American sommeliers entering twilight era
Once a must for serious restaurants, job now a luxury in post-pandemic economy
Restaurants are bustling and dining rooms are buzzing. If you want a reservation at the newest places, you are out of luck unless you know somebody.
On the surface, it seems that restaurants have safely emerged from the despairing depths of the pandemic and the throbbing hangover that followed.
Yet one key element that seemed essential in any serious restaurant before 2020 is often missing: the sommelier.
Wine is still poured at many tables. But the dedicated wine professional responsible for selecting and procuring bottles, assembling an intriguing list, training the staff, assessing a table and telling stories that turn otherwise unknown bottles into delicious adventures — those people are rarely strolling the dining room.
For many restaurants, the sommelier is now a luxury, nice to have but expendable in the blunt calculations of the post-pandemic restaurant model. The highest-end restaurants seem unaffected — diners at Le Bernardin in New York will still be greeted by a smiling Aldo Sohm and his team of ace sommeliers in their black aprons with silver tastevins.
But underneath dining’s stratospheric level, many serious, wine-oriented restaurants are doing without. Instead, those positions once dedicated to wine are now often hybrids with servers, bartenders or managers handling wine in addition to other duties.
Sometimes consultants manage lists and train servers to at least have a perfunctory idea of what they are now tasked with selling. The training job might even be farmed out to distributors who sell wine to restaurants. As a result, many wine lists seem not only more expensive but shorter, simpler and less inventive.
“Not so many wine lists are curated, and wine-bythe-glass lists have less precision,” said Étienne Guérin, retail manager at Sotheby’s Wine on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Cedric Nicaise, a sommelier who is now an owner of the Noortwyck in New York, said wine lists are less creative and more “genericlooking.”
What’s made the sommelier expendable? The pandemic changed the economics of the restaurant business. Most obvious was a severe labor shortage. Many restaurant professionals, in kitchens and in dining rooms, chose not to return, having found alternatives to the grueling hours and lack of benefits in restaurant work. Restaurants had to attract workers by raising wages. In many parts of the country, minimum wages rose, too, further increasing costs. Some restaurants even sold off part or all of their wine inventory.
In addition, supply-chain issues and inflation raised the prices of everything from real estate to ingredients, goods and equipment. And wine itself has risen in price, beginning with the tariffs former President Donald Trump imposed on certain European foods and drinks in 2019. The tariffs were removed by President Joe Biden, but prices have continued to rise. The cost of real estate has raised the price of wine storage, and many restaurants have cut back on inventory.
While wine consumption has leveled off in the United States and other
parts of the world, the fact that wine is enjoyed globally rather than in just a few countries means demand for good wine remains strong.
“There’s been a new awareness on the part of winemakers of what wine is worth, and you’ve seen price escalation across the board,” Nicaise said. “A dedicated sommelier is a luxury you don’t always need.”
For nearly 40 years, the trajectory of the American sommelier pointed to the sky. Before the early 1980s, only formal French restaurants offered such a thing as a sommelier. In that hard-drinking era, sommeliers were considered snobbish types who cajoled diners into overspending.
But pioneering American sommeliers like Kevin Zraly, Daniel Johnnes and Larry Stone presented a friendlier face. Diners came not only to trust their expertise but to rely on them to introduce new and
different wines.
The presence of sommeliers became more common, even typical in the 1990s. By the early 2000s, restaurants like Veritas and Cru in New York were opening, and wine was so much the focus that diners knew the names of the sommeliers there, if not the chefs.
The 2008 financial meltdown was a gut-punch for the food and wine industries. But they recovered, and the 2010s turned into a heyday for sommeliers. Social media won them recognition and movies like the “Somm” series, with its reality-show focus on passionate young wine lovers competing to earn certification from the rigorous Court of Master Sommeliers, made them into celebrities. They even became a flashpoint in wine culture wars as sommeliers were praised, or blamed, for championing little-known grapes and styles.
But then came the pandemic and all the difficulties that trailed in its wake.
“The pandemic was a tipping point,” said Eduardo Porto Carreiro, vice president for beverages at Rocket Farm Restaurants in Atlanta, which operates 23 restaurants in the Southeast. “It was taken for granted in many restaurants that there would be a dedicated wine person and thoughtful lists. Now, it’s a cherry on top.”
Porto Carreiro says hospitality requires more effort than efficient service. Since the pandemic, many restaurants simply don’t have the staff or time to engage in the work that goes into warm hospitality. They settle for service and it’s not necessarily efficient. Updating wine lists often falls by the wayside as managers juggle other tasks.
“Sommeliers came under the category of hospitality rather than service,” he
said. “It became a luxury.”
June Rodil, a master sommelier who owns June’s All Day, a restaurant in Austin, Texas, and is CEO of Goodnight Hospitality, which operates four restaurants in Houston, sees shortsightedness on the part of sommeliers and restaurateurs.
“Ten to 15 years ago, you could be focused on wine and not see the periphery or the bottom line,” she said. “Now you have to be multifaceted. Nobody who has a job does 100% of what they want to do 100% of the time. The ‘Somm’ films made people think it was a sacred job.”
Restaurant operators, she said, were narrowminded in thinking sommeliers should be the first position to go. Wine and beverages have always contributed strongly to a restaurant’s prestige and bottom line. “They need to understand what that position can actually bring,” Rodil said.