Finally sommelier! (interpreter of the wine language)

Few days ago I was in Franciacorta, the most famous sparkling wine region in Italy, to receive my diploma of sommelier from Italian Sommelier Association. The ceremony was a fancy one (see the next post) with great food and wine and even better company. It was awesomely organized by Berlucchi, a famous winery that about 40 years ago introduced the traditional method of sparkling wine production in the region. After all, nothing says celebration more clearly than a glass full of bubbles.

My new gadget - tastevin

But, how come a physicist decided to enter the world of wine?

Three years ago, after finishing PhD, I was feeling mentally exhausted. Probably because in that period of life the rational thinking was occupying my head almost exclusively. I needed to involve brain in a completely different activity, in something more irrational, that involves all your senses and requires creativity. I was already a fan of good food and cooking so the choice was not difficult. I took the course for sommelier. A whole new world opened in front of me.

The big bottle has been sacrified on the way back home

The course is here in Trieste organized by Italian Sommelier Association of Friuli Venezia Giulia and is composed of three levels. In the first level you learn the basic facts and how to do a detailed wine tasting. In the second level the wine geography is treated. A very important subject since you start to fill your sensorial portfolio by tasting wines from around the world. The third level is the most interesting and creative, it teaches you the essence of a sommelier’s job – you learn how to pair food and wine.

It was fun to learn new facts – how the grapes are grown, why the soil composition and weather determines the wine quality, how can you produce white wine from red grapes, how to open a bottle and serve it at the table… But, more challenging, and much more entertaining were the wine tastings were we trained all our senses, often neglected in these hectic times.

The nose was the hardest part. It took us few months before we started to distinguish a particular aroma in a complex bouquet. Did you know it is even important to listen to the wine when poured in the glass in order to “hear” its viscosity? And that your tongue is not only to detect various flavors, but also to feel the tactile sensation that a wine lefts in the mouth.

Finally, in April I successfully passed the final exam. Although I studied for more than a month, it was tough. The hardest part was the tasting in front of a comission, where you have to describe the wine as quickly and with as little words possible. And yet, this is the most important skill of every good sommelier. He is not just a snobbish waiter that serves wine, or tells which wine is good and which one is bad, but primarily a person that knows how to convey emotions a wine can gives us but often we are just too lazy to understand them.

In my opinion, one of the most important duties of a sommelier is to be an interpreter of the wine language. Wish me luck, because up to now I have just managed to learn the alphabet.