Mentor and, now, Master Sommelier
Wine community hails ‘super smart and dedicated’ Keck as he joins elite group
David Keck already owned the undivided respect and admiration of his mentors, peers and customers. Keck’s wine bar in Montrose, Camerata at Paulie’s, which is equal parts hip and geeky, has been humming along nicely, attracting a clientele of folks who don’t know how to sip from a wine glass without swirling its contents first.
Did Camerata need a certified Master Sommelier tending bar? Not really. But Keck was determined to jump through all the grueling hoops necessary to become one. After nearly five years of intense study and a setback or three along the way, he achieved MS status in Aspen, Colo., last week, joining the ranks of arguably the world’s most exclusive — and erudite — fraternity of wine experts.
Sixty-three candidates, including five from Houston, sat for the 2016 exam. The 35-year-old Vermont transplant, whose résumé also includes singing opera professionally, was one of only three who got safely through. There are now 237 Master Sommeliers worldwide, eight of them in Texas and just two in Houston.
The other local, Guy Stout, the longtime director of beverage education for Glazer’s Distributing, earned his prized MS lapel pin in 2005, having safely navigated what he calls “the toughest test in the world.” Paul Roberts of Colgin Cellars — and formerly the head sommelier at The French Laundry — became Houston’s first MS in 2003, but he lives in Napa today. Drew Hendricks, then at Pappas Bros., followed in 2008, but he, too, has moved on.
Having previously passed the wine-service and theory portions of the exam, Keck still needed to ace tasting, which most think is the hardest leg because it requires much more than book knowledge. Six wines must be identified for their blend, the provenance of their grapes — down to the sub-region of a country — and the vintage. They give you all of 25 minutes to do this and, Keck explains, “you’d better be pretty darned close to perfect on at least five of the wines to have a chance. I was terrified.”
Understandable. He failed tasting a year ago.
”You’re in a room with some extremely talented people, the best and the brightest wine minds in the country, friends and colleagues I’ve known for a long time, and you’re on the clock,” Keck said. “It’s a mind game as much as anything. You go through a lot of different emotions. (Having passed) after everything I’ve put in, it just feels surreal. I’m honored, of course, but humbled, too.”
It’s been quite a spring for Keck, who was named one of America’s top sommeliers by Food & Wine Magazine last month. He received his MS lapel pin in a ceremony Wednesday afternoon at Aspen’s Little Nell Hotel from James Tidwell, the wine director at the Four Seasons Hotel in the Dallas area. It was, fittingly, the same pin that Stout had presented to Tidwell when he gained MS status, making the moment all the more special.
Stout wasn’t present for the ceremony — he’d committed to hosting a Rhone wine-tasting event in Houston — but he was delighted to hear the news, having “helped and coached David as much as I could” over the past several years.
“You couldn’t find a better, more dedicated person,” Stout said. “He’s a student of the game, super smart and dedicated.”
Ask anyone about Keck, and that’s what you’ll get for an answer. Camerata may look like just another wine bar from the outside, but its unique vibe exists because of him. The name “Camerata” originated with a group of lateRenaissance Florentine musicians, poets and intellectuals who routinely convened to debate lofty philosophical and musical topics. Opera, which Keck once pursued with the same passion he now reserves for wine (he has a master’s degree in opera performance from Rice’s Shepherd School of Music), is said to have evolved as a result of those sessions.
Felipe Riccio was working as a sous chef at the Pass & Provisions when he met Keck, who had come to Houston from Austin to help open Uchi, the celebrated Japanese restaurant a few blocks east of Camerata on Westheimer. By the end of their first serious conversation, Riccio was ready to retire his toque and sign on to be one of Keck’s original group of Camerata employees.
“I thought David just wanted me to do the food for him,” said Riccio, who leaves for Italy at the end of the month with his wife, Hayley, another Camerata sommelier who has landed a spot in a prestigious industrial design school in Milan. “But instead, he explained about how he wanted it to be an incubator of ideas and what he wanted it to stand for in Houston and nationally. If you had asked me if I’d ever have left the kitchen, I’d have told you you were crazy. But there was something about David — and most people will say this — that draws people to him. It’s his charisma, his personality.
“He has surrounded himself with talented, committed people. None of his original staff were somms. The commitment was to David. For me, he has been such a great mentor.”
Lindsay Thomas moved to Houston from the Washington, D.C., area without knowing anybody here in order to work with Keck at Camerata. Adam Toon arrived recently from Wichita, Kan., having previously crossed paths with Keck at the big annual Texsom wine event in Dallas, of which Keck is hugely supportive. As soon as Toon learned about the openings created by the Riccios’ departure, he began to pack his stuff.
“He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting,” Toon said. “I’m very fortunate to be able to call him my friend and mentor and now Master Sommelier. You will not find a kinder, more generous person if you search the rest of your life.”
Asked for her reaction to Keck’s ascension to MS, Thomas became emotional.
“Oh, my God,” she said, “I think I’m going to cry. I’m incredibly proud of David because of how hard he has worked for this. I’ve seen him make so much progress over the last year or so. For me personally, I have learned more in one year working with David than in my five previous years in the business.”
Riccio acknowledged his pending departure from Camerata “was bittersweet … I’m a little jealous of all the great experiences they’re going to have now that David is an MS.”
Keck also experienced major mixed emotions when he got the good news. Four of his best friends, guys he has spent countless hours studying with, didn’t make the grade in Aspen. It’s back to the drawing board for Bill Elsey, Steven McDonald and Brandon Kerne of Pappas Bros. restaurants and for Ben Roberts of Republic National Distributing Co.
“I know what that feels like to have to start over,” Keck said. “It’s really tough. But nothing’s going to change. We’ll keep working on this together. They’ll get there.”
How did he and his wife, Sarah, celebrate? In appropriate fashion, with a Dhondt Rosé, 2006 Dom Perignon and a bottle of the 1990 Château Latour that one of his new MS colleagues had reserved for the occasion, certain that Keck would prevail. That grand gesture pretty much summed up for him what Keck calls “this unbelievable sense of community in the wine world.”