The super sommelier: How a new breed of sommeliers like Moor Hall’s Alex Freguin are smashing the

Today’s top sommeliers – such as Sommelier of the Year Alex Freguin at Moor Hall in Lancashire – can balance an unwavering passion and immense knowledge with an accessible attitude. Fiona Sims reports

Forget the pompous Frenchman (and it was always a man) dressed in black with a silver tastevin dangling ritualistically around his neck, today’s sommelier is a very different breed.

For starters, he or she – and there are now many more shes – might be sporting a tattoo. They’ll have lots of Instagram followers. And instead of steering you towards an expensive bottle without first checking your budget, they’ll extract and impart information in a chatty, down-to-earth way, even sharing (when invited) entertaining stories of their travels in wine country.

We have to thank, in part, the economic crisis over a decade ago. Restaurants lost their starchiness as people watched their wallets. Then natural wine became a thing – wine suddenly had a younger, hungrier audience, and natural wine was their way in.

By the time Netflix had rolled out its cult-hit documentary Somm in 2013 (which followed four sommeliers studying for the tough Master Sommelier exam), and its equally engaging sequels, the veil had well and truly dropped. Instead of being feared, sommeliers were revered, much like their celebrity chef counterparts – cue the super sommelier.
 

“I’ll go along with that,” nods Alex Freguin, head sommelier of two-Michelin-starred Moor Hall, near Ormskirk, Lancashire, now enjoying super sommelier status as the current holder of the UK Sommelier of the Year title. “Because of those movies, people now understand much more about what we do. It shows just what it takes to become a top sommelier,” he says.