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CAMERON DOUGLAS: Well, good morning everybody.
Somewhere at the top of every mountain around the world, you
might find a New Zealander.
When I say New Zealander or mountain, I mean at the top of
their career, the position they might have in the world.
Just by way of example, you may have heard of Sir Edmund
Hillary, a New Zealander who conquered Mount Everest. You
may have heard of the All Blacks.
They play rugby every now and again.
Sir Peter Blake who took the America's Cup
away from you, once.
And Kiri Te Kanawa, an opera singer, et cetera.
So in many parts of the world, you find New Zealanders that
aren't in New Zealand.
They're around the world climbing their own Everest,
they're creating their own opera, et cetera.
So I don't know whether it's because we're an island nation
and the bottom of the South Pacific.
Whether we are just adventurers at heart, or like
to travel--
I think we're all of those things.
I've conquered my Everest, finally, and it took me a long
time to get there.
So I thought I'd start today just by sort of talking about
the words Master Sommelier.
First of all, the word sommelier, where
does it come from?
It's actually Italian in origin.
Pronunciation-wise it's Latin-based.
It's almost like [? saumaglier ?].
And the French borrowed it, stole it, whatever you like,
it's a French proficient, it really does mean wine server
as a rule/concept.
It's grown in terms of profession in the hospitality
industry since the early 20th century.
Pronunciation of the word sommelier, and this is where
you get involved right from outset.
First of all, what not to say.
Somalia.
All right?
Now, that's a small nation somewhere in Africa, and be
sure you don't ask for the Somalia in a restaurant.
The second word not to say or the second way not to
pronounce it is smellia, because a Master Sommelier is
the smelliest one of all.
But you don't say smellia.
The way to say it is sommelier.
If you can say that word sew, and you can say that word
yeah, and you hold the l, so you go sommelier.
Can you do that?
Sommelier.
OK.
In New Zealand we might say Sommelier, and that's fine.
But I like to say it the American way, sommelier.
Just hold the l a little bit is all you need to do.
Now, the word master, where does that come from?
Well it's somebody who's achieved a pinnacle, the top
end of their profession.
How do they earn that title?
Well here's an example of what a master should be able to do.
A customer walks into a restaurant and says I'd like
something to drink.
I don't like wine.
I don't want to drink champagne.
I don't want a spirit.
I don't want a beer, and I don't want a cocktail.
What can you sell me?
So if you think about that for a second, what on Earth would
that customer have?
So a master, or somebody with the right credentials, if you
like, would then turn around and say, well, I can offer you
an aperitif from France.
A Pineau des Charentes, which is a fortified wine that's
flavored with herbs and spices.
Or you might suggest a Cinzano from Italy.
Or you might suggest a Pimm's from the UK.
Or you might suggest a local beverage from the area in
which you work.
So there are answers to those questions.
The challenge, of course, is being the person who can
provide that instantaneous answer.
Second scenario.
The customer orders fish and fries.
Excuse my accent, it's fish not fische.
It's fish and fries, or as we say in New Zealand, chips,
fish and chips.
And the customer says, well, I don't want white wine, and I
don't want red wine, and I don't like beer.
What can I have with that particular dish?
The answer is sherry, dry sherry from Spain, because a
lot of people like to put lemon juice on their fish,
salt, or vinegar, and sherry goes with all of those
condiments on the fish.
So that's having somebody come up with those answers.
But a master sommelier must also be somebody who can
identify and source quality wine, get the right purchase
price, understand the storage capacities, if you like, or
the sellerability of a wine.
Somebody who has the ability to train other staff.
Somebody who has the ability for continued daily wine and
food pairing for specials of the day-- what's
that going to go with?
Somebody who is creative behind the bar, and so on and
so on and so on.
So it's every aspect of front of house operations, including
serving a table as a waiter from time to time that's all
encompassed in the role.
But at the end of the day, the overriding word is
hospitality, and it's the relationship between the
customer, customers, and the person serving them.
So as Jesse indicated before, it's a little unusual for me
to address you, unless you're all sitting
down about have dinner--
that would be a little bit different.
So I think sourcing and buying wine is a challenge.
Leaning to become a taster, a wine taster, and I might sort
of talk about that for a little moment and give you a
little bit of history into where I
started in this industry.
I won't bore you with my mum did this and my father did
that kind of thing, but it does help to give you the
little bit of a background anyway.
What I forgot to say was that the Master Sommelier helps
create the ultimate dining experience.
And if I was serving you a $5 glass of wine, I would want to
give you $100 service by doing so.
If I was serving you $100 glass of wine, I'd want to
give you $200 worth of service attached to that.
Because I don't want you walking out of my dining room
dissatisfied with the product that I gave you.
And I would rather let you take a mouthful of 20
different wines to help you find that right combination or
ask you 100 questions to get the right idea of what you're
looking for in a wine, than send you away dissatisfied.
That makes me happy to too.
So yes, New Zealand born and raised.
One of the common questions that I'd perhaps like to
address as well is that we do have other masters in this
world called Masters of Wine, and I'm a Master Sommelier.
What is the difference, what is the connection?
So a Master of Wine is somebody who are the
commentators on the industry.
They write the textbooks.
They taste a lot of wine and a lot of fortified wine, and the
Jancis Robinson's of this world, the Robert Parkers of
this world, they are Masters of Wine in a very particular
context, and they're very famous for that, and they're
very good at that.
They spent a lot of years getting their skills
recognized as well.
The sommelier, and not even a master, a sommelier is
somebody who connects the context or the text of
writing, the encyclopedias on wine, the Master of Wine, and
what they have to say, they connect it with the food of a
dining room maybe at a cafe or a fine dining restaurant with
a customer, the atmosphere, the target
audience, et cetera.
So we bring a lot of knowledge, put it in simple
terms, and connect it to the customer and the food and
create dining experiences.
You don't have to be a master to do that.
So where did I start my life?
I left school really early.
I was only 16 when I left school, and I got a job in a
bank, and I survived that for about a year.
It was a very safe job to have. I think in the second
year that I was working for that bank, I started working
for a hotel as well, part-time.
My eyes were opened up wide to this whole different world
called hospitality.
I had fun.
I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
I had fun, my social life exploded.
I found out what night clubs were all about, et cetera.
So I decided very quickly that I would leave the safety of a
bank job and go with adventure in hospitality.
A lot of people say that hospitality ruins your social
life, it just creates a different social life.
That opened my eyes enough to start a
little bit more adventure.
So I decided that at the age of 17, I'd
like to start cooking.
The big challenge I had at that point in time was I
wasn't a trained chef, and I was a vegetarian.
I didn't really become something other than a
vegetarian until I meet my wife.
So cooking meat, chicken, rabbit, et cetera, for people,
and not actually having ate it myself was a huge challenge,
but I got by.
One of the very first cooking jobs I had was in a New York
style cafe in Auckland, New Zealand called Reuben's Cafe,
and we did Reuben sandwiches, et cetera, and I make nachos.
One of the highlights for me, other than being able to cook
in that kitchen and see smiles on people's faces, was being
the first cafe in the country to open 24 hours.
It was a great achievement for us.
The first night we opened 24 hours we had no customers.
The second week we were full from that point and we never
looked back.
Anyhow, so I found that I loved to cook.
So I decided that a little bit of travel might help me, and a
little bit more experience in different restaurants.
So I won a position in a restaurant that was more fine
dining and I started to learn about food and
wine at that point.
So I was all of about 18 years old.
Hospitality in New Zealand is probably a little bit like
hospitality here in the USA where you can often just walk
off the street and get a job.
It doesn't always happen, but it certainly happens in the
New Zealand hospitality industry.
Sadly, redundancy comes along from time to time, and I was
made redundant, and I thought, well, front of house is
something that I could do very, very well.
Actually, it reminds me of a story.
Working for that first hotel, the Hyatt Hotel as a junior
waiter in the banquet department.
It was the very first function on the very first day that I
was working.
It was a wedding for 500 people, and as you can
imagine, they were dressed up to the nines, et cetera.
But the gap between the tables was all of about 10 inches.
So carrying a tray of drinks was difficult to do it this
way, and walk sideways between the tables, and
then deliver it.
It was very difficult, especially with someone like
me who had no training at all.
Anyhow, after about an hour into the service, I though ah,
no, this is easy.
I can do this.
So the tray came up here, and I could negotiate between the
tables quite well.
I had about five pints of beer on this tray, freshly poured,
very cold, and so on and so on.
Anyway, somebody at a table behind me that I didn't see
was talking and just circulating and
they knocked my elbow.
And of course, the tray of drinks went off me and to the
person directly below them, which happened to be a lovely
lady wearing a white dress.
We'll leave it at that.
Anyhow, needless to say, she screamed very, very loudly,
and the room of 500 people went dead silent.
What did I do?
I dropped to my knees and I crawled out because I had no
idea what to do.
None whatsoever.
Anyhow, but teamwork.
The staff came along, they picked her up, they took her
out, they cleaned her up, reset the table, and we
carried on as though nothing had happened.
That was-- oh.
But I realized gosh, I need some skills.
I learned my skills on the job, whereas you can train for
these kind of skills now.
Anyhow, so moving back to front of house, I found myself
very, very comfortable looking after people.
And hospitality, I might say, is something
that you can't learn.
You can teach people how to open a bottle of wine, serve a
plate of food, but you can't teach them hospitality.
It's something that has come from within.
You have to like people first and foremost. And you have to
want to be able to make them happy.
It's called customer service, and we've all had good and bad
customer service.
Anyhow, I found myself in a position in a restaurant
called Papillon.
It was a fine dining restaurant, and I was
fascinated by the owner.
He worked every day.
He would drive around the country in his own spare time,
and he would go around tasting wines and buy those wines,
bring them back to the restaurant.
He'd have a story for every single wine on that wine list.
How he found it, what it tasted like, the foods that it
would go with.
He just created these wonderful dining experiences
simply by telling the people how he lived his life.
So I hooked into this train of thought and I started tasting
wines with this person, and he was actually an
inspiration for me.
So I decided that this is something I
would like to get into.
So I was 19 years old, and found that I loved to serve
and talk about wine.
An aspect of the role of a sommelier that I'll interject
here is it's not just about wine.
It's any beverage you can think of from
anywhere in the world.
So now you can buy a book on mineral waters and how they
might match with food.
That's part of the role that I should absorb.
Once upon a time in the USA and around the world, and
still in parts of the world now, cigar service.
We have to know cigars because who knows when that might come
back in fashion again.
Long time coming in the USA I know.
I've got a spare Cuban cigar out the back, by the way, if
anybody's interested.
So as one thing led to another, after a couple of
years I thought now I can move on.
I found myself in a position or won a position at the
Sheraton Hotel in Oakland.
It was one of only two properties in the country, and
I got the job as the resident sommelier.
I really didn't know what that meant at that time.
What was a sommelier.
To me it was just somebody who did the beverage service.
A customer ordered a gin and tonic, I went and made and
delivered it to them.
But nowadays I'd ask them what kind of gin they liked, and
how much ice they would like, how much tonic, whether it's
on the side, et cetera, and give them the choice of 10
different gins to make that drink.
And the glass that you serve it in makes a huge difference.
A little tumbler is not as good as a Riedel O range.
A stemless gin and tonic is fantastic in that glass.
So I spent five years working for the Sheraton in their fine
dining restaurant, and I was opened up to this wonderful
world of wine where wine companies would phone me up
and say we want to present you our range of wines.
So they'd come in and I'd taste these wines.
After about the first year, I realized that I didn't really
have the tasting palate to really identify the quality
wines, because they all tasted great to me.
They were all good.
So I embarked on a wine training program of my own.
I decided that it would be a good idea to really start
getting some credentials for this.
So I did.
I hooked into a wine program ran by a Master of Wine, and
learned the technique of tasting wine.
So I wanted you to leave here today with some ideas about
tasting wine on your own or next time you dine out, and
remind me to do that, OK?
So I embarked on that.
Luckily, the hotel helped pay for it, and I started to build
a little certificate program in wine tasting of my own.
It helped me immensely because it then exposed me to
understanding more quality aspects of wine and why they
tasted the way they did.
And then, of course, it helped me in my job, especially in a
five star hotel that I could then start to interact with
the customer and the wine, et cetera, and opening, tasting.
Technique's a different thing when it comes to red wine
service in a five star hotel is a lot different from red
wine service in your local license cafe.
The differences are obvious.
So whilst I was now working this new role at the Sheraton
Hotel, suddenly I received a phone call from a friend and
said look, we've got this teaching position going at
Polytechnic.
Would you be prepared to come along and take a look at it?
Because one of my other interests at the time was
computers, which I'm showing one or two of you know
something about.
But it was computers at that time, and I was absolutely
fascinated by it.
Anyhow, I failed the entry exam into learning computer
programming.
So I got a wee teaching job teaching desktop publishing
programs or just application software at Polytech.
A friend of mine was a lecturer in wine at that same
Polytech, and he was on a Master of Wine program.
He said, I've got to go away and do these exams, can you
run my classes for me?
One thing I didn't tell you about my parents, my mother
especially, she was a teacher, and my grandfather was a
teacher, et cetera, and I fell into this teaching role that I
also loved.
So then I was challenged by what am I going to do?
I love teaching.
I love serving wine and beverages.
I'll just do both.
So I taught during the day, worked during the night, and I
was quite happy with it.
My soon to be wife at the time was quite happy
about that as well.
It was career building, and it worked quite well.
So then I had to prove myself in education, and eventually,
it took me eight years also working in hospitality,
chipping away, and I got a degree in education as well.
So I can add those words to my credentials now.
Working for the Sheraton Hotel came to an end after five
years, and I landed a job as the sommelier in another
restaurant, which I absolutely loved and stayed there 14
years, and continued my teaching role.
I left the Polytech and got a full-time teaching job at a
university to which I have still got that job today as a
senior lecturer.
But I run the beverage program there.
Let me fast forward a few years.
About eight years into the my role in this particular
restaurant and doing a little bit of teaching, a very
regular customer came into the restaurant and said Cameron--
actually said to my wife, why doesn't Cameron embark on the
Master Sommelier diploma?
Together, those two people came to me, my wife and this
regular customer, and said why don't I do this, and I said,
oh, it sounds like a good idea.
I got given the name of a gentleman called Evan
Goldstein who is a very famous person within the Court of
Master Sommeliers here in San Francisco.
I started an email dialogue with him, and eventually
convinced the Court of Master Sommeliers to make me come to
America and start on their program.
The problem being, the convincing was that the
program was so popular even back then, that as soon as the
dates were released, the positions would fill up.
I had no chance.
So eventually I convinced them and I came to America and I
did my level one-- it's a four-level program, level one
in Las Vegas at the Bellagio Hotel.
I mean you walk into that place and your eyes are, wow.
I was one of 150 people--
the dress standard is a suit, even at level one.
You walk in looking like a Master
Sommelier for this program.
It's a three-day program, culminating in an exam, and I
sweated those three days you wouldn't believe, because
they're telling you what you need to know for this exam,
and it was stuff--
I didn't know how to pronounce, let alone find the
second wines of Bordeaux growths and things like that.
I didn't know there was a textbook that I
could use, et cetera.
Anyhow, I passed the exam.
Whew.
It's a 90% pass rate at the level one.
It's not that difficult, but unless you actually have an
interest and the passion to begin with,
it can be very difficult.
The one thing that happened to me was at that graduation,
because there's a graduation ceremony at every level.
I walked on stage, I received this tiny little silver pin
that I could then wear as a badge of office, and another
gentleman that is well-known in the sommelier circles
called Friedrich Dame, Fred Dame, a Master Sommelier.
He said, if you want to go further in this program, as
he's shaking my hand, I will help you.
That's all it took.
I walked out of the room, I find my wife and said, I'm
going to be a Master Sommelier.
It was all I needed.
Another thing other than some wine tasting advice I'd like
you to take away with you is one of the philosophies of the
court is to pay it forward.
It's not I've got this title now, kiss the
ring kind of thing.
It's pay it forward.
Anybody that's interested in wine or any beverage at all,
you want to learn more, I'd be thrilled to help you out.
You want to get into the program, let me know, I'll
give you your first 100 questions to
tackle on the theory.
You want to learn to taste wine?
Let's set up a time and we'll just do one wine together.
So I would then have to spend the next six years on this
program working through the levels.
They're all international.
I had to come to the United States to do it because the
program didn't exist in the South Pacific at all.
It does now.
So the next level was the certified.
It didn't exist, but all of you can do
that if you want to.
It means that you can present, open, and pour white wine, red
wines, sparkling wine, you can taste two wines and identify
them blind, and you can answer a bunch of questions about it.
It's very possible for somebody.
But you can walk out of the program at any stage and be
proud of it, even at a level one.
The biggest challenge for me at the advanced level at that
time, which is now level three in the program, is accessing
wines, finding the funds to purchase those wines that
weren't necessarily available in New Zealand at all, and
then secondly, raising the money to get here to sit the
exams. When you've got an $800 a pop exam fee, it's a lot to
add onto a flight,
accommodation, food, et cetera.
So professional development funds at the university helped
me out a little bit, but by and large I had to raise the
money myself, along with my wife.
Advanced exam, San Francisco, so we'll fast forward again a
couple of years, failed.
There are three parts of that exam, a blind tasting, a
service, and a written test. I did not pass any of those
parts at all.
So I had to go all the way back home again
and say, I'm sorry.
It didn't work.
12 months later, I came back.
I'd studied harder, I'd tasted more, I'd served more, and I
nailed all three parts on my second go.
So then I carried a different size badge, slightly bigger,
you could actually see it, and a certificate, and I was an
advanced level sommelier.
Then, of course, 12 months later at the Masters level its
invitation only.
One of the big challenges between advanced and masters
is continued access to wine, access to a mentor, access to
a tasting group that can help you out.
Being the only one in New Zealand, all of those things
were impossible by and large.
So I had to do my mentoring remotely on the internet--
thank you, Google, for that.
And I had to find people who were willing to talk to me,
and I had to make several trips to the USA just to get
exposure to the tasting group and a master, et cetera.
There's a lot of money involved in this final badge
that I have.
Attempt one at masters, zero.
It's like going from junior high to college overnight.
And the leap in what you need to know is incredible.
Yes, you could say that a master is a walking
encyclopedia.
But it's not really about that information, it's about what I
can offer you.
And attempt two, coming back to San Francisco again.
I passed one part.
At the Masters level, once you pass a single exam,
you're on the clock.
You've got two more years to get the other two parts.
So I got the service under my belt.
It was something that I'd been doing for over 20 years in the
hospitality industry.
And then attempt number two, zero.
Attempt number three.
I thought well, I need to do this in a
slightly different way.
So I came to the US for three months and I worked for
Yellowstone Club in Montana with a colleague who was also
taking the exams. Three months down the track, attempt number
three, zero.
So now I have one more attempt to pass these exams. What am I
doing wrong?
The definition of stupidity, and not that I'm trying to say
I was stupid, is that if you do the same thing over and
over again and expect a different result, what is that
the definition of?
My wife I had to stand back, wipe the slate clean, and go
how am I going to pass these exams?
What am I going to do differently in order to pass
these exams?
So we studied differently.
She became my coach, we had to access rarer French wines,
especially American wines, there's all of three brands
still in New Zealand from America.
So we had to find a way to get wine to New Zealand, tasting
every day, six wines blind.
And I'll show you some pictures shortly and sort of
show you really how difficult that is and talk about those.
Open questions from my wife and other people every day.
Give me three wines from [UNINTELLIGIBLE], what growth
are they, and do the have any second wines,
and what's the IOC?
So I amassed a bank of probably 10,000, 20,000
questions that I could possibly be asked in the
masters exam.
The one thing about masters exams to remember
is they're all oral.
The role is in real time.
So you get asked a bunch of questions from a bunch of
masters and you have to answer it then and there.
The pass is 75% or better.
You're given six wines blind-- three white and three red--
and you only have 25 minutes to identify those wines.
And that's them saying nothing.
It's like all you people standing there listening to me
talk about six wines in 25 minutes, and then at the end
of that say, wine number one is, in fact, a chardonnay from
Chablis from Burgundy.
It's a 2005 Vintage Premier Cru level.
Wine number two.
Next four minutes, ***, ***, ***, ***, ***.
So you have to get really four or more out of six correct,
absolute, in order to pass the tasting test. And then, of
course, there's the service exam.
Decant this, open that champagne, tell me about wine
and food pairing, problem customers, all sorts of things
blasted at you for about an hour.
So it's a real time testing situation.
And each test is a 75% minimum pass.
So it's quite a challenge.
But not impossible.
What did I do differently?
Studied harder, I tasted more every day.
I had people asking me questions.
We were asking questions in the car on the way to work, as
opposed to a car, which is an American thing.
A car on the way to work, and so on.
There is no television, no movies, no spicy foods, no
high fat foods, because everything you do affects the
way you taste.
So it's absolute focus on that final goal.
I had the opportunity to go to London and sit this test one
more time before I'd have to start again, essentially.
So I passed.
I went to London.
I felt differently.
I felt confident in that I can do this.
I haven't been in this industry for 26 years now not
to achieve my Mount Everest. I did my tasting exam.
I ran downstairs, used the hotel toilets, I got changed,
caught a train to Heathrow airport and flew home.
That's a 24 hour journey, by the way, from
London to New Zealand.
I got out at the airport, went straight to a three-day wine
show, and 12 hours later I was home again, having judged wine
all day, to a message on my answer phone saying, oh,
Cameron, it's Brian Julyan speaking.
I have some feedback for you on your exam.
Click.
Unfortunately, England was 12 hours behind, so it was 6:00
in the morning there and 7:00 at night for me.
So I couldn't very well call him up at his house and say
give me my result.
So we emailed him and said we'll call you at 9:00 p.m.
My wife was out of the house getting some takeout--
we were just going crazy.
That's why I'm bald, because it all fell
out with the stress.
She came home with the takeout and the lights were out in the
house, completely blacked out.
She couldn't find me.
I was in the bedroom on the floor at the end of the bed
going ah-ha, yeah, uh-huh--
he'd finally called, by the way-- ah-ha, yeah.
OK.
And he'd already given me the result.
But what he was doing was actually giving me the
feedback at the time my wife walked in the room.
So I was just going ah-ha, uh-huh, yeah, I see.
All right, OK, yup.
So she had no idea.
I knew.
All that elation had sort of subsided enough for me to
listen, and I handed the phone to her.
And he said that I had passed.
It's a huge achievement in many ways because it means
that I can continue to promote the role of a profession, or
an aspect of hospitality that does have credentials and
profession, or a professional approach in New Zealand.
It's not just about serving drinks, it's about making
dining experiences fantastic for people.
And it does matter if it's a cafe or fine dining.
If you want a $5 glass of wine, I'll give you $100
service with that, and that's what it's all about.
It's not about delivering a glass that somebody ordered to
a table, it's actually about pouring the wine from that
bottle to that person at that table.
That's service.
So let me show you a couple of pictures that may talk about
the journey.
Well this is a wine rack full of wine.
But part of the role is the labor.
I had to build the racks, I had to put the wine in it,
sort it into order, and make sure that the stock was OK.
That's at the Yellowstone Club, by the way, in Montana.
This is a picture of me in South San
Francisco in Los Altos.
It's probably about 6:30 in the morning, and you can see I
have three white and three red wine, and that's my wife in
the background in her pajamas writing down everything I say
and timing me for 25 minutes.
So it takes continued effort.
You don't swallow anything at all, you spit these wines out,
especially at 6:00 in the morning.
So this is kind of interesting because this is about seven or
eight glasses of red wine and a whole bunch of bottles.
Essentially, what I would do is I would taste three white
and three red, and then a different set, and then a
different set again.
And all the wines I got correct would then
be put to one side.
And all the wines I got incorrect would then be lined
up in a different order.
So I knew that these wines would be there, but they were
completely messed around and I had to do the whole exercise
again just with red wines.
You can see where the experience comes in.
If you're doing two or three flights of this and then
returning to the wine, and of course, the wines start to
change, over age, and then eventually fall over.
So you either have to drink it that night or give it away.
So our neighbors love us because we just ended up
giving it away.
This is back at my house in New Zealand.
One of the things that I had to do in terms of study is
create my own study bible.
Take all the textbooks that I was using, write the key
information into my own Cameron Douglas, How To Be A
Master Sommelier.
That red folder is it.
Thank you.
What else does a sommelier do?
They need to travel.
They need to learn about the wines first hand in real time.
This is a shot of a piece of soil from Central Otago in New
Zealand at a very famous winery called Felton Road
about three weeks ago.
Luckily at the time I was there, a university team dug
about 12 feet down to get a profile of the soil.
What's really interesting, especially for us, is that you
can see that their vine roots right in the soil 12 feet
down, and the white streaks through there is the limestone
that we have down there.
And the rest is pretty much sand-- it would crumble away.
So there's a lot of sand down there, a lot of limestone, the
roots need to go down because when it rains the water just
drops down, et cetera.
So that helps me talk to customers about
wine from that area.
What the soil is like and why you would expect that kind of
aspect of the wine to come through in a continental
climate, et cetera.
OK, next slide.
All right.
The day I got back from the USA without knowing my results
was part of the Air New Zealand Wine Awards.
And this isn't the scene that I would walk into, this is the
scene of the back room helpers.
So this is close to 2,000 wines to be
tasted over three days.
Back to Central Otago.
If you ever get there, this is Peregrine Winery.
This is after I had found out my result
and my little nephew.
He helped build a volcano, and if you pour sparkling wine
into a particular mixture it bubbles up, and he was
fascinated.
Now, what I didn't know but I do not now, and that you might
see later on, is that I was the highest scoring candidate
in London in November, and there was a particular trophy
attached to that called the Laurent Perrier Champagne
Grand Siecle trophy for the high-scoring candidate.
In the USA they have what's called a Champagne Krug Cup.
It's a different scenario.
But I didn't get it because I wasn't there to receive it.
So my sister and brother-in-law had a cup made
for me, put my name on it, and gave me a bottle of champagne.
So that was absolutely thrilling, and I haven't
opened the wine yet.
Back to San Francisco--
we can do another one.
You can see the kind of wines that you have to taste--
Spanish Rioja, Bordeaux growth wines, basic Californian
Cabernet Sauvignon, which is absolutely readily
available to you.
You can't buy it in New Zealand.
The only California Cabernet New Zealand currently his
Ravenswood.
They do OK Zinfindel from time to time.
Oh, did you see the t-shirt, Romulan ale?
So there's a lot of comparative tasting involved
just to work out what wine is what.
All right.
This is what it was like from my side.
So there would be a team of people, we would have 40 to 50
wines at a time just to judge them.
We didn't have to identify them.
We knew that we had, say, 50 Sauvignon Blancs to try and
decide which were the best wines.
We did that solidly about eight hours a day for three
days, and we'd work through the grape varieties.
You don't swallow anything, except water, otherwise after
about three wines, it's all over, they're all great.
Back to Montana.
My first time in the snow.
This is interesting for you to do is instead of pouring
yourself a full glass of wine, choose a nice big glass and
pour maybe two ounces in there, and lay it on its side.
One of the things that we do in the exam is we have to
describe the wine as we see it before we describe it as we
can smell it and then taste it.
And in order to describe or discern a great variety, the
age of the wine, et cetera, is done through the visual in the
first part.
You can see that that's pretty opaque wine, and towards the
edge around the outer rim is quite bright purple or fuchsia
pink, as we might say.
Anyone that's very opaque and dark ruby that's got a pink
rim could be three or four different
grape varieties only.
So I can break down into what I might be dealing with just
through a visual, without even smelling the wine.
That could have been Argentinian Malbec, it could
have been Californian Cabernet, it could have been a
grossly extracted Pinot Noir from somewhere, or it could
have been a merlot.
Big sky Montana.
Big sky Montana.
Rock's the dog on the left.
Studying, study, study, study.
I'm sure you know what that's all about.
It's about memory recall and information retrieval at the
right time.
OK.
We'll make this the final slide.
We'll make this the final slide.
What this New Zealand Sauvignon tastes
like, freshly cut grass.
So this is a comparison.
I'd already got my result from that point.
That's my back yard, by the way.
Needs a bit of work, but hey.
So tasting wine.
If you'd like to ask some questions, go ahead.
Tasting wines.
The next time you have a glass of champagne, and not
sparkling wine made in America.
I'm talking about the French stuff.
The next time you have a glass of champagne, don't just take
a mouthful and swallow it and go, ah, yes, that was the $100
I just spent.
Smell that first, smell it hard, then smell it soft, and
then smell it medium.
Take a really large mouthful and just let it sit there.
And then what you do is what I call the French kiss.
You French kiss the wine.
You roll your tongue around that champagne in your mouth,
and you let it foam up.
And then you swallow it.
Your memory of that wine has changed tenfold, because
you've suddenly exposed your mind memory to the texture of
champagne, how soft the moose is, how small the bubble is,
and then you don't take another sip for two minutes.
How long does that flavor last?
Is it worth the $100, because if that flavor lasts more than
a minute, you're probably in that right bracket.
So quality wine is often associated with the length of
flavor that you have after.
If the flavor dies after about 5 or 10 seconds, you probably
bought an inferior product in terms of its
price/quality ratio.
But it's up to people like me to help set those price points
in the industry.
So a $20 bottle of sparkling wine should give
$30 worth of value.
You should always over-deliver on a product.
The same with white wines and red wines.
It's not about buying the same time everything that you like,
it's about experimenting and buying something different.
And that's part of the role of the sommelier as well is to
introduce you to those different experiences.
All right.
So does anybody have a question?
It can be about any beverage in the world.
I think there's a microphone near that--
AUDIENCE: First I was to just ask has anybody
sent a bottle back?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: To me?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Absolutely.
We don't get it right all the time, and one of the biggest
challenges for the wine industry, not as sommelier is
to stop faulty wines coming to their customers.
And corked taint in wine is a huge problem.
It's a huge issue, and it's largely being resolved with
screw tops.
What's the rule?
Your ultimate aim as a sommelier is
to please the customer.
I can always get that wine replaced by the supplier.
I'd rather sell you something different or
open another bottle.
The problem being is if it's a $1,500 bottle of wine and they
send it back, the customer's always right.
You suddenly advertise that wine by the glass and try and
recover your cost. That's the only way you can deal with it.
AUDIENCE: If I were a wine connoisseur and I really like
the Sauternes wines.
But I was wondering, what's the difference between a
really premium one, like a Chateau d'Yquem.
If somebody said to you, what food would I eat with one of
those to really bring out the characteristics and enjoy it.
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Good question.
Sweet wines are always, or invariably, taken at the end
of a meal with a sweet food, a dessert.
But a wine like Chateau d'Yquem or wines of that
particular ilk or style, are actually very, very good at
the beginning of a meal, as well as the end.
The classic match with a Yquem is foie gras and goose liver
pate, et cetera.
But we've matched wines--
so long as you understand the sweetness level, the acidity
level of a wine, and pair that first and foremost. Wine and
fruit pairing is about identifying the spikes in the
food and the spikes in the wine.
So if you've got a high acid wine like Chateau d'Yquem,
it's also a high sugar wine.
And then all the flavor components come underneath
that, plus that botrytis fungal character that it has.
What can you do at the beginning of a meal?
You match the acidity and you match the sweetness.
So something as simple as poached pears with cheese as
an appetizer dish works really, really well because
you're using the acidity in the wine to take care of the
acidity in the cheese.
You're matching the sweetness of the pear with the sweetness
in the wine, and so on.
So you're just identifying flavor spikes in order to take
care of it.
Chateau d'Yquem's a wonderful wine.
Incredibly expensive.
Hard to come by at the best of times, and really difficult on
a wine list to really pull that wallet
out and pay for it.
So there are great alternatives that I've seen,
especially in US, funny enough.
I hope that answers your question.
AUDIENCE: So you said that a sommelier's job is not
necessarily to do with wine, it's to do with any beverage
or alcohol.
But I noticed that throughout your exam, the emphasis was
always on wine, and that's where most of the training is.
Does that mean that a sommelier still
is more wine focused?
Yes, they know about other stuff, but wine
is their main expertise?
Are there similar professions for other alcohols, because
you could argue that single malt whiskey can get as
complex as wine or cognacs or something like that.
So are there similar professions for other
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Well there is a brewmaster's
qualification for beer.
Yes, it is a wine focus, but when you think about a dining
experience, it might start with a spirit, it might start
with a beer, it might start with wine or
champagne or a cocktail.
That's why we need to know it all.
And I think it's world competitions for things like
cocktails, et cetera.
We do in practical exams may have to identify spirits
without tasting them, or fortified wines without
tasting them, or explain the part of a beer brewing
process, or explain different types of Saki and what we
might recommend.
So we are exposed to that in a testing situation, but you're
right, 90% of the role is really based on wine.
AUDIENCE: It sounds like at the starting levels in your
profession you were probably mostly working at local
restaurants, and as you become more experienced you're
working at higher quality establishments.
At the Master level, where do you find yourself
spending your time?
Only at the finest of restaurants serving royalty
and captains of industry?
And judging the quality of the wines of entire nations, or
what else are you involved in?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: I'll answer that in two parts.
First of all, I passed in November.
This is a year of firsts.
So if you ask me the same question in 12 months from
now, I might have a more complete answer for you.
The second part of the question is since then,
however, I mean the core group of hotels, which are the
Novatel, the Sofitels, the Grand Mercures and things like
that have 17 properties in New Zealand.
I've just been invited to help them select
their cellar wines.
Certainly being flown to a different part of the country,
hosted overnight, taking them through a tasting, and helping
them identify their cellar wine potentials is part of the
role, and that's a nice little reward that I have for it.
Are there any roles for a Master
Sommelier in New Zealand?
Not yet.
But it's something that I'm working on, because my wife
and I run a consultancy.
We are in charge of some wine lists for a number of
restaurants.
We certainly have a link to hotels now.
I write a wine column for a magazine, plus I run a
beverage program.
So that's plenty for the moment, but obviously, as
things progress over time, I might have a more definitive
answer for you.
In the USA, you might be running the beverage
purchasing for a chain of hotels.
You might be the training educator for being wine
estates or Penard Ricard or larger
companies or a large winery.
AUDIENCE: I'm wondering if you have a recommendation for a
resource for beginners who might want to, like myself,
pair wine with my wife's
excellent food as we entertain?
A book, a class?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Two books to get hold of.
The first one is called Perfect Pairings by Evan
Goldstein, who's a Master Sommelier.
It is a must because it's not like a cookbook or such,
although it does have recipes in it.
It's an education piece that you can just look up a wine or
a particular food or an idea, and you're
only reading one page.
There's a few pictures in there.
So Perfect Pairings by Evan Goldstein.
AUDIENCE: That's being Googled many times over right now.
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Yeah.
Perfect Pairings. and there's a new edition of his book
coming out some time in the next couple of years.
I know he's working on it now.
Absolutely brilliant picks.
The other one is written by the CEO of the Court of Master
Sommelier, and it's called Sales and Service For The Wine
Professional.
That is a textbook that is a bible, really, for somebody
who's looking to gain credentials
in sommelier services.
There is a third edition coming out on the 25th of
April, amazon.com, and put your name down.
It's probably about $50.
That's a good reference piece.
AUDIENCE: I have a question.
With all the wine tasting experience you've had,
everyone can probably go to a store and pick out things like
a Chateau d'Yquem or a Bordeaux First Growth.
But in your experience, is there some wines that we
wouldn't know about which you think would give us a--
what would be some of your more adventurous
recommendations?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: You know, that's really quite a
difficult question to answer because my exposure to the
range of wines that are available in
the US is this much.
And it's only in experience that I've gained little bits
of with each trip that I come here.
Let me tell you about a fabulous
dinner I had last night.
And it was at home with a great friend, Georgia McCray.
We had crab with Champagne Clicquot, Veuve Clicquot
champagne, crab and sour cream with lots of
lemon juice in it.
It was a perfect pairing because the white and
intensity of the food was perfectly paired with the
white and intensity of the wine.
Neither was too complete to over-power my senses.
And so I would recommend you try Veuve Clicquot with crab
any day of the week.
That's a fun pairing to have.
Another fun pairing while I'm thinking of it is you know how
there's dry sherry, medium sherry, and sweet sherry.
Drinking those by themselves isn't that interesting,
especially the sweet sherrys because they're so much like a
dessert wine.
What do you do with it?
Dessert sherry is often very dark brown or black in color.
The best match I've ever had with that, which I didn't
create, I just absolutely love it is balsamic vinegar ice
cream and baked tomato tart.
So a really thin-cut pastry.
Tomato's almost semi-dried.
A little bit of Turkish Kishmish, which is like dates
and prunes really finely chopped on top.
Balsamic vinegar ice cream.
That alone is a fantastic combination, and a fine
dessert sherry on top with Balsamic vinegar.
It's beautiful.
Hello.
AUDIENCE: I'd like to develop a small collection of wine
tasting glasses.
What kind of characteristics would I look at, and what are
the most important things in comparing them?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: The most important thing is that you
really only have two brands, and I'm not promoting a
particular brand here, but really the Riedel range, they
have a tasting range that you can purchase, and Spiegelau
have a tasting range that you can purchase.
The glass must be as thin as possible, no etching or
markings on it.
And be quite a large bowl.
If you saw the ones in the picture, that it's got a wide
enough bowl, never put them in the dishwasher.
Ever.
Only wash them with a little bit of
detergent, tiny, tiny bit.
So really all you're doing is removing the grease and the
fingermarks.
Polish them by hand, and keep them absolutely clean and lots
of air flowing through them.
So as thin as possible, really.
AUDIENCE: Why is it that when you guys pour champagne, it
doesn't go, bubbling out of the glass?
And then when we do it at home, even slowly, it goes
[SQUIRT NOISE],
bubbling out of the glass.
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Sparkling wine reacts to impurities
inside the glass.
It could be dust on the inside, it could be a notch in
the glass from the blowing or the punching process, if you
like, of ready-made glassware.
It will bubble more if there's impurities
or dust in the glass.
So the more you polish a champagne flute, the least it
should bubble up.
Also, if the wine is too warm it will bubble up even more.
A champagne bottle has six atmospheres of pressure in
there at about 9 or 10 degrees Celsius.
And the way to reduce that pressure for pouring is to
chill it down.
So champagne stored in a refrigerator about five or six
degrees is a lot easier to open than one that's warmer.
And six atmospheres of pressure is about what you
might get inside of a bus tire.
And so you want to reduce that down by chilling it.
So you've got to polish your glass and pour slowly, as
slowly as possible.
AUDIENCE: So all that polishing isn't just for show?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: It's not just for show at all.
AUDIENCE: My second question is do you take special care of
your teeth with all the limes that you--
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Yeah, it becomes--
AUDIENCE: --I would think in a day of tasting 200 wines, even
spitting them out, you have to be really careful.
CAMERON DOUGLAS: For a wine taster, you clean your teeth
in the morning, then you eat breakfast, and then you expose
yourself to the wines.
Acid is a huge problem.
It eats the enamel on your teeth quite considerably.
If you've tasted, like you say, 150 Sauvignon Blancs in
one day, your teeth ache at the end of the day.
There is a company in Japan that has produced a chewing
gum that you can chew before and after wine tasting that
protects the enamel on your teeth.
But ultimately, there's degradation at
the end of the day.
So you essentially get your dentist to help you out a lot,
and make sure you get teeth insurance.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I'll try not to ramble, but I just wanted to express sort of
a skepticism and frustration that I have. When I go to
restaurants there's the inevitable wine list, and more
often than not, when I look at this wine list, I think it's
preposterous that anyone would have--
anyone outside, a very, very select few--
are going to have an acquaintance, a bare
acquaintance, with even 5% of what's on that wine list.
Let's guess, let's assume that there's 50
bottles, 60 bottles available.
And furthermore, the way that those bottles are presented
it's just text.
And it brings to mind your mention of the way that had to
go about studying for this exam, it's just a vast amount
of regurgitation, factual regurgitation.
So one, there's just a medium by which you're looking at
these choices.
Two, there's the amount of choice that you have. And just
broadly reflecting on this, given that there's not going
to be a sommelier at many good restaurants, have you thought
about more innovative ways of presenting the wine selection
to people at restaurants?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Well it's something that in the program
that I run at the university is a project
for students to undertake.
The white wine is just presented as
ingrained and tradition.
It's a list of either a great variety and all the producers
who make wine under that great variety and there's
the price you pay.
And that means something only to people who know what
they're talking about and have some experience.
A lot of consumers have little to no experience in even some
simple grape varieties.
So what we've come up with is that a wine list can be
presented according to course.
So appetizer wines, and it will list them.
But it will also list them not only just by their name, but
according to how light or heavy they are.
So the further you go down the list under that particular
category, the wine gets fuller, heavier, richer, and
probably more expensive as well.
So we can have appetizer, main course, sweet wines.
You can present it according to region, you can present it
according to its white and its intensity itself.
What the wine list should do is be the sommelier in the
absence of a sommelier.
So there should be some kind of introduction to that
particular section of the wine list, what the philosophy is
in terms of food and wine pairing, and why those wines
are selected in the first place.
Because if you get a wine list that doesn't talk to the food,
what's the point in having it there?
And I know there are probably 1,000 restaurants in the
surrounding 10 miles that actually don't care whether or
not the wine goes with the food.
They've just got to have some wine on the wine list, and it
doesn't talk to the food at all.
People come in, they chug-a-lug the wine, and they
walk out the door.
They're fed, they're watered, and off they go.
But there are a number of people who want a little bit
more out of that.
My recommendation to you is to get people, anybody in that
restaurant a) to pour the wine at the table, and to offer a
taste of a number of different wines until you find
one that you like.
Because ultimately you'll walk out going hey, I got to try 10
different wines, it cost me nothing, and then I chose
something I liked.
I'll come back to that restaurant and do it again.
AUDIENCE: That wine pairing book is, I
agree, it is excellent.
I just found it, and it was like that was a breath of
fresh air for me.
I'm like oh, this is a great reference book.
There should be more of that I think.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
My wife and I taste a reasonable amount of wine, and
as I'm tasting wine I detect things that I like and I
dislike, that I find interesting and that I relate
to other experiences.
But I feel that I don't have a vocabulary to kind of
communicate what I'm experiencing.
I'm curious, what are some ways that I might be able to
develop that vocabulary?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Really good question.
The next time you walk into a vegetable store or a
supermarket, and you know how a lot of people sort of
squeeze the fruit and the vegetables before they pick
the one that they want.
I don't want you to squeeze them, I want you to pick up
everything that you can and smell it.
When you go into somebody else's home , and you're
helping them prepare a dinner, you smell every single spice
in their pantry.
You know how you open the drawer after the summer to
pull out your sweaters for the winter?
Smell your sweater.
What everything smells like.
If you've ever walked into your home or somebody else's
home one day and gone there's a cat or a
mouse in this house.
I can smell it.
Or the cat's peed in the corner somewhere and you've
got to go and find it, right?
You're exposing yourself to senses.
When you walk outside today, you smell the
grass on the ground.
You smell the back of the tree.
You expose itself.
So you've already got the vocabulary in your head.
What you're trying to do is rather than pluck it from the
air is actually use your experiences to help you
describe the wine.
So Fruit Loops, people use the word Fruit Loop to describe
some wines as opposed to somebody
who needs some attention.
It's said that some Italian wines have a coal smell.
If you smell sand, granite, rocks, freshly poured
concrete, some wines smell like the atmosphere just after
its rained.
You walk outside and you've got this
beautiful, sweet air smell.
You can smell that in some wines.
Fish tank pebbles.
Once you've cleaned out the fish tank you'v got wet
pebbles, smell them.
Crushed vitamins.
Crushed sea shells.
Crushed sea shells is Chablis.
Next time you buy a Chablis, don't let it get too cold.
When it warms up, you smell crushed sea shells.
Some people taste chalk in Chablis.
So it's OK to actually take a piece of chalk and eat a
little bit.
It's OK, it won't kill you.
But do it.
Cough medicine, cooked pastry, uncooked pastry, a rusty old
barrel, the tire of a car, the tire on the road.
These are all words that you can now start to use so long
as you've gone ahead and smelled it.
And when I'm teaching people about wine, that's all I'm
trying to do is give them the vocabulary to help them.
If you smell too much, smell your elbow.
Nobody ever puts perfume or after shave on their elbow,
and if you've got a long sleeve, not your skin, smell
your elbow, it'll neutralize.
Yup, and you can keep smelling.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
You've actually caused me to remember another question I
wanted to ask besides the two I already had.
First of all, what do you do with open bottles to keep them
for another day or two?
I've tried lots of different things, but curious
what your take is.
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Well a wine's going to change once it's
opened anyway.
It's inevitable.
It will age because of the dissolved oxygen in the wine
that it already has.
So it will have a life expectancy.
But you can purchase argon gas and squirt some argon gas into
the bottle, put the cork back in and you'll be
safe for a few days.
And you can purchase Vacu Vin pumps.
So you replace the cork with a rubber cork, squeeze open the
little *** on the top and vacuum the oxygen out.
That works OK.
I use that most of the time.
And drink it.
AUDIENCE: There are limits.
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: So my original question was as you have
learned to taste better, and you've met lots of people who
have learned to taste well, does that sort of ruin you to
the simpler, perhaps, cheaper wines?
Because as I've had to do my own tasting, I sometimes
worry, boy, I'm really a great kisser now.
I just want to buy $50 bottles of wine, which doesn't seem
like a good thing.
CAMERON DOUGLAS: I think sadly yes, but I absolutely am not
judging wine when I'm drinking in a social situation, and I
keep my mouth shut.
And providing the wine is not off--
I will enjoy it just as much as the next person because
it's about--
it's not just really about the wine, it's about the people
that you're with, it's about the social occasion, it's
about the food, and the reason for the gathering
in the first place.
Which brings me back to that dining experience thing.
And yes, the wine's important, but it's the big picture that
I'm concerned with.
AUDIENCE: What does your cellar mostly consist of?
CAMERON DOUGLAS: Really good question.
A [UNINTELLIGIBLE] wine left over from preparation for
exams that I will then turn around and pay it forward and
help teach people with.
Plus wine that I've been unable to drink for a long
time because it's just every day drinking
wine that I've purchased.
And my cellar is not a controlled temperature cellar.
It's the coldest room in the house inside
the bottom of a wardrobe.
And some other wines stored at my in-laws
house, under their house.
It's just kept at an ambient temperature.
Full of all sorts of different things.
Some champagne.
We have what's called the 41, and it's a wine rack in a room
that we need to drink these wines within the next three to
four months, and 41 bottles fit in the rack.
So are we going to have a 41 today or are we going to have
something from the cellar.
So every time we pull out a 41 we put
something else in its place.
And that's our every day drinking rack.
One of your questions about how long will a wine last
prompts me to mention poor wine, bad
wine once it's opened.
If it smells of wet cardboard, if it smells like a mouse, or
it smells musty and moldy, it's probably off.
And I would take that wine back to the purchasing point
and say it smells pretty odd to me.
Is it what it's meant to smell like, and get them to replace
it if it's not.
If you sort of drink half the bottle and then realized, top
it up with water, put the cork back in and then take it.
Just to protect the contents.