Wine has Sommeliers, and now beer has Cicerones

“If you’ve been to a fancy restaurant, you’ve probably seen a sommelier — those wine experts who make sure you get the best possible match for your meal. But what if you don’t want a chardonnay or pinot? What if you want a nice cold beer?,” NPR reports.

“A new program is working to bring this same level of knowledge to the world of malt and hops by turning out batches of certified beer experts known as Cicerones.

“Ray Daniels, a Chicago brewer, started the Cicerone Certification Program five years ago. And he jokes that he did so for a fairly simple reason: bad beer.

‘”You’d go into a place that had a lot of taps, that you’d think might know their beer. And they really didn’t,’ Daniels sighed. So Daniels came up with the Cicerone exam to standardize a canon of beery knowledge.

“Beer is a fragile product,’ Daniels notes. ‘It can be ruined instantly by certain types of handling. So the people in the beer business — from the brewery all the way to the waiter or waitress — need to understand the complexity of beer.'”

The rest of the article is here.

Read our article “Craft beer booming in Sierra Foothills and Truckee Tahoe.”

(photo: Cicerone.org)