The Sommelier and feminine intuition

The Sommelier and feminine intuition

There are many female Sommeliers, they are courageous and are coming to be relied upon more and more: Karina Tholin President of the Swedish Sommelier association

Do not be surprised if, in a restaurant with a high star rating,  it is a woman who explains and recommends wines on the wine list to the customer, and a woman who conducts the tours of the wine cellars and production areas of top wine growers from around the world with confidence and competence. Women Sommeliers have finally arrived and are growing exponentially.

Amongst the Donne del Vino 9% of the members are sommeliers, a lot less than the percentage of wine manufacturers members, who are the heart of the association, but although they are a small percentage they are still a considerable number of individuals who are extremely authoritative on wine. The growth in numbers (among the Ais Sommeliers, they are ¼ of the total) and the qualitative component of these pink “priests” of the wine, is very noticeable due to the number of awards and premiums received by this group which increases each year.

2009, la Guida dei Ristoranti dell’Espresso (restaurant guide) crowned Alessia Meli Best Sommelier in Italy

2010 at the age of 24 Karen Casagrande became “Sommelier of the Year” FISAR

2011 Daniela ScrobognaPresident of AIS Sommeliers in Rome, won the

Oscarcome best Sommelier instructor

These are just some of the results achieved by female Sommeliers, who in Italy are more numerous than in France, but who are less in numbers than in the USA and UK. The international component of ‘pink’ sommeliers are scooping awards and hold positions at the top of the national associations in Canada, Estonia, Ireland and Sweden.

Karina Tholin, President of the ’Associazione Sommelier Foreningen, visited both Fattoria del Colle and Casato Prime Donne di Montalcino during her journey through the Tuscan wineries and this gave me the opportunity for a long interview with her. Karina Tholin is small, lively and highly competent. She leads an association which was founded 25 years ago and consists of 300 members, all professionals, half of which are women. Women have indeed significant importance in this context and Karina is in fact the fifth female president. The Swedish Sommeliers’ are part of the ASI – Association Internationale de la Sommellerie, a membership which offers them excellent opportunities to make contacts and interact with other members.

The personal story of Karina shows she has red wine flowing in her veins. She had her first taste of wine within family gatherings and immediately it was noticed she had a good palate, but she really found her calling as a Sommelier when she started working in a restaurant, which she has since bought, in 1990. It was at this point that Karina began to go to Stockholm to train where she met an individual who she calls “the wine mama”, a woman who was both her teacher and the person who acted as her mentor in the discovery of wine. “Becoming a Sommelier is like going on a journey that never ends because the more you learn, the more you realize how vast the world of wine is yet to be explored” Karina Tholin told me “A good sommelier is in fact an individual who is curious, who wants to taste everything and who makes judgments without preconceptions”.

When asked in what way are female sommeliers better than men Karina replied with a smile “They have natural intuition which comes from the hospitality role which often falls to the woman of the house. They first identify what their client is looking for in the wine and then help him choose the wine that will most satisfy that requirement and make him the most satisfied.” The next question we asked was an obvious one, what is the favourite drink for Swedish women. “Bubbles. Swedish women drink less than Swedish men but they are more discerning and much prefer wine to beer. The last and most difficult question was what is the Achilles heel of female Swedish Sommeliers. Also in this area Karina did not hesitate with her answer “Motherhood. A pregnant woman can not drink wine and, under Swedish law, she remains in paid leave from her employment for at least a year and a half. This reduces her career prospects considerably in the current competitive workplace.”

We concluded the meeting with this very knowledgeable wine lover with the

shared belief that Swedish women, despite the maternity leave issues, have a huge future in the Sommelier world due to their openness, ease of communication skills and their eagerness for improved relationships across the world with other sommeliers. In fact the request that Karina Tholin made to the Italian Donne del Vino precisely supported this assumption as she was keen to forge an even closer relationship with our organisation in the future. It was a most welcome request which I am sure will be beneficial for us all.
Brought to you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini