Of the four levels a sommelier can reach in the Court of Master Sommeliers, the first two are relatively simple. The Introductory level tests wine basics like wine production and elementary food and wine pairing; the level above it, Certified, tests the same thing in slightly more detail. Both tests involve a minor—and, for wine professionals, easy—blind-tasting portion. But the last two levels, Advanced and Master, require what appear to be superhuman wine skills. For the theory portion of these tests, applicants have to rattle off detailed wine trivia, such as naming all the appellations in Bordeaux (there are 57, for what it’s worth). For the tasting portion, they must try six wines and accurately describe their color, nose, flavor, varietal, country of origin and vintage.

Aspiring Masters are reluctant to say their methods make them better sommeliers than other wine professionals (on the record, at least). But Cenitare wine director Molly Wismeier seems to sum up their thinking when she says, “I think there’s a lot of value in [the program]. And it does help to give you a distinction, to stand apart from the other people who haven’t done it, because it says, ‘I’m willing to take this extra step and go this mile.’ ”

Some winos in the city have trouble seeing where those extra steps will get them. “It’s an impressive parlor trick,” Joe Catterson, general manager and wine director at Alinea, says about blind tasting. He’s only half joking. He admits that the skill of tasting blind is “hugely important”; still, Catterson is one of many wine pros in the city who have decided not to pursue Master Sommelier certification. Not that he didn’t consider it: In the mid ’90s he passed the Certified course and “took a stab at” the advanced level (like most people taking the test for the first time, he failed). But the point of pursuing it further eluded him. “I already had the job,” he says. “I didn’t know what else I’d get out of it other than membership in this society.”

If there is an unofficial MS society headquarters in Chicago, it might be the Lakeview apartment shared by Lynch, Nacional 27’s Adam Seger and Marcus Will, who runs the wine program at the private Metropolitan Club. All three are members of the Chicago Sommelier Society, a group of aspiring masters that regularly gets together for blind tastings. “We call it our weekly wine humbling,” Seger says. “You have days where you wonder why you’re doing this. It’s really hard. But like anything that’s hard, it pushes you.”

Seger was one of a handful of people who took the Master Sommelier exam last year (sommeliers who have passed the advanced level are invited to take the exam on a rolling basis). He failed all three sections, but came closest to passing on the blind tasting. (The wine he slipped on turned out to be an Albariño, which Seger promptly drank two bottles of that night. “I referred to it that evening as f-ing Albariño,” he says.) Studying for the blind-tasting portion of the test is the most time-consuming and expensive part of the process—the Master Court pours exceptional wines from exceptional vintages, which makes for incredibly pricey practice bottles. But the group nevertheless sees the value.

“[Tasting blind] is not a skill you’re going to be encountering when you’re working on the floor in the dining room,” Will admits. “It’s a training exercise which helps you hone skills which you do use every day as a sommelier.”

Like Catterson, Bin 36’s Brian Duncan isn’t necessarily buying that. “It’s kind of a fun game, and I think it’s absolutely remarkable the skill level that many people reach,” he says. But “unless you’re authenticating wine for auctions and that kind of thing, it doesn’t really serve much purpose.” Still, he says his “only problem in terms of the Master Sommelier certification is the language, [which] I think in many cases shoots over people’s heads.” He’s referring to the service aspect of being a Master Sommelier. With its international designation, the Court aims to train sommeliers who can work in any environment, from a wine bar in the Gold Coast to the swankiest restaurant in Dubai. As a result, the level of service it requires during examinations is highly stylized and very formal. It’s exactly the kind of formality that Duncan has spent years trying to avoid. “More than anything, I’ve realized that approaching food and wine from an academic and analytic perspective was not interesting or fun, and that if you really wanted to get people excited about wine in a new way you had to make it interactive, and you had to make it not so precious,” he says. “If a [wine director] comes up to you in a pair of jeans and a nice shirt and he’s friendly…that’s a new experience for a lot of people. And they find it refreshing.”

And then there’s the word sommelier itself, which anybody can use at any time, certified or not.

“People don’t know how to pronounce it,” Duncan says. “They’re never really sure. Almost everyone—from blue collar to executives—says, ‘Are you a…’ and then they always stumble and wait for me to correct them. Who needs it?”

For more on beer sommelier programs, read Beer geekier.