Sommeliers glean many transferable skills during their time on the floor, including obvious ones like wine knowledge and customer service, as well the chance to boost their business acumen and experience in accounting, inventory, organization, and negotiation. But for many sommeliers, the time inevitably comes—be it due to burnout, need for schedule flexibility, or the desire to try something different—to transition to a different industry role.
“As much as I loved working in the fast-paced, instant gratification of restaurants, I was missing too much,” says Elise Cordell, a former sommelier who is now the brand ambassador for Champagnes for Pernod Ricard USA. “I wanted to achieve a bit more balance in my work and home life.”
However, it can be daunting to figure out which positions you’re well equipped for and how to negotiate the switch. We asked six former sommeliers who now work in wine sales, distribution, writing, consulting, and education for their advice on how to pivot.
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Leverage Your Network
For nearly a decade, Brooke Sabel worked in a “dream role” as the wine director for New Jersey luxury resort Natirar, but in 2017, she became the wine director for Gary’s Wine & Marketplace, which offered a more flexible schedule. Even there, though, pandemic burnout and the need to care for an ailing parent stirred her desire for another transition. Last year, Sabel’s longtime friend Andy Peay reached out to offer her a job as the national sales and marketing director for Peay Vineyards.
Sabel recommends that anyone looking to make a similar change draw on former contacts to research options and interests. “Utilize your network and keep in communication with leaders in publishing, distribution, importing or supplying,” she suggests. Somms with collector contacts might be suited to a retail position; those who relish marketing, logistics, and building portfolios might excel in distributing or importing; and if you have amassed a network of on- and off-premise buyers, you may consider pursuing a supplier role.
“There are opportunities big and small hiding wherever you are,” says Rachel DelRocco Terrazas, an Arizona-based writer, editor, and copywriter. “The wine industry is a supportive community of people to share their stories, ideas and help you find opportunities.”
After a wine writing retreat at the TexSom Awards, DelRocco Terrazas decided she wanted to transition away from the long and late hours as a sommelier at Camerata at Paulie’s in Houston to focus on writing and research. (Her then fiancé, now husband was also transferred to Oaxaca City, Mexico, so she viewed that as a sign to take the plunge and try something new and bold.) Terrazas sent email inquiries and reached out on social media to companies that piqued her interest—even if they weren’t hiring—arranging for coffee or virtual meetups if they weren’t local. She took any opportunity to flex her writing, including launching a blog and offering media and newsletter takeovers, and eventually landed editor gigs at Wine & Spirits Magazine and The Vintner Project.
Wine organizations were offered helpful networks to Cordell when she decided to leave her role as a sommelier and assistant manager at a steakhouse in 2014, in favor of a premium account specialist role in fine wines at an import company, which offered better benefits and a flexible schedule.
“There are so many great resources these days that are focusing on mentoring and fostering the next generation of beverage professionals,” says Cordell. She cites Bâtonnage and Women of the Vine & Spirits, both geared towards women wine professionals, as being particularly helpful, as well as GuildSomm, local chapters of the United States Bartenders’ Guild, and groups like Wine Unify.
Reimagine Your Skill Set
Sommeliers have a broad range of skills in their arsenal that make them well-suited for many other opportunities, according to Raj Vaidya. It may just be a matter of figuring out how to repurpose them outside of restaurants.
“You need to be able to read people, empathize and collaborate within a team, keep cool under pressure, be highly organized and able to delegate and prioritize,” says the former sommelier, who was the international wine director for Daniel Boulud; now he serves as the director of operations for New York-based wine consultancy company Pressoir.
In his case, sales experience picked up from the floor, where he needed to strike a balance between providing customers with the best experience and making a profit for the restaurant, had to be tweaked. Consulting, after all, is all about being an advocate for the client, telling a collector, for example, why or why not to purchase a particular bottle.
Whatever your new pursuit, it’s important to remember your previous perspective. “The sommelier you are trying to sell to has that all too familiar full inbox and is short on time,” says Vaidya. “Empathy is the best way to get them to trust, appreciate, and eventually engage in business with you.”
DelRocco Terrazas has also been able to draw on her previous experience for her new career path. “Curating a wine list or a bar menu takes creativity, experimentation, research, and talent,” she says. “Sommeliers sell wine in approachable and fun ways—writing is that but just in a different form.”
Gillian Ballance, MS, agrees that “skills developed on the floor can be transferred to many different facets of the supplier and distributor side of the business.” After feeling a little “stifled” after two decades in roles at places including Windows on the World in New York City and Cavallo Point in Sausalito, California, she became the West Coast wine educator for Treasury Wine Estates in 2014.
What’s helped contribute to success in her current position as senior education manager is the ability to communicate about wine with people at all different levels. “You can really ‘read’ a room after years on the floor,” she says. Coming from the buyer side, Ballance has helped the sales team to rethink their approach to selling wine as a sommelier would on the floor: by using an elevator pitch and evocative descriptors about the bottle.
Still, though, while Olivia Moravec, a Manhattan and Brooklyn sales representative at Skurnik Wines, says that while some of a sommelier’s skills transfers into sales and distribution, including wine knowledge, storytelling abilities, and interpersonal communication, others are better curated through wider experience as a beverage director.
“In many ways, the job of a sales rep is to also help both retail and restaurants with questions like: ‘How much should I list this bottle for?’ or ‘What’s a common mark up?’” says Moravec. If the portfolio includes spirits as well as wine, former somms will also need to learn to be well-versed in the pricing structures of those bottles, and even cocktail-menu building.
Manage Your Expectations for Starting Salaries and Levels
Cordell cautions against thinking that just because you come armed with ample knowledge of vintages and vineyards, you’ll be a shoo-in for any job title that starts with “wine.” “Many companies see this as something they can teach you,” she points out. “Think about skills that set you apart from others in your field,” such as social media promotion or event production, and highlight those during the application and interview process.
Depending on the company and in which sector of the industry your desired new role fits, your salary may be comparable to what you earned as a somm—or not. When Moravec, who had stints running wine programs in Boston and serving as the dining room manager at Eleven Madison Park in New York, decided to trade the somm life for a career in importing and distribution, she knew there were companies that would have allowed her to start as as sales rep right off the bat. However, it was important for her to work with a portfolio she was passionate about, so she only applied at Skurnik.
This meant taking a 30 percent pay cut for an entry-level job on the sales support team before a sales position opened up about five months later. “Financially this was a big risk, but now I’m more successful in my job because I took the time to get to know the fundamental business pieces that were not self explanatory from the sommelier perspective,” says Moravec.
DelRocco Terrazas says it helps to keep in mind that you might expect to start in an entry-level position, like she did at Wine & Spirits Magazine, leveraging it as a chance for advancement. Yet she admits that without her previous wine experience, even those entry-level roles would have been difficult to crack.
Still, she advises to push aside feelings of imposter syndrome and go for it. “Write that email, send that DM, post the post,” says DelRocco Terrazas. “Everyone else is just another person or human and we’re all trying to figure out how to live our happiest and healthiest lives within our career.”
Dispatch
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Kelly Magyarics is a wine, spirits, travel, and lifestyle writer in the Washington, D.C. area who holds the WSET Diploma. You can reach her on her website, kellymagyarics.com and on Twitter and Instagram @kmagyarics.
