Hacker Cinema
Somm
2013 · Film · documentary · 93 min
Directed by Jason Wise
Somm takes the viewer on a humorous, emotional and illuminating look into the mysterious world of the Court of Master Sommeliers and their massively intimidating Master Sommelier Exam.
8 positive2 negative1 neutralfrom 11 commenters
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11 comments on Hacker News
I've heard this, and I would have been inclined to believe it. But then I watched the documentary Somm about the journey of a couple of friends reaching for the highest rankings of sommeliers. They could identify grapes, regions and year with striking accuracy. I just don't see how you could do that and then not be able to tell white and red wine apart.
The movie Somm was one of the funniest unintentional comedies I’ve ever seen. Just fake it til you make it, apparently. If you fail, simply keep retesting. Drink what you like. :)
> But I recently watched the documentary Somm, about expert wine-tasters trying to pass the Master Sommelier examination. As part of their test, they have to blind-taste six wines and, for each, identify the grape variety, the year it was produced, and tasting notes (e.g., “aged orange peel” or “hints of berry”).
Also fresh tennis ball.
I thought Somm was over the top, even cringeworthy at times. Somm 2 was actually enjoyable and I'm looking forward to their third film.
Whenever this comes up I bring up the documentary Somm. It follows a couple guys training for the master sommelier test. To me it hilariously shines a light on the farce of the whole thing.
But people are often taken aback when I suggest that there might be a lot of bullshit in wine. Even generally rational/skeptical people that don't have that strong of an attachment to it. They all say, "yeah, but you can definitely tell, like when it's good wine or bad wine." And yet virtually any time a blind test is done the results say differently (precipitating some serious schadenfreude in the movie).
It's the same thing with music. So many people think they need lossless quality when effectively zero people can successfully pick it out in an ABX test with an MP3 @ 320.
Alternatively, Somm is about students trying to pass the brutally difficult Master Sommelier exam. Worth a look IMO: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2204371/
I gradually went from "This main guy is a tool" to "Holy crap, he studies incredibly hard. I hope he succeeds."
> There are plenty of sommelier competitions where they tell apart years and zones very precisely.
There's a documentary called Somm that follows a few people as they prepare for the Master Sommelier exam, it's impressive how precisely they can determine the year and region of a wine.
Example tasting from the doc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKNmcCCE15E
I kind of agree about the wine sommelier, I don't want to go into that much detail about the history of wines. The movie "Somm" was enough for me. But I do like history, especially if it's directly related to the person I'm talking to, or the place I'm in.
This Reddit thread was one of the most interesting things I've read recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/3zgffa/what_is_the_most_extraordinary_feat_of_one_of/
And I'm in Phnom Penh now, having done the tour of the Killing Fields and S-21 prison. Learning about Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, and even refreshing my memory about communism, the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, etc. I'm finding it all very interesting now.
But also I agree with the commenter above you, "creative hobbies" would make more sense than "instigative".
What you are describing is a sommelier exam.
There's an interesting documentary on some guys taking their master sommelier exam on Netflix called "Somm" who show an impressive array of these skills.
It's actually quite impressive what a master Sommelier can do. S/he can taste a wine, tell you the varietal, tell you the region it was made and the year it was produced. The flowery language behind describing the wines is for the person the Sommelier is explaining the wine to.
I highly recommend the documentary Somm [0]. It's not an easy thing to become a master wine taster.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4zeyuk8hL8
Wine tasting as layment know it and as the connoisseurs know it is a little different. Or as a sommelier knows it, rather.
I like wine generally, but most of what I know of it comes from the documentary Somm, (on Netflix) - a sommelier's job is to tell a story - and to do this s/he must very knowledgeable and articulate about wine, its history, and its present. The history is basically a memory test, tasting wine is articulating what the drinker might experience in words, and having a palate honed enough to determine exactly what the wine is and where it's from.
All three, except the articulation, are verifiable quantitative tests. Even the during articulation the sommelier cannot stray too far from what is conventionally accepted.
I'm not harping too much on the sommelier service test, because the article is about wine tasting, but other sides apply. People train themselves to learn about wines in detail, and to differentiate wines right down to the highest level of classification and regionality just by just smell and taste alone.