Germany’s first sommelier Paula Bosch has written a book

by time news

Bwhen a professional life begins to enter its late phase, many well-known people have the need to look back and let the world participate. The interest suspected by authors and publishers is not always sufficient for memoirs, but quite often for memories and stories about the person and their actions, the more often the larger the circle of those who may have come into contact with the author.

Jacqueline Vogt

Department head of the Rhein-Main editorial team of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

With Paula Bosch, who was a sommelier at the Tantris restaurant in Munich for 30 years, there could be many. There are already a number of wine books that she has written or contributed to on the market. With “Poured in”, she has now presented a volume that is a bit of a life story and brings together a bit of wine history and a few stories from the world of top gastronomy. Bosch, born in 1956 on the edge of the Swabian Jura, trained as a restaurant manager at the Hotel Vorderer in Walldorf. She was chef de rang at the Leimeister wine tavern in Königstein im Taunus, where she began to specialize in wine advice.

Success and notoriety despite many obstacles

Then began what was a rocky path in a gastronomic world that was thoroughly male-dominated and male-fixated at the time, but which led to success and fame precisely because of the obstacles that lay in the way: that Paula Bosch was the first woman in the German restaurant landscape was a sommelier post is a well-established note in the cultural history of the same. Before that there were acceptance problems. When Bosch applied to be a sommelier at the Hotel Inter-Continental in Frankfurt, she was turned down with the point that wine was a man’s job.

It was no different for her at Pflaum’s Posthotel in Pegnitz before she became head sommelier at the Inter-Continental in Cologne in 1981. She later worked in the same position for Günter Scherrer in the Victorian restaurant in Düsseldorf, and when Gault Millau voted “Sommelier of the Year” for the first time in 1988, it was Paula Bosch. Three years later, she moved to Tantris, which at the time had three Michelin stars and a 35,000-bottle cellar, and stayed there until 2011; since then she has been self-employed, as a consultant and as an author.

Paula Bosch with Diana Binder, “Poured.  Germany's first sommelier about wines, winegrowers and the future of the industry.” ZS Verlag, 187 pages, 22.90 euros.


Paula Bosch with Diana Binder, “Poured. Germany’s first sommelier about wines, winegrowers and the future of the industry.” ZS Verlag, 187 pages, 22.90 euros.
:


Image: ZS Verlag

Bosch has a lot to say and tell, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage for the book. A lot can be read about her professional views and about the winegrowers and wines she discovered. But before a possible, also voyeuristic pleasure in anecdotes, of which there is certainly no shortage in the hospitality industry, where people are involved every day, stands the discretion of the author, who is still active in the scene she describes in a broad sense.

A few bites she serves (a guest who complained that truffled hash browns were burnt, which happened when someone who had ordered an inexpensive wine was accidentally opened an outrageously expensive one) along with some from her personal practice. Half a page long is the description of what Paula Bosch does if she doesn’t like a recommended wine. In summary: He gets a fair chance.

You may also like

Leave a Comment