The Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award 2011
The Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award for 2011 was recently announced during the festivities at the Swartland Revolution. The Award has been established to bring focus – and recognition of achievement – to the growing group of professional wine waiters in South Africa.
To achieve this merited status, the finalists had to endure a testing day of written exams, blind tastings and a practical assessment. In the practical they had to skilfully decant an aged wine,select and present wines to ‘guests’, pairing them with items on a menu. Joakim Hansi Blackadder was announced as this years top achiever and was awarded The Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award 2011. Wayve Kolevsohn was second, followed by Greg Mutambe, sommelier at the 12 Apostles Hotel and Spa.
So what does it take to make it into this competition? The finalists were judged on wine and food service and were tested on the following:
• wine styles and terminology
• wine label information
• wine regulations
• regions of origin
• major international wine regions and their wines
• identifying wines in a blind tasting
• service techniques
• food and wine pairing
• wine storage
• social skills and ability to interact with the patron
Ginette de Fleuriot, Cape Wine Master and organiser of The Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Awards as well as being one of the judges, is very pleased with the overall results, "The high standards attained by Joakim and the other finalists have set the benchmark for aspirant sommeliers. We look forward to an increased number of entrants for The Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award 2012 and wider representation from South Africa’s premier tourist regions. Also, we trust that this Award will act as a catalyst for the hospitality industry to expand training facilities and support local sommeliers”.
Joakim, 27, grew up in the small town of Västerås near Stockholm in Sweden. His training included three years at a restaurant college and two years at a sommelier academy in Stockholm. His wide restaurant training in Sweden includes a stint at Michelin-star Restaurant Mathias Dahlgren. After a brief stint as sommelier at the Grande Roche Hotel in Paarl in 2008, Joakim then returned permanently to South Africa the following year and was appointed sommelier and senior manager at The Roundhouse Restaurant in Camps Bay. Earlier this year he was promoted to General Manager, retaining his sommelier duties. Joakim Hansi Blackadder’s prize for winning The Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award is a trip to the House of Bollinger Champagne in France.
The South African Sommeliers Association (SASA) Chairman, Neil Grant belives that "Wine service has a poor history in South Africa and only with incentives such as these will we find an improvement within the industry. Chefs in South Africa over the past 10 years have proven how good they are and now wine stewards/sommeliers need to be part of this movement so we can challenge the international markets. I would like to thank all the sponsors for the hard work and dedication in making this event a success and I look forward to being part of the Award again next year.”
