Stars in her eyes

Less than eight years ago she graduated with a humble hospitality degree and her tutors advising her to become a supermarket wine buyer. Now she is a qualified Master Sommelier with a stellar reputation. Chris Losh catches up with Laura Rhys MS to find out how she catapulted her career into the stratosphere

Within 10 minutes of interviewing Laura Rhys MS, I am musing on two things. One is that first impressions can be mightily deceptive, the other is that she would make a good politician.

Before I receive furious phone calls from someone who is undoubtedly one of the brightest young stars in the sommelier firmament, and has surely never tried to get taxpayers to fund a cleaning of her moat, I’d better explain.

My first meeting with Rhys was four years ago when she served my wife and I at TerraVina, the gastro-hotel in the New Forest owned by Gérard Basset MS MW MBA OBE, where she is head sommelier. Petite and brisk, she skipped around the restaurant at phenomenal speed. Always there when you wanted her, never hanging around when you didn’t, no-nonsense in her advice, it was an object lesson in quick, efficient service.

For some reason I thought that the young woman in front of me would talk in the same way she serves: fast, effusive, controlling the process.

In fact, Rhys approaches the interview with the care of an MP being grilled by John Humphrys on the Today programme. Questions are assessed from all angles, rolled around the palate like a wine, and answers carefully considered before being phrased with minute precision. Never has my dictaphone contained so many silences.

In fact, it comes as no surprise that she considered studying law, before a spell as a waitress saw her bitten by the service bug and she enrolled to study hospitality at college. While there, she took the option of a WSET course and that, frankly, was that. She was hooked.

I passed the MS, and I felt like something was missing from my life when it had gone

The problem was that a degree course didn’t really prepare her for a career as a sommelier. ‘It wasn’t the obvious choice for anyone studying that degree, so there wasn’t really anything in place to help anyone who wanted to do that,’ she says.
Not only that, but some of her tutors actively tried to dissuade her from sommeliering in favour of wine buying for supermarkets, because the hours and pay were better. The mind boggles.

What price an education?

Would she, perhaps, have been better off ignoring tertiary education and going straight into a job, I wonder?

‘College was useful for me to work out where I wanted to go,’ she replies. ‘But hospitality isn’t the most academic of courses, and [a degree] is not essential to get a job. I’d have had four more years of on-the-floor experience. There was nothing [in my course] to prepare me for the world of a sommelier.’

Rhys’ first job was at the Hotel du Vin in Winchester. It was both daunting and inspiring in equal parts. Working with Claire Thevenot and Jean-Marie Pratt, Rhys joined a team dedicated to self-improvement. During their time off in the afternoon, they would study and test each other. It was here that Rhys realised how much she still had to learn about wine.

‘I never had a problem with the service, and the hours never bothered me,’ she says. ‘It was that I’d study stuff and not remember it. It used to drive me nuts. I didn’t ever think I’d made the wrong decision [to go into sommeliering], but there were times when I wasn’t sure if I’d make it.’

It must be reassuring for junior sommeliers everywhere to hear such sentiments, and to know that she got through them – partly with the help of the team around her, and partly through sheer bloody-minded determination.

‘I’ve always been quite competitive, that’s why I used to get frustrated when I couldn’t do it,’ she admits. ‘Even if I’d gone into a different work environment, I would probably still have pushed myself.’

Driven or not, the big turnaround for Rhys came when she won a regional heat of the Ruinart UK Sommelier of the Year in 2007. ‘I suddenly thought all the hours of study were starting to pay off,’ she says.

Shortly after that, after two-and-a-half years at Hotel du Vin, she moved to join Basset at his new venture, TerraVina.

‘The fact that Gérard was there was pretty much the only reason I went,’ she says. ‘I just knew that it was his hotel and I had to work with him.’

RHYSIAN RUMINATIONS

‘It was between law and hospitality. I chose hospitality. I’m very glad I did.’

‘There’s a huge support network of Master Sommeliers out there who are happy to help people who are studying. So use it!’

‘I’m very excited by Spain at the moment. There’s always something interesting to taste from there.’

‘I love reading about wine, but I find it hard to sit in front of a long list of the Bordeaux Grand Crus and learn them off by heart.’

‘I’d still like to do some travelling. I haven’t done enough of that.’

‘The key to good service is: attention to detail, enthusiasm and an understanding that you’re giving the guest what they want

A masterful mentor

Leaving Hotel du Vin as an assistant sommelier and starting at TerraVina as head sommelier obviously made sense, too. And it was here that the advantages of working for the celebrated Basset became obvious. His reputation as a selfless trainer is well-established, and he managed to combine giving Rhys responsibility with acting as a safety net should she ever struggle or make mistakes. He helped a lot with putting the first list together, but within six months had handed all of the ordering over to his new recruit, while keeping a watchful eye on her progress.

Once again, the environment was one of self-improvement, and Rhys began studying for her Master Sommelier (MS) qualification in 2009. She passed the practical the first year, gaining the theory and tasting parts in 2010. To sommeliers struggling to fit life around the demands of the job, it sounds like a big commitment, and Rhys doesn’t make light of it.

‘It does take over your life while you’re doing it,’ she says. But having got those two prestigious letters after her name, that more or less guarantee professional kudos, the end of such intensity and pressure led to an unforeseen sense of deflation.

‘When I passed I was really happy, but I felt like something was missing from my life when it had gone,’ she says. ‘I’m thinking about doing the Sommelier du Monde. The next one is in 2013, so I’ve a couple of years to train for it. It might fill the MS-shaped hole in my life.’

There’s a Laura-like pause, then a hugely infectious giggle as she realises the implication of what she’s said. ‘Oh! I’ve turned into a competition junkie!’

Knowing how competitive and self-motivated Rhys is, taking on the Sommelier du Monde challenge is not something which would be entered into lightly. She admits she’s unlikely to win it first time (indeed, her mentor at TerraVina famously entered it for what seemed like 50 years before triumphing in 2010). And that could make for a collision between professional ambition and domestic possibilities.

‘I wouldn’t expect to win it first time,’ she says. ‘But I couldn’t not carry on, because I know what I’m like. I’d want to do it again in 2016 and 2019. But you need to find a balance between family life and career.’

The difficulties of female sommeliers leaving the profession in their mid-30s when domestic/family demands get too much are an apparently insoluble problem for the hospitality industry. And Rhys tiptoes around the issue like a cat around a cobra.

‘I don’t know if I could just do lunch services… but then I couldn’t give it up entirely either.’ Long pause. ‘There must be an answer to it, but I haven’t come up with it.’ Pause. ‘I’m not in that place yet in any case. But there must be a divide between the men and the women. I know a lot of male sommeliers who have children.’

A place of her own

One solution would, of course, be to open her own place, but while talented chefs seem to find it relatively easy to get funding, the best way of securing backing for sommeliers seems to be through the National Lottery, which isn’t the most reliable source. ‘You can’t open a restaurant without a chef, but you can very easily open one with bad service,’ Rhys sighs. ‘Having said that, everyone’s first
to complain about bad service.’

If the EuroMillions balls were to fall kindly for her, Rhys would ‘love’ to open a restaurant, similar in style to where she currently works. ‘I didn’t grow up in the Michelin world, and if I had my own place it would be relaxed and friendly, but with amazing food.’

Would she, I wonder, be easy to work for? She seems perfectly lovely – but does that self-driven, competitive streak make her a tough taskmaster? There’s a slight furrow of the brow and a thoughtful pause before a response that is perfect Laura Rhys: reasonable, intelligent, disarming.

‘I’m a total perfectionist in myself – I want the job done the best it can be. But I don’t get frustrated with my assistants. I can remember what I was like when I started. Everyone has to go through that.’

Another pause, then an utterly infectious peal of laughter. ‘Plus I’m too short to be an ogre!’

Editorial feature from Imbibe Magazine – January/February 2012

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