Portrait of a Sommelier

Last summer, the Del Mar Theater, a refurbished Art Deco movie house in downtown Santa Cruz, held a one-night-only screening of the film Somm, a documentary that follows four men as they prepare for the most difficult test in the world, the Master Sommeliers examination. The Santa Cruz Mountain Wine Growers Association hosted the event, which included a wine tasting that took place before the show, and a Q & A session with a special guest after the film.

With documentaries, you’re never assured of a Hollywood ending. The film portrays the emotional, grueling, and often humorous journey of four men who attempt to pass an examination with a success rate of about 4%. Barely 200 people have passed the Master Sommelier examination in over 40 years, and as Somm begins, you know that the chances are slim that any of the four would-be-Master-Somms will pass, let alone all four.

In the end, Ian Cauble, the film’s hero, learns that he has failed the exam for his second time, although two of his friends have passed. As the music fades at the end of the movie, text appears on the screen, and we learn that 16 months after the exam documented in the film, Ian earned the title of Master Sommelier. When the crowed discovered that he had passed the exam, the theater erupted in applause. I spotted Ian under the marquee posing for photographs after the screening, and when he was through, my friend Heather and I congratulated him on the film and on his successful completion of the Master Sommelier exam.

Heather and I talked with Ian for a moment about the 2011 Pinot Noir from Beauregard Vineyards that we had poured at the reception before the film. Ian had mentioned during the Q & A that he generally preferred European wines over Californian ones, but that he did enjoy the wines from the Santa Cruz Mountains, especially the Pinot Noirs produced here with high acidity and low alcohol. Heather and I had planned on asking Ian to join us for a drink, but before we had a chance, he invited us to join him at Soif, one of Santa Cruz’s premier restaurants and wine bars.

While Ian looked over the wine selection, I had a chance to talk with him. I asked if he was still working for Krug, one of the more prestigious Champagne labels, which had hired him the day he passed the Master Sommelier exam. He told me, no, he’d actually had to resign because he had come down with mercury poisoning from eating too much fish while representing Krug, but he is hoping to start his own venture soon.

Ian and I tasting in the cellar at Beauregard Vineyards (photo courtesy of Humanitarian Hedon Films, Heather Hazen)

Ian looked over the wines on display and in the carols, and I talked with him about minerality and terroir. We discussed the undeniable yet ineffable quality of terroir, how it is unique to location, but also determined by the philosophical beliefs of the winemaker. I told Ian how I had recently been reading about minerality in wine, and how it seemed to me that in a white wine this was often expressed by high acidity and an absence of fruit, but that I was having some trouble understanding how minerality is expressed in a red wine. Ian nodded, and smiling, told me he’d found our table a nice red wine with good minerality. In fact, he’d selected three wines: a 2012 Grüner Veltliner, the third most commonly planted white grape in Austria, a Premier Cru Chabli, and a 2011 Beaujolais from the Domaine de Robert Morgon Cote du Py.

 

Ian had a calm, congenial presence at the table; he didn’t try to control the conversation, and instead seemed content to chime in only when pressed for an answer to a question. He was humorous, and though very knowledgeable, resembled his character in the film only in a cursory manor. He was not at all the studious, uptight person known as “Dad” by his friends in the documentary. In fact, Ian told us that this had only happened on one occasion, but that it happened to be caught on film and had been made to look like a common nickname. Ian doesn’t like to see himself on the screen, and so he had gone over to Soif earlier for a couple glasses of wine while he waited for the film to end. He thinks that he comes off in the film as too serious. In person, Ian is humble, a delightful conversationalist, and quite funny; a couple of times I even had the sense that he was holding some ribaldry back because of the company at the table.

We drank the Grüner Veltliner first. There was a peculiar though familiar spicy taste, but I was having difficulty bringing exactly what it was to mind. What fruit is that, I thought—no, not a fruit, not a spice…Ian leaned across the table after swirling his glass and taking a single sip, and asked, “Do you taste the radish?” Radish! That was what I was trying to think of, but its name had escaped me. With one sip Ian knew exactly what the flavors were in the wine, and had no trouble discussing them. “Let the wine sit in your mouth,” he told the table. “Chew on it, have a conversation with the wine, feel the texture. Do you taste that radish spice? Do you feel how it gives way to a tinge of pink peppercorns on the tip of your tongue?” I could feel the spiciness of a radish slowly dissipate over my tongue till just the very tip and edges burned with a subtle heat—as if I’d pressed the tip of my tongue against a pink peppercorn.

After the dry, mineral-driven Chablis, we ended with the Beaujolais. This was my favorite of the three wines we drank that night. I took a sip, and held the wine in my mouth, slowly moving it about with my tongue. “These grapes were grown in solid granite,” Ian said, “you can taste it.” And I could.