What the wine world expects from sommeliers: views from the outside
The third instalment in our series on the Best Sommelier of the World. After the history of the competition and our look back at the Lisbon final, we asked two journalists, Alice Feiring and Antoine Gerbelle, what they expect from sommeliers and from a competition that represents them. Their answers converge on one point: sommeliers have everything to gain by staying close to real customers.
In “How competitions reshaped the sommelier’s profession”, we told how a competition helped restore prestige to a profession. In “Lisbon 2026: what the Best Sommelier of the World tasks say about the profession”, we detailed the tasks of the 2026 final. And in “The sommelier, an asset for a wine and restaurant world in flux”, we explored with sommeliers everything the profession has to offer.
What remains is to look at the profession from the outside. What do those who write about wine, who taste, who compare, and who frequent fine dining rooms as well as small bistros see from where they stand? We put our questions to two journalists with very different backgrounds.
Alice Feiring is an American journalist and author specialising in natural wines. Antoine Gerbelle is a journalist and the founder of Tellement soif. He discovered wine, he says, thanks to sommeliers he has been rubbing shoulders with since the late 1980s, and he follows the evolution of the profession closely.
Today’s sommelier: what really matters
A good sommelier is, first and foremost, someone who knows and who shares
For Alice Feiring, it is someone who knows the list, knows the producers and goes to visit them. Someone who can connect with guests, understand their needs, and whose service goes unnoticed. “Someone who can bring me joy, who can introduce me to wines I didn’t know I needed.”
Antoine Gerbelle agrees, pointing out that this is above all a people-facing job: that of a wine go-between. He also notes that sommeliers have diversified enormously: they write, they speak in the media, some even have their own media outlets. He welcomes this evolution, with a nuance: the “celebrification” of sommellerie is not bad in itself; it is the path taken to get there that may raise questions.
A wine list that serves the restaurant, and the guest
Alice Feiring points out that a restaurant’s financial success has long rested on the shoulders of its wine list, and she would like this to be better recognised. She does not hide her fears for the future: the profession will have to fight to be taken seriously, because “most people don’t care about wine”. She also regrets that sommeliers today are expected to be beverage directors, while acknowledging that any very good sommelier will want to oversee the other drinks as well anyway.
The two journalists agree on the question of price. For Alice Feiring, since the pandemic, “wine prices have become prohibitive”, and unless a solution is found, wine will become the preserve of the wealthy.
Antoine Gerbelle turns this into a very concrete idea: “A great list is when you have bottles priced like your menu.” He sees establishments where the lunch menu costs €35 and where the list offers only bottles at €40, €50 or €60. He argues for lunch wines and easy-drinking wines, bought between €6 and €9 and offered at around €25 with a more reasonable mark-up, a coefficient of about 3. He is convinced people would drink more of them, and that a bottle at that price, even unfinished, is no tragedy. The €12 glass, in his view, has reached its limits: faced with it, some guests hesitate between a bottle and a beer.
He understands the economic reality of restaurateurs, caught between rising costs and falling turnover. But he regrets that they stick with the status quo: “the same bottles, and multiplied coefficients”. His idea: try it for six months, with one case of each wine, and see what happens. “I’m not a declinist at all,” he insists: wine is going through a downturn after a very long period of growth, and adaptation starts with the prescribers, in other words with sommeliers themselves.
Young sommeliers: a social ladder worth preserving
Antoine Gerbelle is concerned about the situation of many young sommeliers. He meets them at press lunches, where they try to make a name for themselves by also doing a bit of journalism: making a living from sommellerie alone is difficult, for lack of places to employ them. He sees shortcomings in working conditions, training and recognition, and believes too many restaurateurs fail to grasp the added value a sommelier can bring. For him, sommellerie remains “a social ladder”: young people who started hotel school at fourteen have become, through talent and hard work, leading figures in the profession.
What the competition could show more of
The image the competition projects
Alice Feiring observes that the competition further reinforces the image of the stuffy sommelier who supposedly exists only in the world of three-star restaurants. The situations staged are, in her view, far removed from real people drinking real wines. But she also sees these competitions as a great opportunity to show that a sommelier is much more than a “wine waiter” or a bottle opener.
Antoine Gerbelle acknowledges the emulation and sporting side of these competitions, and the efforts made on the staging. But he takes the point of view of the wine lover who doesn’t read books about wine: watching the stage, they may come away thinking that you need to be able to guess the vintage by smell to be “good”, which, he says, distorts the image of both the sommelier and wine, and may even put people off discovery.
What would be assessed
For Alice Feiring, blind tasting remains relevant: it does not make a great sommelier, but it is a skill. What matters to her is understanding what is in the wine, far more than naming the grape, the region and the vintage, which she likens to “a sleight of hand (and luck)”: the fruit, the tannin, the acidity, botrytis, the effect of wood, clay or stainless steel, the coolness of the climate and of the vintage. This is what Pascaline Lepeltier managed to do on stage, identifying botrytis and other details of the wine, which seems far more important to her than naming a grape variety.
Her very concrete suggestions:
- Vary the settings of the tasks: a casual wine bar, a bistro, a fine dining restaurant, to see whether the sommelier can adapt their service.
- Open up to natural wines: “not including them is ignorant”, she says, given their influence on today’s consumption. She also suggests questions on farming, yeasts, pied de cuve and inoculation.
- Test instinct and emotional intelligence: for example, a “guest” who doesn’t like the wine offered, another who says it is corked when it isn’t, or another who has “no idea what they want”, which, she reckons, happens nine times out of ten.
- Keep the technical skills: decanting, a difficult cork, sediment, service.
A more open jury and audience
Antoine Gerbelle, for his part, looks at the make-up of the jury. Today, sommeliers judge sommeliers, which, in his opinion, can give an impression of insularity. His idea: a jury in which sommeliers would make up no more than a third, alongside restaurateurs, wine lovers and outside profiles, with rotating members. He also imagines wine lovers drawn by lot asking “ordinary” people’s questions on stage, to rebuild the connection with consumers.
Does a great competition sommelier make a good restaurant sommelier?
Alice Feiring answers in one word: “No.” As for what the competition should be, she prefers to remain discreet: it is not for her to say, even if she can imagine a better one.
The title and the people
For her, it is the person who has influence, not the medal. Gérard Basset was already famous and influential before he won. Others will be known for their victory, but not for their impact. “Pascaline will be known for her impact. It would be a shame if she were only known for her medal.”
Antoine Gerbelle, for his part, finds it rather positive that the new world champion, Nikolai Haram Svorte, does not work on the restaurant floor: it shows that you can do a great many things with these skills.
What these views have in common
Two journalists, two stories, and yet four recurring themes:
- Stay close to real customers. Whether on stage or on the list, they expect a sommelier who can adapt to every setting and every audience, not just to fine dining.
- Accessible wine. Price is the most recurring topic: a €35 menu should be able to come with a bottle at a similar price.
- Recognise the economic role of the wine list and train sommeliers capable of managing it.
- Open up the competition, through the choice of tasks, wines, jury and audience, so that it reflects the full scope of the profession.