2019 profile
Director of wine, Flemings Mayfair
Starting his career in Sweden, Andreas Rosendal names English sparkling and German wines as among his favourites. As director of wine at luxury boutique hotel Flemings in Mayfair, Rosendal helps to oversee the on-site restaurant, Ormer Mayfair, and the 1930s bar, Manetta’s. A believer in the importance of training sessions, he runs two blind tastings a week for his team, as well as a theory competition on Saturdays. “It might sound like it’s all fun but the pressure is also on for them to perform,” he says.
Having “slipped into the profession by chance,” Rosendal applied for a sommelier programme at a culinary university near to a restaurant where he was working as head waiter. “I applied, thinking that drinking wine during school hours must be the best thing ever (which it was) and it all started from there,” he says.
Starting as a sommelier at Sigtuna Stadshotell, which claims to be Sweden’s smallest five-star hotel, he moved to Norway in 2009, where he was appointed restaurant manager and head sommelier at Michelin-starred Haga Restaurant in Oslo, with a wine list boasting 1,200 bins. Arriving in the UK in 2011, Rosendal went straight in at the deep end, becoming assistant head sommelier at the two-Michelin-starred Greenhouse restaurant in London, which has in excess of 3,500-bottles on its wine list. In 2012 he joined two-Michelin-starred Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham as assistant head sommelier, during which time he completed his Court of Master Sommeliers’ Advanced Sommelier Diploma.
Two years later he returned to London, becoming head sommelier at The Westbury’s Michelin-starred Brasserie Chavot. In 2016, Ormer Mayfair opened, after a £16 million refurbishment. Joining as head sommelier and having since been promoted to director of wine, during his tenure there, Rosendal has worked closely with brands such as Nyetimber, Ridgeview and Gusbourne to champion English sparkling wine. He believes in making a wine list attractive without forcing a customer to pay over the odds. With 30 wines below £40, “guests simply like to have options and do not want to feel pressured to choose the most expensive wine on the list”, he says.
