Sluiman, with a chuffed Bains in attendance to cheer his boys on; Tobias Brauweiler from Hakkasan; and Mathias Camilleri from Medlar, with female contenders the only notable absence. “It’s not like there aren’t many female som- meliers out there now, there are – my number two and my number three at Hotel TerraVina are female sommeliers. We need to encourage more women to enter,” urges Basset, later. This came after the regional finals, which this year included Brighton for the first time in addition to Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol and London. “We had an overwhelming response to our call for entries. The quality of the contestants across the UK has been outstanding and the regional results were at a very high level,” says Nick Scade, chairman of AFWS. Now it’s Tanguy Martin’s turn to correct
errors on a wine list. The Hotel TerraVina head sommelier gets 30 seconds to spot each mis- take. There are six errors in all, yet we can only spot two – Coates & Seely are Hampshire win- emakers, not Sussex, as it declares on the list, and Cloudy Bay’s Te Koko is a Sauvignon Blanc, not a Chardonnay. We find out later that Hugel, not Trimbach, makes the Schoellhammer Riesling; that Pomerol heavyweight Le Pin didn’t declare a vintage in 2003; and that Chilean producer Almaviva’s first vintage was 1996, not 1994. This is hard. “It’s much tougher than I thought it would be,” confesses Roger Jones, chef-proprietor of the Harrow at Little Bedwyn, on his first outing as judge for the competition. The other judges, meanwhile, are scrib- bling away ominously as each answer is deliv- ered: James Handford, a wine merchant and master of wine; Matthieu Longuere, a veteran sommelier who won the UK Sommelier Com- petition in 2000, now at Cordon Bleu; Eric Zwiebel, head sommelier at Summer Lodge in Dorset, who also won the UK competition in 2004; and Nicolas Clerc, a master somme- lier who won the UK title in 2007, now at Fields, Morris & Verdin.
Tanguy Martin in the restaurant scenario
The Vineyard at Stockcross’s Romain Bourger
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