course before assigning any points anywhere, and could see me doing plenty of swirling and smelling at home.

The first lesson had reassured me about how much I haven’t forgotten (but thought I had) from the first course, but then I was gripped by panic about how much more I have to learn and my startling level of ignorance. But I got the coffee perfume right with the Nero d’Avola...let the challenge begin!

Italy's restaurant industry in crisis: waiters abandon the profession

The weekend edition of Milan’s newspaper Corriere della Sera, had a great piece on the crisis in Italy’s restaurant industry. The feature article examined the fact that the profession of the waiter is in serious decline.

The article revealed that old-style service and waiters can now only be found in upper-class restaurants as people, especially young people, abandon the profession. And I should imagine the same goes for being a sommelier.

The reasons behind the move away from the service industry as a full time job include the low pay, most of which is also what Italians call “black money”, meaning you’re not on the books. Statistics show that nearly 36 percent of people working in this industry are in unregulated work circumstances, meaning while many taxes go unpaid, wait staff are unlikely to receive the minimum 1,000 euros a month for 40 hours a week work, as stipulated by law.

Italy’s institute for hoteliers reveals that in hospitality schools, 70 percent of students are choosing the kitchen, rather than the dining room, as their choice of profession; meaning that chefs have a boost in image, while waiters struggle to increase their ranks with professionals dedicated to a career.

Upper class establishments, including luxury hotels, are becoming the last bastion for professional waiters in Italy. The owner of Harry’s Bar in Venice, Arrigo Cipriani says: “Waiters providing service take away 35 percent of earnings. The cost of personnel on the whole is 53 percent, compared to 29-31 in England.”

Admittedly, Harry’s Bar has a total of 78 employees, 23 of which are waiters dedicated to service only. It’s a big establishment, but as revealed by other restauranteurs and hoteliers, it’s difficult to find professional staff.

For me this is not a problem restricted to Italy. I worked some dodgy waitressing jobs in Sydney and none of the owners paid taxes on their staff, and none of the establishments paid award wages. In Australia, as in other countries, it’s considered the part time job for students, which is why many restaurants have appalling service and extremely high staff turnover.

Even students though, are shunning the profession, as reported by a café in Sydney a while ago who couldn’t even get a backpacker to do the day shift at $20 an hour; I used to waitress at half that.

Apart from limited social time and skipped weekends, the waiters’ profession can be rewarding if you have the right training and work in the right place. I think you have to love the grind of it, though, and you should always come away from your shift with at least one gratifying episode.

As shown in the Corriere article, being a waiter is now reserved for really top notch Italian restaurants. The profile on Umberto Giraudo, head waiter at Rome’s three Michelin star restaurant, La Pergola, reinforces this. La Pergola is the Rome Hilton’s restaurant and Giraudo has had the opportunity to learn different languages and travel the world with his profession. He now works with internationally renowned chef Heinz Beck, and has served some of Italy’s VIPs, once receiving 1000 euros as his biggest tip.

But I think at this level we’re talking complete devotion, not just dedication, to the art of being a waiter. And who wants to skip their Saturday night for low pay to cop a rude customer and a boss who’ll work you into the ground?