The following blog was featured on il Marco Polo on February 14, 2021.
In this engaging article, we will highlight a very beautiful, but often little-known topic, the differences between a Sommelier and a Wine Taster. They maybe subtle but there are differences.
As always, I will be engaging with Dr. Clinton Lee, a very dear friend, who is a highly respected wine-professional, recognised worldwide in the enology and viticulture sector.
Sommelier and wine taster, are two distinctly different figures who often tend to be confused or incorrectly addressed. They actually represent two distinct and separate professions. They have common and intersecting aspects. Both have the final purpose of evaluating wine but from different perspectives and this affects their professional scope and work. Basically, both figures share a training aimed at possessing in-depth knowledge of wines, their physical and organoleptic characteristics and naturally the fundamental notions for carrying out both activities.
Now, let’s see in detail what their working differences are:
The “Wine Taster” mainly focuses on:
- Technical
- Qualitative characteristics of the wine.
The Sommelier, on the other hand, focuses on the:
- Organoleptic and
- Sensorial characteristics of the wine.
How a Wine Taster and Sommelier taste and evaluate wine.
- A taster and a sommelier taste differently.
- The sommelier can refer to markers of a specific wine (the famous notes of chocolate, tomato leaf, currant and black pepper and all those markers of vines or winemaking and ageing techniques): a story, sometimes poetic, involving the memory and the evocative power of images.
- The taster, on the other hand, is oriented to eliminating as much as possible the margins of subjectivity in the analysis of wine and the tasting results in a quantitative evaluation: a score to be expressed in hundredths.
- Wine taster and sommelier have both common skills but also difference that vary and are exclusive to them.