A sommelier’s view of the care, connection and pleasure behind every bottle.
A bottle of wine is a year, or sometimes several, of someone’s work. Inside it are the rain and the sun, the slope where the vines grew, and people who cared for them. All of it waits in the cellar, for a few months or for years, until the time arrives and someone opens it.
That is where, for me, the art of wine experience begins. After years of being a sommelier, I have noticed that people often talk about the wine through its region, vintage or price. But so much of its pleasure comes from what happens once it reaches the table. Wine is alive. It does not simply sit in the glass, it moves and develops. The first aroma is shy, then it opens, and some time later it has become someone else. The flavour arrives, changes on your palate and slowly fades, leaving a memory behind. Wine asks for your attention, and in a life that teaches us to hurry, that pause is already a small luxury.
The same bottle can taste different on a different night, with different people, and it never quite finishes telling you what it has to say. This is why I say that wine has a soul. When you taste it with attention, you taste a place and a moment in time. A winemaker’s hundreds of small decisions. People who worked in the vines long before the wine reached your table. Very few things allow us to hold a place we may never visit. And wine is at its best when it is shared. A good bottle gives people something to talk about. Someone finds cherries, someone else smells herbs or remembers a summer garden. A conversation begins with the wine and continues into everything else. You are enjoying both the glass and the company.
The experience starts long before the first sip. It begins with how you are welcomed, how comfortable you feel, and the conversation that helps you choose. A sommelier’s work is a little like introducing two people who might fall in love: the guest and the wine. A long wine list can feel intimidating, with its unfamiliar names, vintages and prices. You do not need professional vocabulary. “Something light and fresh” or “that wine I loved on holiday” is a perfectly good beginning. I often bring three or four bottles to the table and explain the differences simply. I want guests to feel comfortable with their choice, including the price. Trust grows when people feel heard and can say honestly what they like or dislike. I also love telling the story behind a bottle. But part of the job is knowing how much someone wants to hear. Sometimes a few words are enough. Some want their favourite wine and a quiet evening. Other guests have endless questions. At a celebration, a quiet anniversary or a long business dinner, guests may be happy to be surprised. Sensing which evening it is, without being told, is half of the work.
People often tell me that being a sommelier must be a dream job: drinking wine at work and getting paid for it. I laugh, because the reality is a little different: tasting is only a small part of the work. There are long hours on your feet, constant study, cellar work and the patience needed to look after different people every day. I came to this profession through beauty. My background is in marketing and communication, but when I first watched a documentary about Michelin-starred restaurants, I was captivated by the sommeliers: how gracefully they moved, spoke and poured. I wanted to learn all of it. As I learned, I began to understand how much knowledge, love for wine and care for people go into making that service look so effortless.
Dubai is a city that shines in every direction, and wine there is no exception. At the Burj Al Arab, I had the privilege of opening rare, extraordinary bottles almost daily, more than anywhere else in my career, and meeting people with very different tastes and expectations. Some were familiar with fine dining. Others had dreamed of visiting this place and were carefully planning a special evening. For us, every guest receives the same care, and helping everyone feel comfortable and enjoy every moment is what matters most. This also confirmed something simple: a great evening does not depend on how expensive the bottle is. It depends on who you are sharing it with, what brought you together and how you feel. A wine chosen with care will complement the evening, becoming part of the conversation, the laughter and the pleasure of spending time together. For me, that is the art of wine experience: the joy of everything coming together in that moment.
I still remember many of my guests well, and with some I am in touch to this day. The moments that stay with me are often the small ones. One evening, a gentleman dining alone ordered a half bottle of a young, full-bodied red. I brought a miniature decanter for it. He told me he had never seen one before, and he was so happy that he took pictures of it and shared them with his friends and asked me where he could get one. It was a tiny detail, but it turned a quiet dinner into something he would remember.
Another time, I served a couple who came for a seven-course menu with wine pairing. Over the evening, their interest turned into hours of conversation about producers, winemaking and faraway places. Later, they travelled to some of the places we had talked about. One dinner had become the beginning of a journey, which is what I love most about wine: it rarely ends at the table.
I have felt this from the guest’s side too. After a wonderful meal at a restaurant in Portugal, I received a thank-you card written in my mother tongue, which people often get wrong. Someone had taken the time to look a little further. I still remember how it made me feel.
That is what I try to give every guest. Wine, at its best, is a bridge: between a vineyard and a table, a winemaker and a stranger, one person and another. Whatever the price of the bottle, the art is the same. Pay attention. Slow down. Let the wine speak. Enjoy. And feel that, for that evening, you are the only ones in the room.
