Episode 274 - UK Sommelier of the Year Emma Denney

You mentioned Curious Vines, Queen of Wong earlier.

That has evidently been really important for you in this journey.

Oh, incredibly important.

It's just provided me with the opportunity to come together with other women in the industry.

You know, some of us who are very keen on competitions, there's some that are not so much, but you know, they're coming, they're entering because they know it's going to happen.

lift their skill level.

And it's just created this wonderful network and, you know, brought in all these mentors that we've been able to train with and people that have done the competition before or people that are MS and, you know, they have the knowledge of what might be expected in the competition.

And it's just given the opportunity to, you know, practice and be tutored and has completely transformed people's my skillset.

If I think back to the very first UK Simility of the Year competition I entered, that was the year that Vincenzo won.

That was the very first year I entered.

I entered that not knowing anything.

How I got to the final six in that year, I don't know.

But I think also I went in just blind and a bit naive.

And I just was a bit more calm because I didn't care because it was my first year.

But my skillset then changed.

is completely different to my skill set now.

And I do honestly think that so much of that has come from this network and the mentorship that Curious Vines has provided for us.

A

third of the candidates this year were women.

It's only a third, but it's still a third.

Two of the finalists out of the three were women.

And last year's winner, Maria Bumper, was obviously a woman.

And now you, so that's two years running.

So what does all that tell us, do you think?

I think it tells you that we might not have as many women, but the women that we have, they're bloody talented and they work very hard.