MJ is a marketing colleague at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A former music promoter, she is also a skilled meeting facilitator and project manager, and she recently added Certified Sommelier to her list of credentials. For the viticulturally challenged among us, here’s the Merriam-Webster definition:

sommelier  \ˌsə-məl-ˈyā(z)\ : a waiter in a restaurant who has charge of wines and their service: a wine steward (Origin: French, from Middle French soumelier, official charged with transportation of supplies, from Old French, pack animal driver, probably alteration of sommerier, from somier pack animal, from Medieval Latin saugmarius, from Late Latin sagma packsaddle)

We staged this True Colors portrait in MJ’s backyard on the same sunny afternoon that we created a portrait of her husband, Nate, with his wooden recurve bow. For MJ’s photo, I wanted to capture a simple, stark image of the sommelier and son verre du vin. But that was before I knew the etymology of her effete title. Had I understood those humble Old French and Latin origins, I might have staged the shoot with a pack mule or oxen. They would have been tastefully posed, bien sûr.