2018 Master Sommelier exam cheating scandal

In early October 2018, the board of the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas (CMSA) voted unanimously to suspend indefinitely the Master Sommelier credential awarded to all but one of an unprecedented 24 candidates who had passed its stringent annual membership exam a month previously at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis.^[1] The decision was taken after the CMSA's board learned that one of its own members, Reggie Narito, had passed advance information about two of the six wines candidates had to identify during the blind tasting section, considered the most challenging of the three portions of the exam. Two of the successful candidates, to whom the information was known to have been passed (a third had failed), unsolicited, were barred from retaking the exam for five years. All the others were allowed to make up the exam in December at no charge; six passed. Narito was expelled from the organization^[2]: 4:38 and lost his Master Sommelier title.^[3]

Aspiring Master Sommeliers often spend years, and considerable sums of money, acquiring the knowledge and experience necessary to pass the exam, the highest credential of the four the CMSA offers, which is only given to those invited to or recommended for it by those already members of the organization. The exam has an 8 percent pass rate; more people have been in space than become Master Sommeliers,^[4] entitled to append "MS" to their names in any wine-related context. Those who succeed have often been rewarded with increased income and more lucrative jobs in the wine industry.

For those reasons, the candidates whose titles were suspended protested the CMSA's decision as not only costing them economically, but casting aspersions on their professional integrity, since they were never offered a chance to prove their innocence. The CMSA defended the decision as the only way to preserve the title's integrity since it could not be determined how many candidates had seen the tip as opposed to merely being sent it. It sustained its decision on internal appeal, but in the process left itself open to public criticism of its internal investigation of the incident as cursory, secretive, and perhaps tainted by conflicts of interest. Rumors that the board's real motivation had been preventing public disclosure of earlier exams tainted by cheating were given credence in 2021 when a Vice article reported that a former candidate said the board had been aware of cheating on the exam almost 10 years earlier yet took no action save tightening testing procedures for the next exam. The affair has also given rise to more general criticism of the opacity of the exam administration process and CMSA's governance in general.

Some of those suspended have continued to pursue the title, a few succeeded; the exam has not been held since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Others, alienated by the CMSA's handling of the matter and a later sexual harassment scandal, have lost interest in ever becoming Master Sommeliers; some have decided to pursue the competing Master of Wine certification. One of the latter, Dan Pilkey, continued to use the "MS" post-nominal in social media posts about wine, and wear the lapel pin, even after the board suspended it. The CMSA sued him for infringement of its collective membership mark; the case was dismissed on procedural grounds and not refiled.