Lauren Delgado: An advanced sommelier certification.
For the past five years, wine has been at the forefront of Melissa McAvoy’s life.
She studied wine regions, memorizing information as detailed as the type of soil in each; opened the Swirlery wine bar in South Downtown Orlando with her partner, Damian Roman; and tasted too many wines to count.
All that hard work paid off: McAvoy, 41, recently received her advanced sommelier certification with the court of master sommeliers. Only 20 of the 69 applicants passed the test — and McAvoy was the only one from Florida to achieve this distinction.
“Just really believing in myself and seeing it to the end helped,” she said.
The exam requires candidates to describe and identify six wines; take a test that can ask anything from the aging requirements for a wine to the type of grapes in a wine region; and show their salesmanship and knowledge in a makeshift restaurant environment by answering questions and discussing wines while serving.
McAvoy got the “bug,” as she called it, while studying wine in an introductory sommelier class to fulfill a job requirement. She has been working in the hospitality industry since she was a 14-year-old busgirl at a French eatery.
Instead of intimidating her, the endless information on wine, particularly wine regions, appealed to her. She learns something new every day — and the information is everchanging. You can never know it all — but that doesn’t stop her from trying.
“It’s such an abyss,” McAvoy said.
In 2014, she passed the first exam to become a certified sommelier. As she prepared for the next challenge, the advanced test, McAvoy soon realized she needed a “tribe” around her.
She found local mentors as well as a weekly tasting group that shares the fun (and expense) of tasting six wines.
“The Orlando sommelier community is great,” McAvoy said. “You end up knowing so many people. You become connected.”
She mapped out her year with the 400-page “The World Atlas of Wine” by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson, spending three hours a day on each wine region.
The test doesn’t just require knowledge of wines, however. Sommeliers need to know beer, cocktails and sake as well.
McAvoy is now studying for the pinnacle exam: the Master Sommelier diploma. She decided that a small break was in order, however.
Making time for studying during a six-day workweek is hard, but necessary, McAvoy sad.
“It’s difficult to say ‘No, this is my time,’ ” she said.