We Have a Milk Sommelier

‘The world’s first milk sommelier,’ reads the headline of New York Magazine’s Grubstreet section about Dutch agricultural adviser Bas de Groot. They find the term a little amusing. Rightly so?

The reason for the piece in Grubstreet is a mini-documentary made by CNN as part of its Great Big Story series. In it, Bas de Groot explains that milk is more than an excuse for breakfast cereal. That milk—just like wine, coffee and tea—has complexity in its flavour and even terroir. This term from the world of wine refers to all the environmental factors in which a product grows, such as soil, climate and altitude.

Cow Stomachs

A cow, after all, chews grass and other vegetation. And that grows in a particular type of soil, so its minerals eventually end up in the milk via a detour through four stomachs (or, in the case of goats and sheep, through fewer stomachs). And you can taste that terroir.

After the water, beer, salt and mustard sommeliers: the milk sommelier.

CNN is convinced (but that may be because the video appears to be sponsored by a milk brand). New York Magazine is less convinced. It fears the term ‘sommelier’ is being diluted (pun intended) by being used for things other than wine. They recall the mustard sommelier New York City knew for a while. Never heard anything about him again. That’s what they mean. What’s next?

Penguin

Still, there is nothing nonsensical about what Bas de Groot, who has been known as a milk sommelier among us for much longer, says. He is not a knife-snapping penguin who, like a water sommelier with a napkin draped over his arm, pours a glass of milk for a restaurant guest at, say, 9 euros as part of an ideal milk-and-food pairing with biscuits. Nor is he a bartender in a trendy Milkbar. For example, Bas de Groot advises which dairy cow is best suited to which type of soil.

Try drinking milk from a Jersey cow and from a Holstein: a world of difference that even you can taste.

Connoisseur

Perhaps Bas de Groot should not have called himself a milk sommelier, but a milk connoisseur (or ‘connoiseur’, as the Americans rather incorrectly say). But then he would not have appeared on CNN and in New York Magazine…