If Wine Could Talk by Kara Joseph

Author:Kara Joseph
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indigo River Publishing
Published: 2021-07-20T16:53:40+00:00

8

So You Want to Be a Sommelier?

Something in me changed after my meeting with Marsha. Nothing could stop me from making my dream of becoming a sommelier come true. However, my head wasn’t entirely up in the clouds. I had seen the documentary Somm on Netflix, and it struck me with the realization I was in for a challenge the likes of which I had never seen before.

The film followed three potential master sommelier candidates through their quests to pass the daunting master exam. It captured all the moments of struggle as they prepared to pass the rigorous test. As I watched them drilling notecards, tasting wines, and going through tedious wine service, the reality of my difficult task hit me. My actual test to become a certified sommelier would be considerably less challenging, but at the time, everything seemed vastly more intimidating than I had imagined before watching the documentary.

Despite whether I could achieve the title of sommelier or not, my decision to pursue it had a deep meaning for me. I was going down a path that looked absolutely crazy but felt so incredibly right. I hadn’t thought about how it looked to the outside world. I was drifting further and further away from normalcy. As I told friends and family that my time in Napa wasn’t just temporary anymore, I was met with mixed reviews. Many friends thought it was cool, but the majority of people were just confused as to why I would do this. I learned something—my dream only had to make sense to me.

As I began to fully commit to my life’s new direction, I let the wine-savvy gentlemen I worked with know my plans. Kyle and David M. were concerned about my aggressive push to try to become both WSET Level 3 certified and a certified sommelier within one year. My coworkers did a good job of making me feel the weight of the goal I had chosen to pursue. They were also a mix of supportive and doubtful bystanders. Many offered luck, but their eyes told me they didn’t truly believe I could do it. They had witnessed all my novice wine occasions and knew how much I needed to improve. They believed I was young and inexperienced, compared to essentially any other aspiring sommelier.

The only way I knew how to get it done was to give myself a nearly impossible deadline. I decided I had to put my head down and grind it out. My wine quest was going to be a test of skills I’d never dreamed of having. Opposed to every other test I had ever taken, I actually wanted to take this one.

As I crafted my study plan, I decided to work toward my WSET Level 3 Award and my Court of Master Sommeliers certification at the same time. I resolved to skip levels 1 and 2 of the WSET and go straight for level 3, due to the confidence I gained from my nightly Starbucks study trips.

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