One of the co-owners and the chief sommelier of the Michelin-star awarded Noel restaurant from Zagreb, Ivan Jug, has achieved the title of Advanced Sommelier.
He has achieved that accomplishment when he passed the exam with the Court of Master Sommeliers, the most prestigious organisation in the world for the certification of the sommeliers, Kult Plave Kamenice writes. The Advanced Sommelier is the third level of the certificate given by the organisation, and it’s the final step before the highest professional title of Master Sommelier.
Ivan Jug is now joining Siniša Lasan, the head sommelier from the Dubrovnik’s Proto restaurant, who has been the Advanced sommelier for a little over a year now. The exam has taken place in Freigut Thallern, a wine hotel located near Vienna in Austria. 22 professional sommeliers applied to the certification exam, and only 9 of them were advanced to the Advanced level, which proves how difficult and demanding of a hurdle it is. In order to become an Advanced Sommelier, one has to show the advances they’ve made since they took the exams for levels one and two, both in the skills and in the theoretical knowledge. Much more focus is put on the service, and encyclopedic knowledge of the wine styles and regions is required. In addition to that, the candidates need to know in detail the work of the winemakers from each of the wine regions.
The Court of Master Sommeliers recommends that candidates prepare for the Advanced Sommelier exam for a year or two. It takes three days to take the test, which consists of theoretical tests, practical tests and the blind tasting of six different wines on the last day. The results are published several hours after all the applicants have completed the tests, and it’s strictly forbidden to publish the questions anywhere. The circumstances and the demands of the exams themselves have gotten even more strict recently, after the scandal which erupted after it was found out that some people got their hands on the exam problems unauthorized.
But, Ivan Jug didn’t need that type of help, as he is one of the leading Croatian sommeliers, current sommelier champion of Croatia and has ASI international gold diploma, the highest level of the certificate. His achievement is just another evidence of the increasing quality of the sommelier scene in Croatia, which is becoming an important part of Croatian tourism and hospitality industry.
