Where do you stand on screw cap versus cork?
If the winemaker feels his wine is better kept under cap than cork then I’ll go with that. For me it’s about the wine. If it tastes good then I don’t care what the stopper is. What I would say is that one in ten cork-stopped bottles go off. Now you wouldn’t accept that with beer so why have we taken so long to address this issue with wine? What this debate has done is finally spurred the cork producers to improve their methods and invent treatments to make corks more reliable.
So how does one become ‘Sommelier of the year’?
There’s an annual competition to find the best sommelier in the country. There are several different stages which whittle entrants down from over 100 at the regional level, down to 15 for the final. The final’s where the real hard graft starts. There was a morning of questions based on wines, spirits, beers and waters, followed by a blind tasting of five wines. The final test before lunch looks at your knowledge of winemakers, merchant and producers, matching drinks to food, glassware and decanting. By afternoon there are only three contestants left. We were all on stage in front of our peers and having to role-play difficult situations with customers, empty a magnum of Champagne into 16 perfect flutes without revisiting a single one, and finally, another round of blind tasting. It was pretty nerve-racking.
So will you be defending your crown next year?
Unfortunately, once you’ve won it you can’t enter again. It was my third year of competition though, so I’ve had a good run and I’ll definitely be back helping out.
How did you get started?
When I was at school, I had a part-time job at a hotel in Belfast which got me interested enough to take a hotel and catering management degree. Then I came to London in ‘97 and got a job as a Commis Sommelier at the Capital Hotel. It immediately felt right and I learnt a lot very quickly. The sommelier himself was of the ‘old school’ and I quickly discovered that I was always in the wrong!
Isn’t the role fairly ‘old school’ by its very nature?
Actually, it’s a constantly evolving profession. In the UK right now we have some of the best sommeliers in the world and they are always pushing things. The world is a smaller place today so there’s more variety and freedom in choices of wine. You can try things and the customers are adventurous and want to try more things.
Have You worked in France?
Yes, I worked in a chateau in Bordeaux for about six months. It really helped with my understanding of the whole wine-making process. You can study wine-making from afar, but until you’re actually in the field seeing the grapes develop or cleaning the inside of a barrel you’re not going to really understand what goes into a wine.
What chance Ireland ever has a good grape?
Ha! There are one or two grapes in south west Cork but I can’t see them producing any wine of note. England on the other hand is already doing well and could get an even more solid crop if the weather warms slightly. Actually Tom’s Place (Tom Aikens’ upmarket fish and chips restaurant in SW3) has a completely English wine list.
How did you become sommelier at Tom Aikens?
I first met Tom at the Capital Hotel. We stayed in touch and when he was setting up his restaurant he asked me if I wanted to put together a wine list. I jumped at the chance – you don’t often get a chance to compile a list for a restaurant of this quality. We opened with 500 bins and the list’s been constantly evolving since.
Can you enjoy going to other restaurants?
Absolutely. Living in Battersea there’s a lot of great places to choose from and as people get more demanding restaurants and pubs can’t get away with serving ‘Vin de Pays de Plonk’. Ransom’s Dock has a wonderful wine list, as does The Grapevine on Battersea High Street, The Fox and Hounds on Latchmere Road and The Lighthouse on Battersea Park Road.