The development of sommeliers in China

In recent years, China’s wine market has become extremely hot, with a large number of foreign brands entering the Chinese market. Now, as the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo are approaching, a huge tourist source market will surely be formed, and correspondingly, the service quality of the catering and hotel industries will also be greatly improved. Facing a variety of diversified international tourism business people, sommeliers, heavyweights in the catering and hotel industries who represent high-end services, have also begun to become a sought-after professional talent in the market. More and more people have realized that in order to develop better, our country must cultivate its own sommeliers.

Literally, a sommelier seems to refer to a waiter responsible for serving drinks in hotels and restaurants, but in fact a good sommelier has multiple roles and responsibilities. Not only restaurants need sommeliers, but their job is not just to suggest how to pair wine with dishes. He should have knowledge of wine cellar management, wine storage conditions, understanding and judgment of the value and characteristics of wine, and wine lists (corresponding to (for the composition of the menu), buying wine, storing wine, providing suggestions to guests... If you are a sommelier in a supermarket, you may need to understand the consumption structure and the needs of consumer groups. Their work is closer to purchasing advice, and Rather than making personal, one-course recommendations in a restaurant, they are overall commercial wine consultants. However, no matter which one they are, sommeliers are the embodiment of professional wine knowledge. They have noble temperament, good cultivation and extraordinary self-confidence, and they have mastered social consumption habits, wine tasting tastes, food culture, taste trends... …

In the European and American catering industry, the position of sommelier, which is not available in traditional Chinese restaurants, can be regarded as one of the value indicators. Even in a gourmet country like France with a high concentration of good restaurants, there is only Only high-end restaurants have professionals like sommeliers. For restaurant guests, if the chef is the person who creates taste, the sommelier is the person who weaves imagination through a deep dialogue between the language of wine and the taste of food; for a restaurant, the sommelier is the person who manages the wine treasure. , and only he knows the value of this treasure best. Therefore, in European and American countries, the level of sommeliers is often a symbol of the quality of catering; the number of sommeliers in a restaurant also indicates the society's taste for exquisite cuisine. However, in China, sommelier is still a new profession that has emerged quietly and is not familiar to the public. Currently, in some international hotels or high-end Western restaurants, there are very few formally trained sommeliers. According to relevant personnel, there are only about a dozen full-time sommeliers in China, all of whom are concentrated in five-star hotels. Most of them are deputy managers in charge of Western restaurants, and they are often sommeliers hired at high prices from abroad. Therefore, in order to welcome the upcoming World Expo and Olympic Games, and to serve foreign guests and tourists better and more professionally, the Chinese sommelier industry has great significance and good career prospects.