Sommelier Program Heads to San Francisco

The ninth edi­tion of the Olive Oil Sommelier Certification Program pro­duced by the Olive Oil Times Education Lab and the International Culinary Center is com­ing this September to San Francisco.

An inter­na­tional fac­ulty of renowned experts will guide stu­dents through more than 100 olive oil sam­ples from 26 coun­tries in the world’s most com­pre­hen­sive cur­ricu­lum in olive oil qual­ity assess­ment.

The six-day, two-level olive oil som­me­lier cer­ti­fi­ca­tion course will con­vene within the San Francisco Art Institute in the city’s Marina District with dra­matic views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The direc­tor of the pro­gram, Curtis Cord, said stu­dents were in store for an unri­valed edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence designed to fos­ter a deep under­stand­ing of olive oil qual­ity assess­ment. Cord devel­oped the pro­gram with the late Dorothy Cann Hamilton, founder of the International Culinary Center.

While stu­dents of the som­me­lier pro­gram have included such diverse pro­fes­sion­als as pro­duc­ers, mar­keters, importers, mer­chants, food buy­ers, qual­ity-con­trol man­agers, chefs, jour­nal­ists and lawyers, Cord said the pro­gram is designed to teach the vital skills of sen­sory analy­sis and appre­ci­a­tion to any­one con­cerned with olive oil qual­ity. There are no pre­req­ui­sites for the course.

Nearly 200 have suc­cess­fully com­pleted both lev­els of the acclaimed pro­gram, join­ing a grow­ing inter­na­tional net­work of experts and edu­ca­tors. Many have gone on to launch their own edu­ca­tional ini­tia­tives, author books, offer con­sult­ing ser­vices and develop pro­grams to fos­ter a greater under­stand­ing of mat­ters relat­ing to olive oil qual­ity, cul­ture and usage.

“I enjoyed the course and really appre­ci­ated how well orga­nized it was, and how it brought peo­ple from other fields of exper­tise together,” said Zi Xie, an Australian entre­pre­neur who took the course in New York last May. ​“My favorite part was the peo­ple I met and the pas­sion that was shared.”

“There is not a sin­gle path when we talk about olive oil,” said Christian Vogt, an olive oil pro­ducer in Brazil. ​“There are many pos­si­bil­i­ties and the sum of visions and knowl­edge pre­sented to the stu­dent can be applied in its own way.”

“I like the whole con­cept of the course as a com­pre­hen­sive and prac­ti­cal source of infor­ma­tion about olive oil,” said Monika Solińska, a retailer and olive oil edu­ca­tor in Poland. ​“My favorite part was the great peo­ple, my class­mates and the amaz­ing lec­tur­ers from dif­fer­ent coun­tries and regions.”

Enrollment for the San Francisco pro­gram is open on the Olive Oil Times Education Lab web­site.