Tomáš Brůha has the most sensitive tongue and the broadest knowledge of wine among Czech sommeliers. The Plzeň Bohemia Sekt sommelier won the 11th Czech sommelier championships on Thursday.
He will, therefore, represent the Czech Republic at the world championships of sommeliers in Chile.
There were 20 other contestants alongside Brůha fighting for the title. Despite the fact that one of the most remarkable winners of previous competitions was a woman – Klára Götzová, there were few women present in the Kaiserstein palace this year: Zdeňka Kačmárová from Radniční sklep in Lednice and Jana Vašičková from the wine cellar U Jeňoura in Moravian Prušánky.
“This time it really is a men’s event,” said Pavel Maurer, publisher of the only Czech gastronomical guide who also sat in the jury.
Riesling or pálava
Three contestants got through the basic round into the finals: Brůha, Jakub Bratánek from the French restaurant in the Municipal house and Jakub Král from Hotel pod Věží.
All three finalists have taken part in the championships before, Bratánek finished second last year and the year before, Brůha was third last year and in 1998, while Jakub Král won last year’s championships.
How did the competition go? Each finalist had 15 minutes to demonstrate serving sparkling wine, red wine decantation and the degustation of four samples: sparkling wine, white and red wine and a liquor. While all the finalists agreed that the last sample was vodka, they disagreed on the remaining three. With the white wine they hesitated between riesling or pálava while in fact it was rulandské white. Only the winner Tomáš Brůha identified the country of origin of the red wine as Italy. He also correctly identified the sparkling wine, which came from his employer’s production.
Twenty-nine year-old Brůha has worked as a sommelier for the last seven years. He studied at a hotel school and that is also where he chose his current occupation.
For better profit
Sommelier profession has been booming in recent years. Only a few places in Prague had their own wine expert a few years ago. Today even mid-range restaurants and wine cellars hire sommeliers.
A sommelier chooses the wines for the particular restaurant, looks after the correct temperature and humidity and is available to customers who ask for recommendation for a wine to go with their meal.
There are usually two paths to the sommelier profession. “One goes through the hotel school and the second, the so-called Moravian way, leads through wine into gastronomy,” said Libor Nazarčuk who won the Czech sommelier championships a number of times.
Nazarčuk also confirmed that the numbers of restaurants with sommeliers are growing. He himself, trains dozens of new experts each year. A sommelier is very often rather profitable for his employer since wine profits usually grow four-fold.
