The best sommelier in the Netherlands comes from Amsterdam. Margot Los was named Sommelier of the Year by the French GaultMillau, known for its annual restaurant guides, this week.
“Very cool,” Los calls it himself. “It went very well,” she says when she looks back on the year in which it all started. In 2009 she decided she wanted to learn everything there was to know about wine.
After a few search terms on Google, she ended up with Petro Cools, who had just been named sommelier of the year at the time. “I called him and asked, ‘what should I do to learn all about wine?’ I thought about that when I was on stage myself 13 years later.”
Balance
She is now a seasoned wine connoisseur herself. What does she pay attention to when she takes a sip herself? “I sometimes compare it to iced tea. It often consists of bitter tea, sour lemon and a lot of sugar. Separately not tasty at all, but together it is. That is wine too. You have acid, fruit and tannins. If it is one out, it’s not pretty, but everything in balance is.”
In a profession dominated by men, Los sometimes had to deal with prejudice in the beginning. “Then I was asked if the sommelier wanted to come by the table. Then I said ‘it’s in front of you’, and they didn’t believe that. But I always like to convince them in the end.”