Opposing Viewpoints from the Sommelier Community

Sommeliers Speak Out

After publishing our omnibus examination of the failures and contradictions inside the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas, the response was immediate—and, in some quarters, furious. A number of prominent sommeliers wrote to us directly, objecting not only to our conclusions but to the legitimacy of the questions themselves.

What follows are representative excerpts from those responses. We removed ad hominem attacks and edited for clarity and length. The full, unedited comments remain publicly available beneath the original article. What matters here is not tone, but substance.

Several Master Sommeliers argued that we had confused individual identity with institutional responsibility. Others dismissed the article as rumor-driven, politically motivated, or fundamentally ignorant of nonprofit governance. A few rejected outright the idea that the Court bears any responsibility—moral or structural—for broader problems in the restaurant industry, including sexual harassment and abuse.

 If I’m reading this right, you are somehow responsible for your employer’s political views? Also, does the author have evidence about sexual violence as it directly relates to the court? If so I would be interested to see that. But it doesn’t seem to be in the article… The author’s arguments are non-sequiturs and their basic misunderstanding of how non-profits work leads them to sensationalist conclusions.

STEVEN MCDONALD, MASTER SOMMELIER
COURT OF MASTER SOMMELIERS
SOMMELIER AT PAPPAS BROS. STEAKHOUSE, TEXAS

Whispers are not facts. They are usually derived from individuals scorned over not passing some level of the exams. Perhaps before deciding to take down an organization over rumor and conjecture….take part in CMS with an open mind and see for yourself what is fact and fiction.

Brandon Tebbe, Master Sommelier
Court of Master Sommeliers
Lead Sommelier at Encore Boston Harbor

As both a female and a Democrat, I do not believe a boycott is reasonable. It’s ridiculous to hold individuals responsible for the donations or political leanings of the company they are employed by.

I also don’t agree with the claim that you have to know the “right” people to succeed, since I had NO master sommelier recommendation letters and still got into the exams.

To blame the Court for the harassment of women in the wine industry and various other offenses listed, without so much as mentioning the disparities of giant wine corporations such as Constellation or other educational routes such as WSET or CWE, is both irresponsible and biased.

ANDREA BOULANGER, ADVANCED SOMMELIER
COURT OF MASTER SOMMELIERS
LEAD SOMMELIER AT AUREOLE LAS VEGAS

As a Master of Wine (MW) candidate and person of color, I believe this entire outlook is absolute insanity… I also believe that automatically assuming a person, business, or organization is immediately evil because they are Republican shows a level of ignorance that ironically is what they are complaining about… Of course, I am against sexual violence (being a victim), as well as hate and prejudice (being a victim), but to look at the world and this organization in such a narrow-minded, ignorant, and purely fascist way makes you no better than what you are fighting against.

BRIAN BROWNING, MASTER OF WINE CANDIDATE
The Institute of Masters of Wine
BREAKTHRU BEVERAGE, NEVADA

The SOMM View

In short, the objections clustered around three claims.

• First, that individuals should not be held accountable for the politics of their employers or colleagues.
• Second, that the Court cannot be blamed for sexual violence in the hospitality industry absent a direct causal link.
• Third, that our criticism reflects partisan bias rather than good-faith inquiry.

These arguments deserve to be addressed carefully, because they reveal a persistent misunderstanding of what the Court is—and what it claims to be.

The Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas is not a private company. It is not a loose professional club. It is a nonprofit trade association, organized under section 501(c)(6) of the tax code and incorporated in California. That status confers benefits—chief among them, tax exemption—but it also imposes obligations.

Under California law, the board of directors bears responsibility for the organization’s acts and omissions. Directors are bound by duties of care and loyalty. Those duties are not symbolic. They are legal and ethical constraints that attach the moment someone agrees to govern a trade body on behalf of an entire profession.

A 501(c)(6) trade association is not permitted to behave like a boutique credentialing business that serves only those with access, influence, or cultural alignment. Its mandate is to promote the common interests of the industry it represents. In the Court’s own words, its charter is education and the improvement of standards across the restaurant and hospitality trade.

That framing matters, because it undercuts the claim that the Court bears no responsibility for the conditions in which its members work.

Trade associations routinely act on workplace safety, ethics, and systemic risk—not because they caused harm, but because they exist to mitigate it. During the height of the #MeToo movement, the American Hotel & Lodging Association coordinated safety-device programs and mandatory training across tens of thousands of hotels. It did so precisely because hotel workers faced elevated risk and the industry required a collective response.

The sommelier workforce is no less exposed. Yet the Court—while asserting that it represents sommeliers as a trade—took no comparable action. No coordinated training. No industry-wide standards. No public acknowledgment of responsibility. Silence, instead, framed as neutrality.

This is where the defense offered by some respondents collapses. The question is not whether the Court directly perpetrated harm. The question is whether it fulfilled the obligations it claims in exchange for its nonprofit status and industry authority.

Equally misplaced is the insistence that criticism of board composition constitutes political shaming. Our reporting did not argue that Republicans are unfit to govern. It argued that a board drawn overwhelmingly from a narrow political, corporate, and demographic slice of the industry cannot plausibly claim to represent the profession as a whole.

If the Court’s membership includes women, Democrats, independents, people of color, and working sommeliers without corporate backing—and it does—then meaningful representation is not optional. It is foundational.

Around 2018, the language changed, and nobody admitted it had.

Calls for accountability were reframed as ideological attacks. Governance questions were recast as personal insults. Structural critique was treated as heresy. That rhetorical shift did not originate with critics of the Court; it originated with institutions accustomed to operating without scrutiny.

We are not asking the Court to confess sins it did not commit. We are asking it to behave like the trade association it insists it is.

That means a board that reflects its members. Transparent governance. A willingness to confront racism and sexual violence as industry problems rather than external inconveniences. And an acknowledgment that prestige does not exempt an institution from responsibility—it heightens it.

If the Court is unwilling or unable to do those things, then the question facing sommeliers is not whether criticism is fair. It is whether continued participation is.