We have a lot of monks to thank for “some really righteous booze,” master sommelier Emily Wines told a roomful of champagne enthusiasts gathered on a recent Thursday evening at Stratus Lounge, on the rooftop of Hotel Monaco in Old City.
The appropriately named Wines, a lesbian and one of only about 25 female master sommeliers in the world, presented a 2005 bottle of Dom Perignon, explaining its namesake was a Benedictine monk.
Wines had five other champagnes on offer that she paired with everything from wild mushrooms in a puff pastry shell to a red berry dessert.
As a woman in the mostly male wine world, she shared the story behind Veuve champagne. The word means “widow” in French. When the owner of the Clicquot champagne house died in the early 19th century, his widow wondered if she should pass its management to another family member. But she decided to run the house herself and the Veuve Clicquot brand took off, especially as it became one of the first to embrace rosé champagne.
Wines poured it over a bowl of sherbet with strawberries, raspberries and pomegranate seeds, making a simple desert stunning.
Before her class got underway, Wines sat down with PGN. The San Francisco resident, who serves as senior director of national beverage programs for Kimpton hotels, talked everything from becoming a “sommager” to paying no mind to “the men who won’t let you” into the industry and coming out after she thought it wasn’t an option.
PGN: How did you get into wine?
EW: I was working in a restaurant waiting tables while I was going to school. As I was learning more about wine, I just couldn’t get enough of it. At a certain point, it was like, “I kind of would rather do this than go to college.” After I passed my master sommelier exam, I started doing more corporate wine director work for Kimpton. I’ve been there for 15 years. It’s very open, very diverse and very welcoming in the LGBTQ community, which has been very cool.
PGN: What do you like about champagne?
EW: Champagne goes with a lot of foods. It’s not just its own little aperitif or celebratory thing. It can be an everyday thing. You can have it with beef and you can have it with oysters and dessert. They all work depending on the style that you drink. [During the class, she said her favorite pairing with Perrier-Jouët is a bucket of fried chicken.]
PGN: What is it like to be a woman sommelier?
EW: There are 130 master sommeliers in the world and I want to say 25 of us are women. There are women who, certainly, feel shut out or like there’s a little bit of a glass ceiling. I always say, if your excuse for why you can’t get ahead in this industry is that the men won’t let you in, then that’s going to be the reason that you don’t get ahead. You can’t make it your excuse. It has boys’ club-ish moments, but there are a lot of great women in it as well. People who are professional and passionate do really well.
PGN: How did you come out?
EW: I came out when I was 19. I don’t even know if it’s much of a story. It was a lot bigger of a story when I was younger. I always had this affinity for women and really loved women. I actually didn’t know I could be gay. I didn’t know it was an option. When I was in high school working at the mall, I remember somebody I worked with talking about these two women who were lesbians and owned the pizza shop in the mall. I was so fascinated with them. Then I ended up working at a Starbucks and met a lesbian there and I was so smitten with her. All of a sudden it just opened up this whole world of possibilities for me.
PGN: You’re one of a select group to have passed all three sections of the master sommelier exam on the first try. How did you prepare for that?
EW: Anywhere from six months to a year before an exam, that was really my sole focus. I spent a lot of my free time driving around, going to tasting groups. I hit the books a lot. I look back at that time and it’s like, “Wow, I didn’t really do that much.” I didn’t go out to clubs because I was working at a restaurant at night and all my days were studying.
PGN: How has the industry changed since you started?
EW: When the economy really went down, there were a lot of sommeliers who lost their jobs because people were thinking, How few people can I have in my restaurant? Maybe the guy selling wine is one I can do without. The sommeliers who were really successful were the ones who were able to cross over into restaurant management and could do both jobs. I think what’s come out now is this sort of hybrid position; I call it the “sommager.” That new hybrid is pretty powerful because they have a lot more skills that can take them into jobs like mine where they’re overseeing multi-concept restaurants in a company or doing other kinds of corporate positions. Nobody can work on the floor forever.
PGN: Are there professional development groups for LGBT people in the industry?
EW: I definitely know of a lot of queer sommeliers out there, but [there’s] nothing organized. I’m on the board of directors for the Court of Master Sommeliers, so I’m really working closely with a lot of other MS’s around the country and around the world. You really have to learn from one another. We tend to go on trips together a lot. Sommeliers are the only people I know who use their vacation time to go on a trip to another country with a whole group of strangers who are in the same industry, and they make friends for life. I love the camaraderie and the way that we share. They say that a rising tide raises all boats. That’s a cool thing about this business.