Wine tasting is serious business.
When Ron Sober took an examination to gain accreditation as an international wine judge it was hardly a cocktail party. “It was brutal,” says Sober, an instructional designer for Human Resource Development. “It was a very difficult, thorough, four-hour exam.”
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Sober was required to taste several different wines and identify flaws, as well as rank them based on factors such as acidity and consistency. He passed the examination and participated as a wine judge for the first time in 1993 at the InterVin International Wine competition in Toronto.
Sober not only is an active judge in wine competitions throughout the United States and Canada, but he also assists the Kerrytown shop Everyday Wines in selecting its products. “We go through 20 to 30 wines per week,” Sober says, “and less than 10 percent are considered.”
Everyday Wines only sells selected wines that cost less than $25 a bottle. Some of the wines offered at the store come from obscure markets such as Uruguay and Argentina because they are a better value. “It is hard to find value in established areas,” he says. “Everything on the shelves has been vetted.”
While it is easy to assume a wine connoisseur would be dismissive of cheaper wines, Sober rarely spends more than $20 on a bottle. “People treat wine like it has some mystique when it really doesn’t,” Sober says. “There isn’t any quality-to-price ratio.”
Sober attributes his interest in wine tasting to his upbringing in Toronto, where his father was a restaurateur. “We were up on the food scene, and we had wine in the house all the time,” he says.
Although Sober was born in Pittsburgh, his family moved to Toronto when he was 8 years old, and he continued to live and work in the area for nearly 30 years. “I am a Canadian by proxy,” he says. While in Toronto he wrote a wine column in a local newspaper and worked for a company called California wine imports.
In 1999 Sober moved to Ann Arbor, where he currently lives with his wife, to work for an Internet startup company. In August 2002 Sober began working for U-M as a technical trainer for Michigan Administrative Information Services, and in April 2008 he began his current appointment with University Human Resources.
At Human Resource Development, Sober organizes career development curriculum, developed a Web site for Career Development Services and supports the Voices of the Staff Program, which uses dialogue and feedback from staff members to improve the work environment at U-M.
In the past Sober considered making a dramatic career change of his own, but he has found a good balance between his professional responsibilities and his personal interests with his position at U-M. “I thought about getting a chef’s degree,” Sober says. “But I found my outlet feeding friends and family.
“I love to cook, but after growing up around the restaurant business I understand the difficulty of it. Working here gives me the ability to do cool work that doesn’t consume my whole life, and I can still do wine work and cook. It is perfect.”
The weekly Spotlight features staff members at the University. To nominate a candidate, please contact the Record staff at [email protected].
