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Ordering wine in a restaurant is enough to turn some people to drink. But wine waiters want to help, not intimidate
by Luke Leitch
It is barely 11am, I am dressed up like the Milk Tray man and drinking my fifth glass of wine of the morning. Sitting opposite me, across a table strewn with spent bottles, is Gerard Basset, the man who is overseeing my helter-skelter initiation into the world of the sommelier. This is a privilege: Gerard is a legend in the business. The master sommelier who put the “Vin” into Hotel du Vin (his cut was £2.5 million when he and his co-founder, Robin Hutson, sold out five years ago) is probably the greatest wine mastermind in the British Isles.
Twice winner of sommelier of the year, an MBA in wine, three times runner-up in the world sommelier championships and various other oenophile awards — he proved his credentials to me the night before, when he plied me with a tangy, buttercup Gewürztraminer and a deep, almost milky viognier (there was also a pinot noir and a nectary dessert wine, but I recall those less clearly).
Distractingly, though, he also has the Frenchest accent imaginable, a moustache that has earned him the nickname La Tache in one wine industry magazine, and the mien of Gorden Kaye as René Artois in ’Allo ’Allo. This, combined with the wine, inevitably leads to thoughts of Van Clomp’s Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies. Yet there is no time for such distractions — the next bottle is being uncorked. What a moaning.
Britain may rank only thirteenth in the table of most prodigious per capita wine drinkers, but we import more wine than any other nation — a very respectable 1.6 billion bottles annually. As our recycling bins attest, much of that is little more than plonk glugged comfortably chez nous as an all-purpose bourgeois life-anaesthetic.
Yet, in the public arena of a half-decent restaurant, wine drinking can be an uncomfortable experience for the ignorant imbiber. A comprehensive wine list is problematic taken on its own; combined with a haughty, patronising sommelier it’s enough to drive you to lager. Or as Gerard says: “Asking for advice can be an intimidating experience if the customer does not have so much knowledge of the wine. The sommelier is there to help, but sometimes it does not seem that way.”
I was invited to Hotel TerraVina, Gerard’s 17-room boutique hideaway on the edge of the New Forest, to experience service from the other side of the coin. The plan was to shadow Laura Rhys, the hotel’s 27-year-old head sommelier and the latest in a long line of Gerard’s protégées who, this week, won the Academy of Food and Wine’s sommelier of the year competition. “It is about psychology, salesmanship and knowledge of the wine,” Gerard says. “Laura is very good, very dedicated.”
Laura arrives at 9am, bespectacled, in her all-black work uniform, hair tied back in a businesslike bun. The first job of the day is the “mise en place, which means setting up the bar. As we check that the fridges are fully stocked, dish up nuts, cut fruit and polish glasses I assess Laura: she certainly doesn’t have the bearing of a sommelier who — unlike so many that I have encountered — would revel in giving diners an inferiority complex along with their wine.
“It’s very important that your customers feel comfortable,” she says. “Your job is to read them, but this comes from practice and there are never any hard and fast rules.”
Restaurants typically aim to make a gross profit of 60 to 70 per cent on their wine, while more grasping establishments may try to get away with more. Strip away the elegant pouring technique, the fine palate, the managerial skills and the years of knowledge and the sommelier’s ultimate responsibility is to sell wine and rack up as much of that profit as possible.
If a customer does not indicate which kind of wine they prefer, says Laura, it is the sommelier’s job to steer them towards a decision that works for everyone. “Often I will suggest three or four wines; different prices, styles or countries, and try to read them through what gets them excited. From there, you can steer them in the right direction.”
The wine glasses are now impeccable, so Laura proceeds to the cellar. It is dizzying: there is a champagne ante-chamber and beyond it sections for red and white.The wine is filed geographically. Without drawing breath, she rattles off the order: “Here you’ve got France — by region — then Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Greece, England, America, South America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. And then there are the sweet wines.” Finally, she breathes. “And the rosé.”
To keep the cellar topped up and the wine list refreshed, a sommelier is also responsible for ordering new wines. This week alone there are three dealers due in to brandish their wares at Gerard and Laura including, this morning, a specialist in Californian wine called James Hocking. This is where the imbibing — on my part, at least — begins.
The first is a delicious roussanne from a winery called Terre Rouge. James pours, and they all start that Jilly Goolden expert’s schtick, spinning the liquid around in the glass before sipping, then slurping and gurgling with the phlegmy enthusiasm of someone drinking soup from the bowl. I sip. It is silky and delicious.
I swallow. Laura is still gurgling, then suddenly leans forward and spits expertly into a hitherto-unexplained wine bucket. “It could go well with the sweet potato risotto?” she speculates, to nods from Gerard. It is only after three further sips (from a Mount Veeder chardonnay, a Capiaux pinot noir and a zinfandel rosé from somewhere I can’t recall) that I feel confident enough to spit along with the rest of them.
Opening what proved to be a lovely cabernet sauvignon called Phaedrus, James the wine merchant tells me that although restaurant sales are slightly down, and some restaurants — particularly flashy West London restaurants — are proving unreliable to do business with, trade is nonetheless ticking along. “Despite the recession, people are still drinking,” he says. “But people who would once have gone to Tom Aikens and spent £500 are now going to Harrods instead. They’ll spend £50 on some beef and the same on a bottle of wine, and for them that represents value.” Gerard, Laura and James continue expertly to contemplate the relative merits of each wine. I don’t understand how they do it. My taste buds feel assaulted, and a purportedly spectacular Pax winery syrah (trade price £37.46 on the bottle) tastes grotesque.
The end of the tasting comes as a relief. Yet immediately afterwards, in preparation for the forthcoming competition, Gerard sets Laura a blind tasting of five spirits from the bar: a cognac (that smells like whisky), a rum (that smells like cognac), calvados, benedictine and tequila. She sails through. I get them all wrong.
Next up is a “scenario”, a kind of theory exam for sommeliers: Gerard asks Laura how she would best increase sales of a particularly fine Peter Lehmann shiraz named Futures that we have just tasted. She rattles off her options, which include selling it by the glass, stocking it in the hotel’s minibars and thinking anew about which dishes on the menu best complement it. Gerard nods contentedly.
All through the morning I have been trying not to think about serving customers. But now the lunch hour of reckoning is at hand. Matthew Whitfield, a chef, and Laura French, a waitress, both from Marco Pierre White’s Yew Tree, are the first to arrive. Under Laura’s instruction, I have been practising my pouring technique, but am convinced that there is going to be a horrible accident.
Gerard is not foolish enough to let me loose on his wine list — Laura helps them to choose their half-bottle of Yering Station chardonnay — but I am the one dispatched to top up their glasses. The walk from the bar to table, tray balanced on my hand, feels interminable. It passes without calamity, and I am so relieved that I take the bottle from the tray without contemplating the consequences. Without the bottle, the tray is unbalanced and begins to tip off my hand — but with a madman’s twitch I recover. Whitfield and French generously pretend not to notice.
The next thing is to pour, and I remember Laura’s advice: first show them the label “so the customer can see it is their wine”, and then I lean forward to serve, holding the bottle by its base. Then disaster looms again — this time courtesy of the writer Christopher Hitchens. French’s glass is on the far side of her plate, and I remember a spectacular Hitchens diatribe clearly written in great fury immediately after ill-treatment at the hands of a sommelier. Hitchens’s offender had done exactly what I must do to French, whose glass rests on the far side of her plate from me: leant over it, blocking his view of his dining companion in the process, and pour. This is not only a “breathtaking act of rudeness”, wrote Hitchens, “it also tends to undermine me as a guest, since at any moment when I try to sing for my supper, I may find an unwanted person lunging carelessly into the middle of my sentence”.
I will not be that lunger, so go for an unorthodox approach: I ask French if she would mind placing her glass on my side of the table so that I can pour. She does, and I do, then pour again for her lunch date, and walk back to the bar elated. For me, as Herr Flick should have said, the pour is over. After service, Gerard and Laura assess my progress. Despite my knowing practically nothing about wine, and having prevented her from doing anything remotely useful this morning, Laura says: “Well done! You’ve not made any serious mistakes at all.”
For his wine MBA, Gerard wrote a thesis on the psychology of the wine list. In it, he identified a series of risks that deter diners from buying wine. These include the functional risk (“unable to determine if the wine is in good condition or if it goes well with the accompanying food”), social risk (“embarrassment resulting from choosing a wine not perceived to be adequate”), and financial risk (“incapability to know if the wine is worth the price asked for it”).
I would add to that sommelier risk, the fear of being made to feel like ignorant dirt by someone who charges you for the privilege. Yet unless you take the time to learn about wine — and considering that there are more than 2,000 chateaux in Bordeaux alone, that could take a while — you must to some extent rely on them. So hold your nerve, and hope that it’s someone who wears their knowledge as lightly as Gerard and Laura do.
Wine list dos and don’ts
By Gerard Basset
Do inform the sommelier of your budget up front. Sommeliers love to know how much a diner wishes to spend to avoid embarrassing situations and wasting time.
Do remember that it’s not all about the money. Price plays a part in indicating wine quality but so too does reputation, rarity and the name of the producer.
Don’t accept a 2005 vintage if you’ve ordered 2006. In some cases it can make for a very different wine. Vintage changes must be pointed out before the bottle is opened and in some cases must be reflected in the price.
Don’t rule out wines just because they have a screwtop — you’ll be missing out on plenty of wonderful wines.
