(Wine-Searcher) - The prestigious credential is being used as a ticket off the restaurant floor, Liza B Zimmerman discovers.

At the closing dinner for at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers this past February, 12 Master Sommeliers (MSs) were asked to pair wines with the meal.

The wines served were more commercial than expected from a wine-geeky group long known for pushing semi-oxidized wines, produced ideally with organic, natural yeast. That came as no surprise, given that the bulk of the wine directors were currently employed by major wholesalers, producers and wine marketing groups. A handful of them were making their own wines, consulting or teaching for a living; not one member of this select group was still working on a restaurant floor since getting the degree.

Long hours, inconsistent pay and lack of personal time have long been driving sommeliers, with and without "official" credentials, from the restaurant business. The bulk of them who passed the exam have long left for less-organic, yet greener and seemingly less-oxidized pastures.

"It's hard to turn down that fat paycheck from the Big Boys, so they leave the restaurant," says Chris Blanchard, himself a former rapper, radio host and sommelier at Yountville's REDD restaurant who now makes his own Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays under the Down by Law label.

While he says that he bucked the trend by producing affordable wine priced at $10 a glass on-premise, he is also exactly mirroring it, as many MSs segue into representing high-volume, national brands with accessible price points.

While the restaurant exodus is logical, it raises the question whether the vaunted degree that inspired two movies – Somm and Into the Bottle – is just the latest and best corporate hunting license in the competitive, and often poorly paying, wine business. So I chatted with a handful of MSs to find out why they sat for the exam, what wines they have been motivated to sell throughout their careers and why to they made the move to corporate jobs.

Personal achievement and credibility

The exam is a big challenge and almost all the MSs to whom I spoke said that they sat for it because it was an important personal and intellectual hurdle. In a field noted for having very few proper degrees, they also said that the credential set them apart and offered them numerous new career opportunities and bigger paychecks.

Gilles de Chambure – who worked at the French Laundry, The Napa Valley Reserve at Meadowood and restaurants in Paris – is now president and general manager of the Alejandro Bulgheroni Estate in St. Helena, which produces Cabernet Sauvignon. De Chambure went after the MS degree for the benefit of the title. He noted, justifiably, that The Court of Masters Sommeliers and Institute of Masters of Wine – both of which were established in England – are among the very few institutions that regulate qualifications in the wine business.

The irony of how important degrees and titles are in the United States is especially not lost on him; after all, the bulk of nobles in his native France were killed for having them during the French Revolution.