Why a cheating scandal is upsetting the world of sommeliers

On Tuesday, we learned of the cheating scandal during the Master Sommelier Exam held last month in St. Louis. In response, the body responsible for the review, the Court of Master Sommeliers, announced that it would invalidate 23 newly issued state securities. If you are not familiar with the workings of the sommelier world, this may not seem serious. But it sends shockwaves in some communities.

About an hour after the publication of the story, I went to the Wine Top 100 Wine & Spirits Magazine in downtown SF, where almost all the people I've talked to have talked about the scandal. A long-time master sommelier told me that he had cried on hearing the news. I understood why: those who undertook (completely voluntarily!) The grueling process of studying for the master sommelier exam feel a sense of kinship with those who chose him. For them, this sounds like a violation of a sacred trust, an intimate infidelity. And they feel a lot of sympathy for the new anointed states that have not cheated and will now have to go through the difficult trial again – and this time may not pass.

Since we first reported the story, we learned that the 23 disabled Member States will have two opportunities to retake the tasting exam, one later this year and one in 2019. All their fees will be deleted and travel expenses will be reimbursed. .

We expect to learn the title of the faulty master sommelier sooner or later, since this person will apparently be stripped of his MS designation. (Meanwhile, the discussions on Reddit and GuildSomm are unleashed.)

In addition, the saga of grape releases due to tobacco smoke in California and Oregon has been the subject of an international press. We now have a good update: winemakers in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, who have not been affected by this year's wildfires, have gathered to harvest the fruits of their neighbors to the south. Rogue Valley to provide financial assistance to these growers. Lake County grower Clay Shannon, who is featured in my story, has made similar favors to his neighbors. In both cases, we are told that the fruit tastes good and is not smoked at all.

And in case you missed it, I also published this week the profile of Pauline Lhote, the 35-year-old woman who recently became director of Domaine Chandon's wines and who leads the sparkling wines of the great brand in a unexpected direction. Finally, in the Wine Country Travel special section last weekend, we published a visual essay featuring great photos of Erik Castro on the harvesting process at Littorai Wines in Sevastopol.

What I drink

Speaking of Tuesday's wine and spirits event, I tasted some fine wines. The standouts included the pickled, lush Ovum "Base Line" Riesling 2016 ($ 27), from a vineyard 40 km from the Oregon coast. The grapes have developed botrytis, or "noble rot", but the wine is dry, giving an expressive range of stone fruit flavors. I have also enjoyed the 2014 A Torna Dos Pasás, an earthy and chalky red wine made by Luis A. Rodriguez Vazquez dark varieties Brancellao, Caiño and Ferrol – native varieties in Ribeiro in northwestern Spain. And another obscure discovery of grapes, this time from Italy: Nascetta, native white grape from Piedmont, which gave a floral and tasty wine, different from anything I've ever tasted, by the powerful producer Barolo Elvio Cogno.

What I read

"Wine Food," a brand-new cookbook of Dana Frank (from Oregon's Bow & Arrow Vineyard) and writer Andrea Slonecker, is a bright and colorful treat for the eyes and just contains this that we must (read: not too rigid) in food and wine pairing. I can not wait to start cooking and cooking at home this week. (P.S. Frank and Slonecker will be The grape berry in Oakland Thursday night!)

It was a great week for university research on wine! First of all: in Harvard Business Review, Kieran O. Connor and Amar Cheema look at wine price inflation and ask "if people tend to give higher ratings over time". They note, for example, that only 15% of the 90+ wines scores in Wine Spectator in 2000; now almost a third do it.

According to a study by North Carolina State University, wineries have better financial performance when implementing environmental sustainability practices. The study looked at small and medium-sized wineries around the world and found that profits were even better when wineries perceived competition.

And U.C. Davis has published a podcast on how Californian winemakers react to smoke.

Punch reviews the most popular cocktails – on and off the menu – in the country's top 40 bars, including our own Trick Dog, ABV and Slanted Door.

The title of the week goes to Punch's Megan Krigbaum: "Why does everyone in Wisconsin take Angostura? their distributor delivers in five-gallon drums.

Mike Dunne explores three wineries on the Mendocino County wine route, the least traveled: Corridor 101, east of the best-known Anderson Valley. (For more recommendations on wineries in this area, check out Sara Schneider's itineraries for Ukiah and Hopland in The Press.)

I can not recommend enough to my colleague Lizzie Johnson, "Out of the Fire," about taking over the devastating Tubbs Fire in 2017. Lizzie has spent hundreds of hours over the past year in the life of two families who lost everything in the flames – and shows how they find a way to move forward.