Get to Know ‘Somm Essentials’

David Glancy Explains the Importance of His School’s Latest Program

Somm Essentials is a 2-week intensive program developed by Master Sommelier David Glancy to provide broad knowledge across multiple beverage categories for students starting out in the food & beverage industry or those looking to polish their skills or broaden their skill base. It offers students a unique convergence of industry and product knowledge with service and tasting skills that are critical to staying competitive in today’s hospitality industry.The purpose of the program is to help students develop a solid, high-performance foundation for all beverage-related career tracks. It is ideal for waiters, bartenders, foodservice managers, tasting room staff, and food writers, as well as those pursuing sommelier and other wine credentials.

The program includes preparation for the Hospitality/Beverage Specialist credential from the Society of Wine Educators, but goes far beyond it in scope, rigorously covering beverage service, blind wine tasting, and food and wine pairing—all areas necessary to move your career to the next level.  Importantly, the program also goes beyond wine and includes education on the fundamental elements and styles of tea, coffee, bottled water, beer, wine, sake, and spirits, as well as each of their production techniques. The Official Society of Wine Educators’ Hospitality/Beverage Specialist Study Guide is included in enrollment as a supplement to instructor guidance and additional educational materials from San Francisco Wine School.

David Glancy, Master Sommelier, on the importance of Somm Essentials: “Based on my experience as a Master Sommelier and helping hundreds of students earn their Certified Sommelier titles,” explains Glancy “there is a clear need to provide a robust overview of the beverage and wine world before delving more deeply into wine regions. Attaining a deeper understanding of coffee, tea, spirits, mixology, beer, and sake before students fine tune their wine knowledge, will give their education a much better platform for success. So often these areas are forgotten until higher levels of study, and in my opinion that leads to a disconnect. There are so many important parallels and common themes across the beverage world. Students should internalize them from the start to serve a client base that is growing more sophisticated by the day. In addition, I have seen too many students in CSW or pursuing sommelier-level education who lacked crucial service and blind tasting skills, I knew I wanted to cover those aspects in our foundation-level program. From a wine career perspective, they are skills that must be introduced correctly early on.”