Of "Beer Sommeliers" and Other Folk

My good friend Don Russell, a.k.a. Joe Sixpack, got a little riled up this week about the notion of a “beer sommelier.” This position, as he notes, is beginning to appear at a small, albeit increasing number of restaurants around the country, and is even being talked about in terms of a national certification program. Don likes the idea, just not the name.

(For this, I believe, he can blame Phil Baxter, the GM of the Four Points by Sheraton LAX, who, following some extensive property renovations, created in his hotel a beer bar and began a training and server knowledge program for his staff.)

To Don, the term “beer sommelier” connotes too much the idea of wine. As he states in his column of November 24, “A sommelier by definition is the employee who maintains the restaurant's wine list. A ‘beer sommelier’ is like calling someone a ‘baseball quarterback.’"

Don further decries the “winofication” of beer, in which ale and lager becomes what the Brits call poncey, or in other words, upper-class, pinky-in-the-air pretentious. He worries, no doubt tongue firmly planted in cheek, that people will start calling him Monsieur Sixpack.

The worthy beer scribe’s point is well taken, but for the wrong reason. It is not because of an ill effect on the sociable, democratic appeal of beer that “beer sommelier” should be rejected, but for reasons of redundancy. Simply, describing a person as a beer sommelier is, or should be, as silly as calling someone who cooks a “food chef” or a person who mans the stick for a living a “drinks bartender.”

Truth is, it’s only habit that has us associate “sommelier” with wine. A rough etymology of the word, thanks to my Collins English Dictionary, connects it to the Old Provencal French saumalier, meaning pack-animal driver, from the Late Latin sagma, meaning a pack-saddle. Not a word about wine there.

So rather than craft a new term, let’s simply reinvent the one we have and acknowledge that the sommelier should be well-versed not only in wines, but in beers, whiskies, waters and cocktails, as well. Perhaps not infallibly so – not all existing sommeliers are Masters of Wine, after all – but certainly more knowledgeable than many are now.

Already, I’m teaching Ontario sommelier students the basics of beer, including beer and food pairing, in a intensive one-day session that's a mandatory part of their courseload, and I strongly suspect that other such programs across North America are headed in the same direction. So let’s keep that up, intensify its impact and importance, and consign “beer sommelier” to the dust bin of phrases that have had their day, but are no longer needed. Like we’ve done with the once-archetypal “dry white wine.”

(Stephen Beaumont makes his sommelier class available to the hospitality industry in the form of his newly created “8 Hour Beer Expert” program. Email him for details.)

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