Parallel with this move, I was preparing like never before to take the ultimate test and compete in the World’s Best Sommelier competition. Sure, I miss aspects of life in Scandinavia, but I think I will call this city home for some time now. The wine community is strong and energetic and there are opportunities here that are rare to find elsewhere. But the city has given me a wonderful welcome, and I truly enjoy exploring all it has to offer (a lot!). I had travelled a lot to the states, but never to New York really, so it really was a gamble. A few months (and some grueling work on visa applications) later, we packed our bags and settled in downtown Manhattan, a few blocks away from Charlie Bird, a lovely little neighborhood restaurant which I’d like to think has a wine program that punches well above its weight. I distinctly remember the phone call to my girlfriend (today my wife) asking her if she wouldn’t mind moving to New York. We talked a lot over these few days and found ourselves agreeing on so much when it came to how to run a restaurant and what really makes for good service and hospitality that we decided then and there, without really discussing any details, that we had to work together. One of the few people of this group that I hadn’t met before was Robert Bohr, New York sommelier of almost legendary stature. I was in negotiations with some interesting groups in Europe, but by pure happenstance found myself on culinary trip with a group of winemakers and sommeliers from France, Italy and USA. I began looking around for something else. With 8 restaurants under my supervision and three more to come in 2015, it had simply gotten too big for me, and although I took great pride in the work I did and it gave me some wonderful opportunities to travel the world, meet wine makers and experience what it’s like to wield big buying power, I had gotten too far away from the essence of the job of the sommelier, too far away from the guests and the bottles. In the second half of 2014 I decided that I had to leave my job in Copenhagen. Still, I owe it to you, and to myself, to if nothing else stick my head in once in a while and give a little update.īetween then and now, a lot has happened. So, I will not make any promises that I will keep up the writing. Couple that with a desire to not just put out content, but something actually meaningful every time I sit down to write, and the result is nothing at all. My goal was always to build and maintain an active presence on the blog and in social media, but work and life simply got in the way. I wonder how I ever had time to do so at all. I log in every once in a while, shocked to find that people still drift here somehow, and I feel a little ashamed that I haven’t been able to post anything in three years. A lot has happened since I wrote anything on this website.
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