Advising restaurant diners on the wine list has traditionally been the role of a male sommelier — but times are changing.
“When I started out seven years ago there were very few women in this job,” says Dawn Davies, 31, head sommelier and wine buyer at Selfridges, London. “Now most restaurants have at least one female sommelier, even if she’s not the head. Some of the best sommeliers in the world are women.”
Until recently, though, the world of the sommelier has been one of the last remaining bastions of masculinity (along with being a chef, of course, Angela Hartnett notwithstanding). And out of 264 internationally respected Masters of Wine, only 62 are women. A woman only won the UK Sommelier of the Year award for the first time in 2006. But things are definitely changing. US Elle recently celebrated the new “girl gang of sommeliers” who are taking over the New York restaurant scene. This group includes Lee Campbell, 37, sommelier at Nick and Toni’s, a high-end Italian restaurant in the Hamptons.
ILLUSTRATION: LANCE LIU
“It’s not wholly unusual to be a woman sommelier in New York,” she says. “But we still have to be very aware of how we’re perceived. Where I work, the Hamptons, is the microcosm of power in New York City. Everyone that comes here is a baron of industry, men and women. You have to make sure they don’t doubt you.”
In general, though, it’s still the men ordering.
“When you go to a table to serve, nine times out of 10 the man has chosen the wine. As a woman you have to be very aware of how you need to present yourself to be taken seriously. For me, it’s almost a ‘show no weakness’ situation. And as a black woman I have to check that even more,” Campbell says.
Women are part of the democratization of the wine industry, says Neleen Strauss, 43, co-owner and sommelier at Vivat Bacchus in Farringdon, London.
“It is still exceptional to be a woman in the wine industry, but we are helping to defuse the snobbery about wine. I like to remind people that wine is made by farmers in shorts and flip-flops. Being a woman makes that easier. Also, I’m not the biggest person — I’m 5 feet 3 inches [1.6m] — and you can just get away with more. It’s easier to talk to men. You can subtly flirt with them without being over the top,” she says.
Strauss used to run Browns restaurant in South Africa, where she banned wine lists.
“We built a place where you could eat in the wine cellar with 4,000 bottles of wine around you. We canceled the wine list and would just suggest a bottle. It was hands-on, more intimate and you had more to choose from,” she said.
Women sommeliers tend to claim that they are more creative and more open-minded about wine. Because there is a lot of power play around wine in restaurants, using your gender is one way to rise above it all or bring them down to your level.
Joelle Marti-Baron, 36, marketing manager at Champagne Henriot, says: “Customers can be a lot more confrontational with male sommeliers. I remember a situation when a male customer said to me, ‘I want the house wine.’ I replied, ‘I’m afraid we don’t have such a thing,’ and explained what we had. He gave me such a look. It could have gone either way. I thought he was going to tell me to get lost. If I had been a man I think he would have. The French accent doesn’t always help.”
But women get on better with the difficult customers, she says: “The relationship is easier and if you make a recommendation — or a correction -—they will accept it graciously. It is too humiliating for them to take it from a man.”
When Marti-Baron first started as a sommelier in France, she was the only woman working in the restaurant.
“You have to work twice as hard as a man. I had to work harder to make sure I wouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to say, ‘Oh, well, she’s a woman.’ If you are committed and passionate it’s not an issue. I don’t think it’s any harder than being a female broker. You prove that you work hard, you don’t take sexist remarks seriously, you just laugh and say, ‘Next!’ People respect you more if you don’t get tetchy about silly things,” she says.
Karen Ribier, 24, head sommelier at Papillon in London’s South Kensington, is recognized as one of London’s rising stars. She was trained at Mirabelle, where the head sommelier (a man) took her under his wing for a year and taught her everything he knew.
“In the rest of Europe, it’s still unusual to be a woman sommelier. Here, people are more open. In France it’s different. But even in London I still feel that I have a lot more to prove than a man. Some people look at you as if to say, ‘Are you really able to do this?’ People tend to like it, though, because it’s a bit different,” she says.
Dawn Davies worked at The Ledbury in London when the restaurant got its Michelin star. She agrees that the French model has been holding women back for a long time.
“There is a very stereotypical French idea that the sommelier should be a man. But customers everywhere are always surprised. I’ve only had a couple of experiences where people have said: ‘You’re a woman and you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ In general, though, it’s a nice talking point,” she says.
She too has found that women sommeliers can be better at challenging the customer’s choice.
“People find it easier to be reproached by a woman because they don’t feel like there is a contest of wills,” she says.
You do feel more “watched,” however, Campbell says.
“I have embraced looking a bit different. I don’t wear suits. I wear colorful things, feminine dresses, I don’t dress conservatively. I want people to know that wine does not have to be about elitism,” she says.
You can’t win with everyone, though, she says.
“One week into one of my first jobs, I had to deliver some wine to a table. I was nervous about how to hold it and was moving it more than I should have. The customer said: ‘Your sommelier is shaking my bottle all over the place and getting sediment in it.’ I have never forgotten it or made that mistake again. They do look for mistakes and weakness where they would not do otherwise,” she says.
She has another reason to prove herself.
“I don’t really think too much about being a woman in the wine industry, but I think about being African-American. People are surprised when I try to engage them and make them see that I grew up in a very similar way to them. I grew up in an upper-middle-class home; my parents were able to pay for a top college. More times than not people are surprised — but not negative,” she says.
Few of the women sommeliers believe they have some kind of biological advantage over their male peers. But since the 1970s, studies have shown that women have a keener sense of smell and taste than men. A 2004 questionnaire in the US showed that women have more odor preferences than men. A 2002 study at Cardiff University, Wales, showed that smells activate more areas of brain activity in women compared with men.
“Women are more sensory-aware,” Davies says. “There are a lot of men who would agree with that in the industry. It’s a positive, enlightened view of women in the wine trade.”
Others are not so convinced.
“I don’t think it’s scientifically proven that women have a better palate, for instance,” Marti-Baron says. “It’s just about how much practice you have. I think men and women have the same capability when they are tasting.”
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