Was at a Michelin 2 star tonight in Champagne…
Quote of the night (by the 2nd sommelier) to a local grower - “there can be pinot noir in blanc de blanc”
I’m sure there are others with similar stories…just thought I would share.
What did Louis and his Dad say?
Hope you guys are having a great time.
Pretty crazy that a Som could make a statement like that but I guess we sometimes expect too much from them.
They were speaking French…b.ut you should have seen his face…just complete shock…
Had a 74 Deutz…it was killer!
Stupid things said by sommeliers…
“I’m a sommelier so I know what I am talking about”
…need I say more?
At Domaine Carneros:
Me: “What’s in the Claret?”
Somm: “Um, it’s 100% Claret…”
You’re in France. You expect intelligence? ![[whistle.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/87d24eb81ec6dc01d84f3d6c19fa9a357e90218e.gif "whistle"){kind=small}
Put quote marks around every word ever spoke by a somm.
OK, technically not the sommelier, but still one of my favorite $(!@^ stories about ordering wine in a restaurant. I order off the list, wine #1 isn’t available. Order second wine, same result. Finally, I order a third wine–a Zinfandel, figuring surely the Zinfandel is there.
The waiter comes back after a long pause, and shows me the bottle, saying nothing. I see that it’s NOT the bottle I ordered. When I point this out to the waiter, he says:
“Well, we were out of that wine as well, but at least this one is from the neighboring county.”
Bruce
Well… if it was a sparkling wine from the US, he would be right. Just playing devil’s advocate. ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
how many are actually somms saying this and not just wait staff that handles wine?
Color me jealous here.
Ow. I bet that was terrific.
Glad you guys are having fun.
Post notes from Chablis so that I can get my buying strategy together.
Serving a Brunello 2004:
“It is a 2004 so the Brunello is very old” ![[truce.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/d/d33e712b50d5efc2425bf219c404fbdb7ed0ba50.gif "truce"){kind=small}
“I checked every wine, and none of them are corked…”
3 of the 8 wines we were served were corked, 2 considerably so.
At a restaurant in Madrid, where the Somm was supposedly one of the best in Spain.
Mine was the ‘head’ somm…
Or was it remotely possible that he meant ‘can’ as in ‘it is possible’ i.e. through error rather than ‘it was likely’ or in any sense ‘a normal part’ of a B de B?
Perhaps there was something else about the sommelier that suggested a lack of basic knowledge or expertise – apart from the apparent shock on the face of the grower? The fact that he was talking to a local grower should have provided some warning about stepping carelessly into his customer’s area of expertise.
I guess the restaurant would have been les Crayeres or l’Assiette Champenoise and both, particularly les Crayeres, have stellar Champagne wine lists as one might expect. And both usually have highly trained staff. However visits in recent years since Boyer and then Voisin left les Crayeres have seen a major reduction in staff numbers, particularly the ‘old hands’, so that might have affected the situation if it was there.
My biggest problem with sommeliers [a rare event I am glad to say] is usually over an ‘off’ bottle where they might seek to defend the indefensible whether TCA or oxidation etc. Most customers just keep quiet unless a wine is completely rotten and sadly some even shrink from doing it then. IMO a decent sommelier should know better than to defend any fault called by a reasonable customer – and occasionally by an unreasonable one.
Nigel,
This happened to Michael and myself at a restaurant in Burgundy recently.
I won’t name it but the Som never came out.
We were served a 1997 Chablis that was absolutely shot.
The Som supposedly said it was OK but advanced. He finally relented to let us order another bottle and take that one off.
Go figure.
Okay, I have to step in and say I’m almost positive this person is not a certified sommelier. I’m pretty sure the blanc de blanc person isn’t, either. Can we please distinguish between sommeliers and wine stewards/pourers? If I am wrong here I am sorry and horrified.
All I know is that I asked for a sommelier, and was told that this was the ‘head sommelier’ at Domaine Carneros. I believe the nametag even said so…
Amazing, isn’t it?
That is amazing in a very negative way. I still have to think the folks at Domaine Carneros are misusing the term, but who knows?
Maybe that was the guy’s name. “Head Sommelier”…just throwing out a theory.