(Editor’s Note: This guest post about last week’s Texas Sommelier Conference comes from San Francisco food, wine and spirits writer Jordan Mackay, a James Beard Award-winning author for his 2010 book with Rajat Parr, “Secrets of the Sommeliers.” But we knew him when!)

At TEXSOM, if you were not in a suit and tie, you’d have been likely to feel underdressed. But that’s part of the culture at the Texas Sommelier Conference: everyone’s suited up most all the time. Yet, thanks to the fact that they’re tasting wine all day, they’re likely still having more fun than you.

And when they’re not drinking wine, they’re drinking coffee. And when they’re not drinking coffee, they’re drinking Campari, which the bartender of the lobby bar in the Four Seasons at Las Colinas, where the convention took place, told me the hotel stocks up on before the conference. The thirsty, wined-out sommeliers likely drink as much of the red Italian aperitif (with soda or in Negronis), he said, as the hotel goes through the rest of the year. (Other preferred non-wine alcoholic beverages included Aperol and Fernet Branca, as well as mezcal.)

The bulk of the conference is taken up with education. In-depth wine seminars ran constantly for two days as heavily credentialed experts discoursed from the dais on subjects like “Grenache around the World” and “Red Wines of Burgundy’s Cote d’Or” to hundreds sitting quietly in the audience, taking notes and trying not to spill any of the eight glasses of wine they had lined up before them.

And all the while this was going on, a crew of masters from the Court of Master Sommeliers, the premier sommelier training and certification organization in the world, was putting 23 young sommeliers through a grueling multi-day examination to determine the winner of the Texas Best Sommelier 2011. The ultimate champion, Bill Elsey, was crowned at TEXSOM’s concluding event, the Grand Tasting, at which dozens of invited wineries and importers poured their wares for all the convention’s attendees.

TEXSOM is of particular relevance to me as, when I left Austin and Texas Monthly in 2001 to pursue my own interest in wine outside Texas, there were, to my knowledge, no dedicated sommeliers in Austin. I hardly knew what a sommelier was when I arrived in San Francisco later that year. Yet destiny led me to fall in love with and, in 2006, marry, a sommelier. Last year, I published Secrets of the Sommeliers. These days, as I learned at TEXSOM, Austin has several sommeliers, like the spirited June Rodil (who won Texas Best Sommelier in 2009) of Congress and the affable Mark Sayre of the Four Seasons (2007’s winner).

Texas has long been an important place for wine, even if it wasn’t noted for its sommelier community. Rebecca Murphy, who was one of the first members of the modern sommelier profession in Texas, starting in Dallas in 1972, remembers there being no culture of the professional wine steward. “I was working by myself, figuring out how to be a sommelier on the job,” she said. Today Murphy writes periodically on wine for the Dallas Morning News and runs its wine competition (more…)

Tagged: Bill Elsey, Court of Master Sommeliers, Drew Hendricks, Jordan Mackay, Rajat Parr, Rebecca Murphy, sommeliers, texas, Texas Sommelier Conference, wine

TEXSOM. Say it like it sounds. Tech-Somm. No, it’s not a new form of Texas cuisine, as in Tex-Mex. And no, it’s not a new style of Texas line dancing blended with the Samba. It stands for the Texas Sommelier Conference and if you’re in the wine industry, you’ve at least heard of it, if not become a regular attender.

TEXSOM 2011 was held just last week at the Four Seasons Hotel Resort and Club in Colinas following the Court of Master Sommeliers Level 1 Course and exam. It’s actually the only one of its kind in the country. Formed by Texas-based Master Sommeliers James Tidwell of the Four Seasons Las Colinas and Drew Hendricks of Pappas Bros., the conference is a central meeting place where sommeliers from across the nation (and globe) congregate to network, brush up on characteristics of specific grape varietals, regions, and basically taste a whole lot of wine. (In one day alone, I counted a total of 42 wines tasted. And just to be clear, no one with any common sense actually drinks the wine completely; you taste and spit, otherwise you’d be a stumbling fool.)

James Tidwell and Drew Hendricks

In its 8th year, the event, hosted by the not-for-profit organizations Texas Sommelier Association and the Wine and Food Foundation of Texas, has attracted more than 2,200 wine professionals from across the United States.

“Every year, the conference reflects greater diversity,” says Tidwell. “This year we featured an amazing vertical tasting with celebrated winemaker Serge Hochar, who traveled all the way from Lebanon and shared wines dating back to 1969. No other conference integrates all levels of the business and welcomes the public like this one does.”

In addition to the unparralleled experience of having Serge Hochar from Chateau de Musar–a rare occassion that brought a hush over a room full of sommeliers–TEXSOM hosted it’s annual competition to determine the Best Texas Sommelier of the Year, a key component that occurs in the background of the conference for a hand-picked 20 candidates from across the state. To participate, candidates must be a current resident of Texas and must not have passed the Court of Master Sommeliers’ Advanced Exam.

This year the distinction went to Bill Elsey, Director of Sales for D’Amore Wine Selections a wine distribution company owned by Duchman Family Winery.  Elsey outperformed his fellow Texas compatriots in an intense three-part examination involving service, blind tasting, and theory and proctored by a panel of Master Sommelier judges. (more…)

Tagged: Bill Elsey, Drew Hendricks, Duchman Family Winery, James Tidwell, TexSom