I had reason to be scared of writing the Level 1 exam leading
to the 4th level and pinnacle level of Master Sommelier qualification
with the Court of Master Sommeliers. The
two days of review before the exam were grueling: 8 to 6pm of one power point after another,
one country after another, flipping from old world to new world, districts,
zones, individual vineyards, varietals international and indigenous, wine
controls, labeling, geography, soil and blind taste tests all followed by
studying until 11pm and up at 3am for more review. If I hadn’t prepared for 3 weeks prior to
this, I don’t think I would have stuck it out past day one. But I passed the first exam, and with a grade
over 70%, I was invited to attempt the second level test. I knew in my heart of hearts that I was not
prepared but buoyed by my initial success, I went for it and did not pass the
second level exam.
Although I am a Certified sommelier in Italy, I wanted to
know more about International wines. I
couldn’t have picked a more rigorous course of study: the Court of Master Sommelier
based in Torquay, England. It seems that
since the Brits don’t have a wine culture of their own, they have taken it upon
themselves to maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of everybody else’s
wines. It didn’t take long for me to
realize that I was in a different league.
When you step out of your comfort zone, you
learn a lot about yourself. This
experience ended up being a bit of a revelation for me.
My first epiphany was that I learned that I do not want to work as
a restaurant sommelier. I realized that
they go to work at about the time that I start looking longingly at my pajamas
and continue ‘til the wee hours of the morning.
I know that I would not be able to maintain that schedule for very long. But, that does not imply that I don’t want to
continue with my studies. I am as
determined as ever to continue with my studies and master this thing called
wine, albeit hopefully by a different route.
People were curious as to why I was there. One person told me I looked too scholarly to
be in the “sommelier business”. Perhaps
they were just being kind and “scholarly” was their euphemism for “old”. I did feel a little out of place, but enjoyed
listening to these young people banter about their work, and it caused me to
answer a really important question. Why am I doing what I am doing? It wasn’t easy to answer that right off, and
I think I’m still working my way through it.
In order to come up with an answer to that question I had to go back to
how I got here.
Seven years ago, I was a new vice-principal living
in Halifax, Nova Scotia with 3 sons and a husband. We had lived in Halifax for 10 years. My husband had been in the military and we
were used to moving, but it was nice to finally start putting down some
roots. For Christmas 2003 I bought my
husband a book called “The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey”
This is the true story of a family from Ottawa, Canada with
3 boys about the same age as our boys were at the time, who sold their home, bought a sailboat,
left their jobs behind and sailed around the world with their family for 4
years : 65,000 kilometers in 1,145
days. The book chronicles all that they
did to prepare for the voyage (they were not sailors), their reasons, and the
details of the trip. I longed for that
sort of sustained time with my family.
Up until then, being together as a family seemed to come in small spurts
of time, interrupted by phone calls, sports, lessons, school, work and
friends. Family vacations had allowed us
a short period of time together floating in our bubble, undisturbed by our
everyday routines. To make a 7 year
story short, we got what we wished for: our
adventure brought us to Japan at the foot of Mount Fuji for 2 years and then to
Naples, Italy at the foot of Vesuvius.
We managed to give our family the adventure we were looking for, and
then suddenly, our 3 sons were walking out the door seeking fortunes and
adventures of their own. You’ve heard
this part of the story before: our
entire married life had revolved around our children and suddenly they were
gone.
Tired of feeling sad and lonely, my husband and I were not
satisfied to let the adventure end and we decided to do something useful with
the extra hours in the day that you find yourself with in an empty nest. We had to find comfort in our lives. We had
to find something other than the television at the end of the day. We were not in crisis mode for long before we
came up with a plan. We spelled out how
we wanted to live an active life, how we would do it, and what we were going to
do to achieve it. We were faced over and
over with the thought of failure, of family and friends laughing at our “mid-life
decisions”. The decisions that we made
have taken us in a direction that we would never have imagined 7 years
ago. We thought and we planned out how
we wanted to live for the next part of our life. We were faced with all kinds of fears, but we
did exactly that, we faced them and we got busy. My husband signed up for a certificate course
in winemaking and viticulture with UC Davis, and I signed up to be a sommelier
and we bought a vineyard, the unfolding of which is all chronicled right here
on this blog. So to answer the question
“why”? What started out as an escape has
become a passion. When you begin to
learn something in part 2 of your life, you learn it with zeal. I am prepared to master it one hour at a time
even if it takes me 10,000 hours.
I have, after 4 years of study become confident enough to say
the following: I am a grape grower and
my grapes tell a story and I know how to read that story of weather and soil,
of sun and rain. I can foretell harvest
dates. I know how to winter prune, and
green prune and I know why and when to do it.
I know about bugs. I tend my vines
and care for them with the attention that I afforded my children and my
students. I am a sommelier and I not
only know what makes good wine, I am able to taste it and describe it to you
using all of my senses. I may have
started out unsure, but I know what I know, and I know how to teach you what I
know. I know where I’m going and I know
why: because I want to. 
