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Despite reports of strong sales in 2015, sommeliers are being hit by big challenges that could signal the end to the kind of influence that they wield in the market today. In the way that once powerful restaurant maitre d’s have now largely been replaced by hosts whose jobs are to seat people, sommeliers may also see their roles within NYC restaurants diminish. Why might that be? Let’s take a look at what is changing. A lot that is positive and encouraging has been said about the emerging no-tipping trend, but it is hard to see how it will do anything for sommeliers in New York except reduce their numbers. This is because sommelier jobs on the floor skyrocketed after New York City restaurants were hit with a series of tip-focused lawsuits. Six and seven-person sommelier teams emerged in restaurants within groups that previously employed much fewer. Restaurateurs were being sued for big money for subsidizing kitchen help and management functions out of tip pools, and hiring more sommeliers was hit on as a reliable solution to the changing landscape. Floor sommeliers could receive tips, but also take up some of the slack being left in the wake of fewer managers, fewer maitre d’s, and fewer captains on the floor. It was the legal answer to a challenging situation for operators looking to meet budgets. But moving to a no-tipping model means that restaurants will be able to distribute wages however they see fit. The smart bet is that some of that money will immediately go to kitchen labor. The kitchen side of the equation is something that an increased amount of sommeliers had not been able to solve. At the same time, the momentum will likely shift away from larger sommelier teams and back into more all-purpose management jobs. The sommelier surge was a temporary solution that seems to have run its course. At the same time, no-tipping means higher prices on wine lists, and that may deter consumers from buying more bottles. Prosecco sales are soaring in the United States. Rosé has been on fire as well. One aspect that these categories often share is that consumers don’t feel that they need a recommendation when making a choice among them. Consumers are comfortable purchasing these wines on their own. This is especially true of first-time wine buyers. Nielsen recently noted that, in the States, one third of Prosecco’s massive growth has come from buyers that never bought sparkling wine before. Prosecco is an entry point for consumers who are new to wine. What’s worth noting about that is that Prosecco is not a sommelier-driven category. Sommeliers typically shun Prosecco, and there are New York City wine directors that have gone on record as refusing to offer a Prosecco. What’s important about this is that although we think of sommeliers as introducing people to wine, it seems that consumers are choosing to find their own way into wine and that they are gravitating towards categories where a sommelier’s advice isn’t needed. In the same way that some movies are "critic proof," obtaining large ticket sales even if the reviews for them are lukewarm, some wines have become "sommelier proof." A blow to consumer confidence in sommeliers has come from sommeliers themselves. It is now common — and not only common, but expected — that sommeliers will shill for their friends and their friends' wines when speaking to the press. The excitement that sommeliers repeatedly express for wines in the press is wholly at odds with their level of excitement for those same wines in private, but this no longer applies to just one or two people who are fluent in media training — this is pretty much the industry at this point. Over and over again sommeliers publicly go on record endorsing wines that have little going for them on their own merits in the market except for some sort of personal tie with the sommelier. This is at odds with what brought sommeliers to such prominence in the first place — which is that sommeliers introduced consumers to new wines that offered superb value in the face of a wine writing establishment that often continued to predictably endorse their own favorites even as prices for those wines skyrocketed and left most consumers behind. Sommeliers stayed with consumers and offered them great wines in their price range when critics didn’t. In place of that, a certain cynicism has set in with sommeliers in that they don’t seem to think readers will be able to tell the difference between a good recommendation and a personally motivated one. This has already been toxic to the reputation of sommeliers in general and will only continue to be more damaging unless the sommeliers themselves change their tune. As regulations governing the interstate shipping of wine have gradually eased following a 2005 United States Supreme Court ruling, the landscape for wine sales has also changed. 41 states now allow shipments of wine from wineries located out of state, while it used to be only nine states. This means that many domestic wineries, both large and small, have shifted their model to one that emphasizes direct-to-consumer sales. The impetus for this is easy to understand: if they sell direct, wineries keep for themselves the margin that would have gone to a distributor. A winery can make twice as much on a bottle of wine sold direct as they would on a bottle of wine sold through distribution. Struggling wineries know that the number one item on the action list for profitability is increasing the amount of direct-to-consumer sales, and it has become the common strategy for many wineries, struggling or not. The idea is to build relationships with private consumers directly, bypassing distribution and restaurants. Now that more states allow direct shipping the wineries have more incentive to focus on building their own mailing list, and to invest in hospitality centers and tasting rooms aimed at private consumers, not trade buyers. The idea is to build relationships with private consumers directly, bypassing distribution and restaurants. This is especially fruitful for wineries because those private buyers who have established a relationship with a winery are much more loyal in their purchases year after year than the fickle trade buyers, who are quick to move on to the next new thing to keep their own customers excited. It is also true that a relatively small amount of consumers act as an outsize portion of the total wine market. A relative handful of people, measured in the thousands, buy an outsize amount of wine.
