A Sommelier’s Guide to Shutting Up and Drinking What You Like

My wife Susan and I were celebrating a delayed wedding anniversary last week @Round Hill Hotel and Villas in Jamaica. One night we had the best fried chicken either of us has ever eaten. I brought a 2015 Volnay Fremiers from Comte Armand with us. The chicken was burnished and crisp. The wine was delicate, with red fruit and mineral tension that cut through the salt and richness. We drank what we wanted because we were hungry. Because we were sitting together. Nobody said a word about whether the paring made sense. It just did.

For decades, we were all taught there were rules. Red with this. White with that. Don't pair X with Y. Sommeliers made their living gatekeeping these rules, telling you what belonged together and what didn't. They still do. Most of them.

But something's changed.

In 2020 Vanessa Price understood this when she wrote Big Macs and Burgundy. She paired wine with fast food and meant it. Not as a joke. As proof that the rules are smaller than the moment. In 2025, Eric Hemer, Senior Vice President of Wine Education at Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits and Master Sommelier and Master of Wine, said it plainly: "Guests like what they like, regardless of food pairings." The industry is finally catching up to what regular people already knew.

This all started for me when I had a 1978 Sassicaia with pepperoni pizza while on deadline at Christie's in 2000; and I don’t even know how much Champagne and Popcorn I’ve had over the years. The fried chicken and Volnay at Round Hill. None of these follow the rulebook but all of them made perfect sense.

The sommeliers still clinging to gatekeeping? They're not protecting wine. They're protecting their own authority. They're making you feel wrong for what you like so you keep asking permission. The ones who get it, who understand that your palate is as valid as theirs, those are the ones reshaping the industry right now.

Your taste is not wrong because it doesn't match their rules.

Your choice is not bad because it surprises them.

Trust yourself.