Knowledge refreshed: Two Bell Seafood employees have been trained as fish sommeliers

30.04.2019 Working at Bell Food Group

They have pored over books, honed their sensory skills, listened carefully, cooked and tasted. Theodor Pulver and Pascal Bieth from Bell Seafood in Switzerland have been able to call themselves fish sommeliers since last fall. They completed the extensive training at the Transgourmet Seafood Academy in Bremerhaven.

How does climate change affect fishing? What quality criteria should you look out for when buying fish? And what is the best way to remove the bones from a salmon fillet? Theodor Pulver, Head of Seafood Purchasing, and Pascal Bieth, Seafood Consultant, can now answer these and many other questions about fish and co. even better. This is because the two Bell employees in Switzerland have recently become fish sommeliers with a qualification from the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the association of German commercial enterprises, which is committed, among other things, to training and further education in its member industries.

"We both wanted to deepen our existing expert knowledge and prove it with a recognized qualification," reports Theodor Pulver, and Pascal Bieth adds: "For me as a training manager for seafood product sellers at Coop and Transgourmet, the comprehensive theoretical content, for example on the subject of sustainability, was particularly important."

For the course, which is the first and only one of its kind in German-speaking countries, the two traveled to the Transgourmet Seafood Academy in Bremerhaven for a week each last autumn. Transgourmet Germany launched this course there because those responsible had been wondering for some time why there were actually sommeliers for wine, meat, water or cheese, but not for fish.

Transgourmet brought "FischMagazin", the research service provider ttz Bremerhaven and the Bremen Chamber of Commerce on board as partners and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund of the European Union as supporters to implement their idea. this enabled the first group to complete their training to become certified fish experts in 2017.

The program then started for Theodor Pulver and Pascal Bieth last September. In a total of eleven training modules, they and 24 other participants from a wide range of industries gained a comprehensive insight into the special features of fish as a foodstuff. The focus was on product knowledge, fish sensory analysis and quality testing and recognition.

The curriculum covered a wide range of topics, from the history of fishing, aquaculture and overfishing in the oceans to correct storage and the nutritional properties of fish. The theoretical modules were supplemented, for example, by the sensory part, where noses and taste receptors had to prove their skills, or the joint cooking, where manual skills were required, for example when opening oysters. And since a good meal also requires matching drinks, the last module taught the participants which wine goes best with which fish.In between the two training units, the textbooks were waiting for the colleagues. "The documents we had to work through comprised around 1,200 pages," says Theodor Pulver. "That's quite a lot of material that we had to learn in a short space of time alongside our full-time jobs."

In mid-November, at the end of the second week of the course, the two of them had to take their individual exams, which they passed successfully. "We were able to put the learning content into practice straight away: Pascal Bieth with his training courses, for example, and I with the procurement of seafood products for Bell," says Theodor Pulver.

So well equipped, the two newly qualified fish sommeliers are guaranteed never to flounder again, even when faced with tricky questions from colleagues, customers or course participants.