Why No One Knows Ottawa’s Sommeliers by Name

Ottawa knows its chefs. Knows the faces on the pass, the signatures on the plates, the names that get stitched into every awards shortlist. Chefs here are characters. Recognized, quoted, mythologized.

But sommeliers? Ghosts.

There are a handful in this city with encyclopedic palates, people who could dismantle a wine list in their sleep. They can coax a timid diner into drinking Jura, or quietly save a bad pairing with a pivot. They’re the ones translating vineyards into moments. And yet—outside of the dining room—they barely exist.

Montreal puts theirs on magazine covers. Toronto makes them influencers. Here, the sommelier is usually invisible. Why?

Partly, it’s our press. Chefs are the only characters the media here knows how to write. Partly, it’s the culture—Ottawa has always been careful, allergic to the flamboyance that wine service sometimes carries. And partly, it’s the restaurants themselves. Too many treat wine like a bolt-on to the food, a profitable upsell rather than an art.

The result: diners know the names of the people slicing their duck, but not the ones pouring the Clos Rougeard beside it. Ottawa’s sommeliers live in the footnotes, even as they shape the meal.

And maybe that’s the bigger loss. Because when you erase the person behind the glass, you erase part of the story of dining here. And Ottawa, if it wants to grow up as a food city, needs all its stories told.