Do you need a hot sauce sommelier?

In a hypercredentialed world, consumers want guides for every taste. The gourmet food business now obliges with 'sommeliers' for just about any product.

Hot sauce.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Hennadii/iStock, adekvat/iStock)

Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in The Washington Post Magazine. Reprinted with permission.

My training as a honey sommelier at the American Honey Tasting Society culminates with eight wineglasses filled with various honeys, lined up from light to dark. My instructor, Carla Marina Marchese, tells me that when we taste honey, we don't do the ceremonial swirl — the wine expert's ritual — before we sniff. Honey sommeliers smear. "Smear it on the sides of the glass like this," she says, using a tiny plastic spoon. Once the honey is smeared, I can stick my nose in the glass to properly evaluate the aroma, then spoon a dollop onto my tongue.

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