What knowledge and skills do sommeliers need?

“The most taboo thing when tasting food is to add your own emotions. For experienced tasters, although everyone’s tastes and preferences are different, the objective evaluation of the food is basically the same . If someone’s evaluation of a certain dish is too different from everyone else’s, then there is something wrong with either the taster’s level or his character.”

There is something wrong with the taster. Rules" The knowledge and skills of a taster are as follows:

The complete process of tasting food consists of four actions: looking, smelling, tasting and spitting.

Look, as the name suggests, it refers to the image of the dishes, that is, the appearance of the dishes. However, image scores are rarely perfect, because beauty has no limits.

Smell is the taste of the aroma of the dish. If people can be attracted by the aroma of the dish before seeing it, then the dish is half successful.

Tasting is the most important step in tasting food, and there is also a very particular rule for this. When participating in some competitions, it is required that the sommelier must change a pair of chopsticks and rinse his mouth every time he tastes a dish. In addition, when tasting, you should also grasp the three words "fine, fast and slow". The so-called "fine" means that the dishes should be tasted delicately without missing any flavor; "quick" means that each dish should be tasted quickly, just one bite is enough, and the delicious food should not be eaten endlessly; "slow" means that It means that after the food enters the mouth, it should be allowed to slide slowly on the tip of the tongue, mouth and even the esophagus to release all the flavors.

Vomiting means spitting out the food you are tasting, because you cannot swallow the delicious food after entering your mouth. You can only chew it slowly in your mouth and taste its taste. If you swallow the food all at once, there will definitely be something in your mouth. There is a lingering aroma, which may affect the feeling of the next sip. For this reason, Tut makes the tasting professional and notarized. If you are an ordinary person, if a delicacy that you rarely taste is placed in front of you, wouldn't it be a kind of torture if you have to spit it out after chewing enough? You can't fully enjoy the delicious food in your mouth, and only the taster can experience it. Tasting food is not a bad thing. Although most sommeliers are chefs, it is not easy to be truly trained to be a taster. For ordinary people, it may be enough to know whether the food is good or bad, but this explanation is not enough for professional tasters. The taster must be able to use appropriate and correct vocabulary to describe the dishes. It is indeed not an easy task to express personal intangible physiological feelings with some nouns, verbs and adjectives that everyone can understand.

In addition, aside from cooking experience, what a taster needs most is a tongue that is sensitive but not sensitive. Master Dong told reporters, "The tongue is the key organ of human taste, so it is also the "eating" part of the taster. It must be protected at ordinary times. First of all, it must not get angry, otherwise it will definitely affect the taste; secondly, it must pay attention to the diet, and usually eat more Eat light food and don’t over-stimulate your taste buds.” So being a food taster is definitely not a good job.

In fact, everyone has different requirements for dishes. Some like salty dishes, while others like them lighter. Therefore, in ordinary life, everyone is a taster and everyone can comment on dishes. The place where sommeliers appear should be some food conferences and new dish promotion meetings in hotels. In fact, this is not the case. There are three, six or nine levels of tasters. Those who appear at the review meeting are experts in the culinary field or nutrition and belong to the professional level, also known as gourmet reviewers; while the amateur level is the chief executive of major hotels. kitchen. In Quanzhou, most sommeliers are still amateurs, and their workplace is the kitchen where they cook. Before each dish is served, it needs to go through the "eye" of the head chef to ensure that it tastes right before it can be served. As we all know, there are eight major cuisines in China, and each place has different cooking methods for dishes. Moreover, in professional competitions, every dish is made by a famous chef, so it is natural to "pick a bone between eggs". The job of a sommelier.