Choosing a wine at a restaurant is always feels far more stressful than it needs to be.

If the restaurant has a good in-house sommelier, selecting a wine should be a pleasant, stress-free experience. The sommelier will help you choose a wine that is appropriate for your budget, meal and dining experience.

Brad Royale, wine director for Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts, summarizes the role of a sommelier:

A visit to PEI a few weeks ago made me think about the current sommelier situation in Canada. It’s the elephant in the room.

This elephant took its sommelier certification and it wants to be recognized across Canada, but there’s a problem — Canada does not have a national sommelier association. In order to have sommelier certifications recognized across Canada, we need a national association that collects together all the satellite operations, associations and educational programs and applies a set of accepted standards.

I just received my judge’s binder from the International Value Wine Awards, with my scores and the names of the wines that I tasted. Now it is time to go through it and find the wines that I liked, that I can actually buy. There aren't many, sadly.