How to be a sommelier

There's a job for you: helping people pick the perfect wine. Of course, it requires that you understand wine and have a pretty good palate, and it also requires that you can put up with people. For example: ""Can you recommend a wine that my wife hasn't tried yet?"

Clarissa Wildwood is a part-time sommelier, and writes for The Hairpin on what exactly her job entails. Most writing about wine is inherently snooty, so it's nice to read someone who is down to earth. Big question: what about those people who claim to get a headache from drinking wine? First of all, WIldwood explains, wines of lesser quality can contain all sorts of things that aren't exactly wine, which will give you a headache just reading about them. And second, in addition to the rule about not drinking and driving, there should probably also be a rule not to drink when you're not eating. You need food and water both to ameliorate the potentially negative side effects of wine-drinking.

There's a lot to learn in The Moonlighting Sommelier.