MEET THE SOMMELIER
BY THE CQ
Wirral Life's wine specialist (The Curious Quaffer) talks to Sarah
Donoher, Sommelier at The Art School Restaurant, Liverpool.
In many restaurants today we, as the paying public, will come
across the odd sommelier or two. A fine dining restaurant,
or any restaurant with a good wine list, are the likely venues
for discovering one. These sommeliers are trained and
knowledgeable wine professionals who are expected to
specialise in all aspects of wine service, wine storage and in food
and wine pairing. Their responsibilities are, today, as varied as
they are demanding.
This months article offers up a valuable insight into the life of a
sommelier. Welcome to the world of Sarah Donoher! She is, at the
age of 29, the Head Sommelier at the Art School Restaurant in
Liverpool. She graduated from Sheffield Hallam University where
she studied Hospitality Business Management. Post graduation
she immersed herself in the wine industry. For the last eight years
or so she has mainly worked as a sommelier, working her way
rapidly up to the position she now holds at the Art School. She
has held this position for the last two and a half years. She lives on
the Wirral too!
This summer I decided to pay her a visit, in her ‘lair’, at the Art
School. Twelve carefully selected questions were asked of her. No
passes were allowed – and only the definitive answer was accepted!
What is your earliest wine memory?
As a young child I remember my grandfather making his own
wine. Sadly I was deemed too young to be allowed to taste it! It
remains, nonetheless, a lovely, a lasting and my earliest wine
memory.
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What got you into wine?
My University course involved a year’s placement at the wonderful
Michelin starred ‘Number One’ restaurant at The Balmoral in
Edinburgh. Early on in my time there I was given two glasses of
white wine to taste blind. They smelt, and tasted, worlds apart
- as different as different can be. It was after tasting them that I
was informed that both wines were, in fact, made from the same
grape. One was an aromatic, almost tropical, new world sauvignon
blanc that was full of big flavours and citrus fruit. The other was
an altogether softer and more delicately floral old world sauvignon
blanc. It wasn’t just the fact that they were both truly beautiful
wines that got me into wine; but also the fact that the same grape,
grown in a different part of the world, could produce two such
stunningly different wines. How could the same grape produce
something so different? My interest, as well as my palette, had
been well and truly spiked.
If anyone reading this wanted to become a sommelier what is
the process; and do you ne