Tag Archives: Court of Master Sommeliers

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Winecast 54: Melanie Ofenloch and wine’s #MeToo moment

Melanie Ofenloch
Melanie Ofenloch: Yes, wine has a good old boys network.

“It’s something that is so pervasive and such a part of the fabric of how men feel they can take things. It’s just not right.”

• Melanie’s post about the podcast and the sommelier sex scandal

Melanie Ofenloch writes the Dallas Wine Chick blog, and is well regarded for her work. But that’s not her day job — she is a long-time top-level marketer, and she has traveled the world for a variety of multi-national companies. As such, she lends a unique perspective to wine’s #MeToo moment.

And, not surprisingly, says Melanie, the Court of Master Sommelier sex scandal is no different than anything she has seen in the business world. The surprise is that so many people accepted it as part of the culture. But the stories that have come out, she says, don’t even scratch the surface.

So why were people in wine so complacent? Why did it take so long for this to come out? Why did it happen in wine, which prides itself on being different? And what can be done to fix it?

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 13 minutes long and takes up almost 9 megabytes. Quality is mostly excellent.

Sommelier cheating scandal just part of larger, more devastating problems at Court of Master Sommeliers

sommelier cheating scandalNew York Times report cites long-time pattern of sexual abuse, harassment, and assault that predates the sommelier cheating scandal

Nov. 3: update: The Times reports that the court has suspended seven of its male members, including co-founder Fred Dame, in the wake of its Oct. 29 story that detailed widespread sexual harassment and intimidation of women in the organization. Another male member resigned on Sunday. The seven suspended members will be subject to an external investigation.

Oct. 29: Someone asked me, after the sommelier cheating scandal broke, if we would ever know exactly what happened. That’s because the Court of Master Sommeliers had done a Nixonian job of stonewalling. It had found a scapegoat and intimidated members, and the Winestream Media was more than happy to accept the court’s version of what had happened.

So I told them: Not until the New York Times gets into this.

Well, the Times did. And those of us who suspected that the cheating scandal was just one sad and sorry part of something much bigger were correct.

The Times reported on Thursday that 21 women said “that they have been sexually harassed, manipulated or assaulted by male master sommeliers. They, and other current and former members of the court, say the abuse is a continuing problem of which its leadership has long been aware.“

In addition, said the story, improper sexual relationships may have been part of the cheating scandal, and that this “dynamic has turned a system that should provide mentorship and equal opportunity to women into a bastion of sexual harassment and coercion.”

The piece is well-reported, with almost a dozen women quoted by name and on the record that male sommeliers made sexual advances, often with promises of preferential treatment if the women complied. Twitter screenshots, in fact. In addition, it cites at least one case of disciplinary action taken against male sommeliers for improper sexual behavior that the court didn’t publicly acknowledge at the time.

So why did it take two years after the cheating scandal for this to come to light? Because those of us who cared didn’t have the resources to report the story. And those of the Winestream Media that had the resources didn’t care enough. And that’s because the wine business and the Winestream Media feed off of each other – samples, trips, and perks – so that each can further its own cause.

That’s why sommelier Richard Hemming, MW, called it an incestuous relationship during a podcast, and that it’s difficult – if not impossible – for wine writers to be objective. “Why should [consumers] trust us? They shouldn’t, necessarily,” he told me.

Because for the wine business. making money trumps all – even cheating and sexual harassment. I don’t know why that still surprises me.

More about the sommelier cheating scandal:
• Winecast 39: Mark Greenblatt and the sommelier cheating scandal
• The sommelier cheating scandal: Once again, wine reminds us it’s big business

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Winecast 39: Mark Greenblatt and the sommelier cheating scandal

sommelier cheating scandal
Mark Greenblatt

How did the sommelier cheating scandal get to the point where people are afraid to talk about what happened?

Newsy’s Mark Greenblatt broke last week’s story detailing the possibility of more trouble at the Court of Master Sommeliers in the wake of last year’s sommelier cheating scandal. That’s when someone gave the list of wines for the blind tasting portion of the test to at least one candidate. Then, the results of the exam were “invalidated” and the sommelier group insisted all else was fine. We’ve heard nary a word since then.

That’s when Greenblatt, a long-time investigative reporter, got interested. There should be more transparency when something like this happens, he says, just as with any sort of accreditation process. People who work hard to get the MS initials deserve at least that much. And that it hasn’t happened, says Greenblatt, may speak to larger problems within the court, including possible conflicts of interest.

What struck me during our conversation was that so many sommeliers and candidates are afraid to talk to Greenblatt for fear of retribution from the court. Hence, the need for anonymous sources and leaked documents – hardly something that should happen in the wine business.

We talked about what has happened in the wake of the Newsy story, the followup that Greenblatt is working on, and why no one in the wine media did much with the story after it first became public. If you want to email Greenblatt, click this link.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is almost 11 minutes long and takes up 4.3 megabytes. The sound quality is excellent.

The sommelier cheating scandal just won’t go away

• Podcast with Newsy journalist Mark Greenblatt: People are afraid to talk about what happened

Newsy website reports that sommelier cheating scandal may be part of more extensive problems at Court of Master Sommeliers

Remember last year’s sommelier cheating scandal, which grabbed the cyber-headlines and then mysteriously disappeared? The Newsy website reports that the scandal may be part of larger problems at the organization that oversees the master sommelier program.

“[S]everal current master sommeliers are going public for the first time by speaking to Newsy,” reports the website. “They have grown concerned about more ‘systemic’ problems plaguing the Court of Master Sommeliers, the nonprofit governing body that administers the group’s exams.”

The report – you can watch it in the video at the top of the post or read the transcript – outlines what appears to be an attempt to stonewall outsiders from finding out exactly what happened.  All we know is that someone gave the list of wines for the blind tasting portion of the test to at least one candidate, the results were then invalidated, and the sommelier group said all else was fine.

Since then, the court has revised its code of ethics to include a provision that would punish master sommeliers who criticized the organization: Newsy reports that the new code “warned of ‘disciplinary action’ for ‘any action or utterance’ by a master sommelier that ‘could be construed as detrimental’ to the Court’s good name.’ ”

Says one master sommelier in the report: “I took that as, you know, ‘Be quiet. Don’t question our authority or we’ll kick you out. There are some fundamental things that are wrong.”

None of this is surprising. I made a few phone calls in the aftermath of the scandal, and couldn’t even get anyone to talk off the record. They didn’t want to talk at all; as one well-known master sommelier told me, “I advised them to go public, and they ignored me. It’s their problem now.”

The reason for the group’s behavior is not surprising: money and power. As I wrote last year, “Sommelier-ing has become an industry in and of itself – movies, even. Sommeliers are the current rock stars of the wine business, perhaps even more quoted and revered than the celebrity winemakers who used to dominate the discussion.”

But the minute it looks like those MS initials are worthless, all of that collapses. So the court, according to the Newsy report, has done all it can to make sure no one finds out exactly what happened. And, if anyone does find out, to punish them for telling the rest of us.

It’s also not surprising that a Mainstream Media outlet had to pursue the story. There’s little incentive for the Winestream Media to follow up on the scandal. It has almost as much invested in turning sommeliers into rock stars as the sommeliers do. Who do you think put all these people on a pedestal in the first place?