Wine world has a harassment problem
Women decry sexual misconduct at hands of master sommeliers in U.S.
Master sommelier is the most prestigious title in American wine, and those who earn it instantly join the ranks of the highest-paid and most influential members of the profession.
Only 155 people have achieved the honour since the 1997 founding of the Americas chapter of the Court of Master Sommeliers, the examining body that confers the title on those who survive its gruelling, years-long qualification process. Of those, 131 are men.
The court and its separate educational spinoff, GuildSomm, have seen a flood of new candidates since 2012, when the documentary “Somm” chronicled the intensive training process for the final exam. More than 12,000 people are now members of the community, many of them young women hoping to avoid the sexist hazing that is notorious in the wine industry by joining the court’s program of mentorship and education.
What they have encountered is very different. Twenty-one women told The New York Times that they have been sexually harassed, manipulated or assaulted by male master sommeliers. They and other current and former members of the court say the abuse is a continuing problem of which its leadership has long been aware.
One master sommelier, according to these accounts, propositioned at least 15 candidates, sometimes promising professional favours in return for sex. Another shut the door to a classroom full of students in the face of a woman who had refused his advances.
One student said a master sommelier in Texas asked her for a pair of her underwear “to snuggle with.” Several said the slur “sommsucker” is used for women who have relationships with members of the court. And one woman said she was raped by a prominent master sommelier in New York City after meeting him at a wine event.
“Sexual aggression is a constant for women somms. We can’t escape it, so we learn to live with it,” said Madeleine Thompson, 28, a wine director in Dallas who said she opted out of the court’s qualification process because of harassment by several master sommeliers. “It’s a compromise we shouldn’t have to make.”
In a written response to questions from the Times, the court said it expected members “to uphold the highest standards of professional conduct and integrity at all times.” It has “investigated every accusation of such conduct that has been brought to their attention” and imposed multiple disciplinary sanctions.
Last month, the group established a hotline for anonymous reporting of ethical violations, including sexual misconduct. Previously, there was no mechanism for doing so other than a direct approach to the board — a body that has often included the men accused.
The Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas, a non-profit headquartered in Napa, Calif., is part of an international network of affiliated courts, all swathed in pomp and privilege. Master sommeliers show up tableside at top restaurants; they act as paid ambassadors for global brands like Krug and Moet Hennessy, consultants for top hotel chains, guides on luxury cruises and senior executives at the biggest wine distributors.
Earning the red-and-gold lapel pin that denotes a master sommelier brings a lifelong payoff. Working their way up through four levels, from introductory to master sommelier, candidates pay for classes, tastings and testing — but then command high fees. In an internal 2017 survey, master sommeliers reported a median annual income of $164,000 and a median consulting rate of $1,000 per day.
Grading of the final test is cloaked in secrecy, determined by examiners drawn from the senior ranks of master sommeliers. Letters of recommendation, access to expensive wines for tasting practice and educational trips to wine regions are also needed to pass — and are all in the hands of these senior masters who are, overwhelmingly, older white men.
This dynamic has turned a system that should provide mentorship and equal opportunity to women into a bastion of sexual harassment and coercion.
“Among certain men, there’s no attempt to hide it and no shame in it,” said Jonathan Ross, 37, who has been a master sommelier since 2017. “It’s like something from another era.”
Singled out
Geoff Kruth, 45, has long been one of the court’s leading educators — the founder and president of GuildSomm, a former board member, and featured as an authority in “Somm” and its sequels. Eleven women told the Times they had experienced sexual misconduct by Kruth; through a lawyer, he denied any impropriety. Last week, he resigned his position at GuildSomm “to remove the Guild from any controversy.”
Jane Lopes, 35, a wine importer in New York, said Kruth suddenly slid his fingers inside her underpants and kissed her breast as they said good night after a 2013 dinner. Courtney Schiessl, 30, said when she assisted Kruth at a 2013 event in Chicago, he asked her out for cocktails, inquired which of the bartenders she would choose for sex, then insisted the taxi driver skip her hotel and take them both to his — where she rejected his advances.
Ivy Anderson, a sommelier in Charleston, S.C., was 22 and had just taken Kruth’s Champagne class when he contacted her, saying he noticed that she had bought a ticket to GuildSomm’s 2016 holiday party in New York.
He invited her to a dinner at a glamorous restaurant, Piora, the workplace of one of her heroes: Victoria James, the restaurant’s wine director and — as the youngest person to become a certified sommelier, at age 21 — a celebrity to young candidates. He also invited her, she said, to stay in a Manhattan hotel with him and other court members.
Thrilled to be singled out, she accepted, assuming she would be crashing on a sofa somewhere. But at the hotel, Anderson was taken aback to find only one room with one bed. On the way to dinner, she said, Kruth told her that he and his wife had an open relationship, that he had had a “passionate” affair with James, and that sex between master sommeliers and candidates was common. (The court’s nonfraternization policy doesn’t prohibit that, as long as it’s disclosed to the board and doesn’t appear to pose conflicts of interest.)
“I can’t reject this person,” she remembered thinking. “It’s freezing cold, I know no one in New York, and he’s going to throw me out in the street.” Back in his hotel room, she said, she felt that going along when he initiated sex was her only option.
Anderson said she went home shaken and disgusted, but convinced that she had done what was expected of women in her profession. “I guess this is how you get to be the next Victoria James,” she thought.
James, 29, now a partner and beverage director at Cote, in Manhattan, said she believed the same thing about her role models when she was working her way up. “It breaks my heart that Ivy believed it,” she said.
In 2014, James won a place on a tasting trip to Switzerland led by Kruth. She had been warned not to be alone with him, she said, but he seemed respectful during pretrip text exchanges.
On the trip, she said, he repeatedly angled to get her away from the group and into her hotel room. Eventually, they had sex. “I thought it would appease him and he would go away,” she said. She was angry, she said, but not surprised.
“The sad thing is that you get used to being beholden to men in this industry,” James said. “I felt like I didn’t have a choice.”
About a year later, she said, Kruth offered to write a recommendation letter she needed to proceed to the next exam if she would meet him for sex at a court event in Austin, Texas. She did. “I got off the waiting list the next day,” she said. “I felt dirty and terrible, and that was the end of the court for me.”
Through a lawyer, Kruth said he believed that all the sexual encounters the women described were consensual and that many of the women remained on good terms with him; he was invited to James’ and Lopes’ weddings. He also said he did not give special treatment to women with whom he had sexual contact.
A spokesperson for the court said that the board issued a “letter of warning” to Kruth in 2017 after investigating two formal complaints about sexual misconduct and that he is barred from court programming and upper-level examinations.
Aclimate of fear
Kruth is not the only high-ranking master sommelier accused of sexually inappropriate behaviour by multiple women.
Robert Bath, a professor of wine at the Culinary Institute of America, is a longtime board member and former vice chair. He was suspended from the court from 2007 to 2009 because of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, the court’s spokesperson confirmed.
Bath, 65, acknowledged the suspension, writing in an email, “I have been a member of the Court of Master Sommeliers since 1993 and remain in good standing with the Court to this day.”
Liz Dowty Mitchell, 37, a sommelier in New Orleans, said that when she was a candidate in 2011, her mentor, Matthew Citriglia — a board member from 2005 to 2017 — pursued her repeatedly with sexual invitations, which she declined. “He said that master-candidate relationships were fine, that it happened all the time,” she said.
Alexandra Fox said Citriglia messaged her out of the blue in 2011, saying he wanted to talk about her next steps toward becoming a master and that he was coming to Tampa, Fla., where she lived, for a group dinner for wine professionals. No one else showed up for the dinner, she said, and he made a pass at her on the way home, which she rejected.
Citriglia apologized repeatedly, Fox said, and she agreed to take a class he was teaching a few weeks later in Cleveland. One night, she slept with a fellow student; when Citriglia found out the next morning, he closed the classroom door in her face as the class watched. Months later, concerned that he might be an examiner on future exams, she reached out to clear the air; he never responded, she said. “I never did anything further toward certification,” said Fox, 51.
In an email to the Times, Citriglia, 55, wrote, “I do not agree with the accusations levied by Ms. Fox and Ms. Dowty.”
Kate Ham kept quiet. In 2018, she was working at Verve, in Manhattan, when the staff went to a party at a wine bar that included several master sommeliers. She said she was star-struck, drank more wine than usual and agreed to have a cocktail at another bar with a master sommelier she’d been chatting with.
The next thing she said she remembers is waking up in a strange bed, fighting back as he raped her. She left, she said, knowing that she could never confront or report him because of his high stature in the wine world. (She did not name him for this article.) Ham, 30, said she felt increasingly unsafe in New York, where she often saw her attacker at work events, and soon moved home to Nashville, Tenn., where she started her own business as a private wine consultant. She is no longer working toward a sommelier title. “I have no interest in the court now,” she said. “I have no desire to be tested and judged by these people.”
Areckoning
For all of the court’s secrecy, recent crises have begun exposing its workings to public view.
On June 22, following the killing of George Floyd, the board announced a new committee on diversity and inclusion. The court’s posts on social media immediately began to showcase women and people of colour in the organization. That did not sit well with Mitchell, who then decided to come forward about sexual misconduct in the court.
“They do not get to use us as PR when we have been subjected to so much misogyny, put up with so many unwanted touches and stares and invitations to get where we are,” she said.