photo courtesy Jim Newberry

Alpana Singh is our favorite 29-year-old, Fijian desi, Padma Lakshmi-rivaling master sommelier (via Sepia):

At 26, Singh was the youngest woman ever to become a master sommelier… Awarded by the London-based Court of Master Sommeliers after a multiyear maze of exams, it’s the highest honor a wine professional can attain; only 4 percent of all applicants pass. [Link]

She just published Alpana Pours:

… from the chapter “Pairings: Wine, Hooking Up, and Dating”: “Looking super hot in a really expensive dress can be immediately undermined if you order a diet cola…” Alpana Pours is probably the only wine book out there that could be excerpted in Cosmo… [Link]

Basically, it’s like a chick-book about dating meets a wine book. For example, wine tasting is kind of like speed dating. You go in, and you find the feel for the event, understand that you’ll spend 30 seconds for each wine and feel the impression for yes or no… Wine tastings are like that. You get that general impression; some you know right away that you’re not going to like, others you’re thinking, ‘maybe I’ll walk around with you for a bit,’ and others you’re exclaiming, ‘Slam dunk, where do I buy this?’ [Link]

“My idea of a wine lover is someone who stocks up on a case of wine at Trader Joe’s, spends $70, and they have a bottle over the course of three nights with their spaghetti.” [Link]

Singh says she’s single-handedly saving the Indra Nooyis of the world:

“Time and time again when I was explaining the wine to the woman, I’d find myself telling more of like the People magazine story–the gossip behind it… And with the guy, I would describe more of the structure and the boldness and the richness–the prestige of the product…

“You have a female CEO running Pepsi now… She goes out to dinner, she entertains clients–do you think she’s going to hand over the wine list to a guy and tell him to pick? No.” [Link]

And she almost cried when she read The Namesake:

“Trying to explain to your parents things that happened to you in the Western world–you really do live a double life. You go to school and you’re talking about New Kids on the Block–’Oh my god, Jordan is so cute!’–and then you come home and sit down for Indian prayer and learn how to cook and clean, how to be a proper bride.” [Link]

And she becomes just a tad more impassioned when she talks about her quiet rebellion against her traditional Indian parents, the kind of passion that hints at emotions felt not too long ago (she’s no longer angry at them, she says, and, in fact, is very appreciative now)… [Link]

Singh got a head start on her career by dropping out of college:

“My parents never told me about the SATs,” she says. “I didn’t know about taking certain classes or being well-rounded, like having to play sports or doing music. We never had that talk because my parents didn’t know. They didn’t know how to cultivate a child that was going to be college friendly…” So she opted to get a job waiting tables while attending community college. [Link]

The correct response to that question is Sula:

… if a less-than-enlightened diner happens to say something like, “But I went to India and they don’t have any wine there” (like one did recently), Singh is more than happy to inform her — in the most hospitable manner becoming of a master sommelier, of course — that she was born and raised in this country. [Link]

I would love to go to India; I’ve never been. [Link]

Here’s Singh on her voilà moment. Lacking the senses, I still secretly suspect it’s a bluff

“‘I don’t get the blueberries–I just taste nasty alcohol.’ So I just kept trying and trying and one day I got pear out of a wine.” [Link]

“I really understand what it feels like to be intimidated,” she says, adding that her Indian culture is not known for its wine consumption. [Link]

She has a zaftig physique which pointed her in an Å“nophilic direction:

[Singh] was at one point planning to join the U.S. Air Force. “I love to travel, so it sounded great,” she recalls. “But I went for my physical, and the doctor said, ‘I just don’t picture you in the Air Force.’ [Link]

Singh is deceptively casual about her success:

Perhaps it was divine intervention that led her three years ago to Rancho Cellars in Carmel, Calif., where she was named wine education director and guru of its 900-wine e-commerce site. [Link]

Alpana Singh is host of the #1 Public Television program in Chicago, Check, Please!, which has won two Emmy awards. She has been named Best Sommelier in America by Wine and Spirits Magazine, Jane magazine’s “30 Under 30,” Crain’s “40 Under 40,” Food and Wine Magazine’s “35 Under 35,” “Best Sommelier” Chicago Magazine 2004, and a 2002 James Beard Foundation Nomination for Wine Service. [Link]

There’s something very Nigella about her — Singh too married a writer. As Borat would say, ‘It’s niiice.’