ooh your askbox is open! I've been (mildly) considering somm school and wonder if you have an recommendations or advice? did you go somewhere local/in person or did you do online classes? did you have to purchase all of your own wines? this is basically a thinly veiled ask for you to give us a write up on what somm school is like. :)
SO! This is the third time I’ve tried to answer this, so let’s hope that tumblr doesn’t eat it once again. To start, I’m going to give a quick overview of wine education in North America/U.S., as that’s where I pursued mine.
There are two major certifying bodies for wine education in North America and they have two slightly different areas of focus, the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET) and the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS). Both of these are extremely rigorous and respected and those that have achieved the top levels and titles (Master of Wine for WSET and Master Sommelier for CMS) are renowned as experts in the field. In the world, only 416 people who have become Masters of Wine (MW), and only 279 people have been awarded as Master Sommeliers (MS).
WSET’s focus is a bit more academic, going deeper into wine theory and the science of production, whereas CMS is very deeply founded on the business of the sommelier and is broader but not quite as deep, but also adds a service component to the exam that WSET doesn’t feature. I don’t have much to say (yet) about WSET, only that I’m likely to pursue my WSET 3 and 4 in the coming years and think the two complement each other well. I will also say that, if you’re interested in wine but not in the art of the sommelier - a key distinction - then I tend to recommend WSET as it doesn’t have the service component.
That said, I’ll go into more depth on CMS, as that’s what I pursued. The Court has four levels of exam (i.e. Introductory, Certified, Advanced, Master) each with a huge jump in difficulty, and it is strictly a certifying body that does not provide classes. However, a number of years ago, one of the Master Somms became the Dean of Wine Studies at the Institute of Culinary Education - my alma mater - and together with several other Master Somms, they designed a ten-week preparatory class for the Certified exam. As far as I’m aware, this is unfortunately the only prep course affiliated with CMS, but if you happen to be in NYC, it’s really incredible. It’s taught by that MS, with a number of visiting lecturers and guest instructors who are also Master Sommeliers or are Advanced Sommeliers who are now candidates to take the Master Somm exam. It was Monday-Friday for those ten weeks, for four hours a day each day, which a frankly unreal amount of time to be personally instructed by wine professionals of that caliber! I was so fascinated. The days were split between two hours of lecture and two hours of tasting wines from the region we’d just covered and learning to describe, identify, and recall them - even blind. The cost of the wines we tasted was rolled into the overall cost of the course, but I bought a bunch of wine outside of it to practice with.
(Side note: I think blind tasting gets a bit of a bad reputation as a useless parlor trick, which it sometimes is, but it is extremely helpful in the wine business. If you have a table that says they love a big bold Napa cab but you don’t have a Napa cab, then you still know from your training of what that style tastes like and what, from your own wine list, that you might be able to recommend in its stead.)
Passing the prep course is hugely helpful in passing the Certified Exam, but is by no means a guarantee, and unfortunately two people in my prep class of ten did not pass the exam, despite doing well in the course. It’s just a really difficult exam and not their fault! It’s an all-day affair structured in three parts. You arrive at 8 am and go directly into blind tasting. There will be two white wines and two reds in front of you and you must methodically go through describing them by color, consistency, smell, taste, etc and building a case for the wine you ultimately say it is. From there, you move directly into the theory portion of the exam, which is 45 questions of multiple choice and short answer. (I was convinced I’d failed this section, as the questions were so tricky.) Once you turn in your theory portion, you’re given a time to return for the service portion, where the Master Somms have set up a room as a fake restaurant and you must act as their sommelier from start to finish: approaching the table with a welcoming demeanor, being knowledgable about the night’s specials and wine flights, being able to answer their questions about wine pairings with food, about cocktails, beer, spirits, all while making sure to move clockwise around the table, to pour 5 oz consistently without spilling, to use the correct glassware, to open a bottle of sparkling wine safely and silently, and so on. I’ve spent a lot of time in customer service and hospitality, so this was actually where I scored the highest. You must pass each section of the exam (Tasting, Theory, and Service) by at least 60% to pass the entirety of it, and unfortunately if you fail one, no matter how well you do on the others, is an immediate fail.
This isn’t to put you off! I just want to give a faithful description of the experience. Truly I had so much fun and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about wine.
As I’m not currently working in a restaurant, I don’t qualify to take the next level of CMS (Advanced), so after my classes this fall in winemaking and viticulture, I’m going to transfer to WSET and pursue more wine education there. I chose CMS at first honestly because it was offered through my culinary school and because I have a long-time love and fascination with the art of restaurants and hospitality, despite not currently working in one, so I wanted to learn the art of sommelier service as well.
I hope that answered any questions!
