OFF DUTY
EN POINTE
Jessica Nemmers says her career as a ballet dancer taught her physical and mental discipline.
PURSUITS
The Cabernet Counsel Attorney Taylor Rex Robertson puts his analytic skills to use as a sommelier and award-winning wine taster. story by ELLIE BEECK SNAPSHOT
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learning,” he says. “I love something that’s analytical and productive, and for better or worse, wine and wine tasting checks all those boxes.” The rigorous exam, offered by the Court of Master Sommeliers, has three parts: service, theory, and a blind taste test—Robertson’s favorite. He finds his thought process when analyzing a wine to be similar to his work as a lawyer. “When you’re in law school, and you’re trying to figure out a fact pattern or whether you can allege breach of contract or negligence, and you know all the elements of a case, you try to look through the fact pattern to find all those elements and make an argument for why you can meet however many elements. Blind tasting is extremely similar. You are taking all of the clues and trying to fit them in these boxes.” Robertson’s work as an attorney sometimes makes it difficult for him to be taken seriously in the sommelier world. The Court of Master Sommeliers, for example, won’t allow him to take the next level of exams through their organization. So, he’s doing so through another certifying body, the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. Already a national champion, Robertson plans to one day become a Master of Wine, one THE NOSE of the highest honors in the KNOWS industry, with fewer than 400 Wine expert Taylor Rex Robertson, masters worldwide. below, and at left with tasting He says his notoriety in the partner Jacob wine world is great for buildFergus. ing relationships in his law career. “It’s always the first thing that comes up with clients or even opposing counsel,” Robertson says. “I’ll introduce myself and they say, ‘Oh, you’re the wine guy.’”
Elevate Credit’s security chief Jessica Nemmers’ star turn as a professional ballerina. Jessica Nemmers took her first ballet class when she was 6 years old. By 12, she was training to be a professional ballerina. She made her professional debut when she was a senior at Ursuline Academy, and before long, went from being cast as “human scenery” to performing in the corps de ballet in Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers in The Nutcracker. Now Elevate Credit’s chief security officer, Nemmers says she loved performing and the “smell” of the theater. “As a ballet dancer, you can smell it, and you can taste it,” Nemmers says. She switched to IT and then cybersecurity after Ballet Dallas went bankrupt. “My hardest day in corporate America still cannot compare to a typical day as a professional dancer,” she says. “My ballet training and experience has been valuable at all stages of my IT and security career. It taught me physical and mental discipline, time management, and fortitude.” — Kelsey J. Vanderschoot
P H OTO G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y O F T A Y L O R R E X R O B E R T S O N A N D J E S S I C A N E M M E R S
dallas attorney taylor rex robertson’s passion for wine tasting has taken him all over the world. A certified sommelier, he won the U.S Wine Tasting Open in 2019 with tasting partner Jacob Fergus. That earned him a spot at the World Wine Tasting Championship in France. At both events, Robertson was the only lawyer in the room. “I’ve had situations where I’ve been not invited to tasting groups because of [not working in the service industry],” he says. “I’ve had to fight a little bit of that resistance.” Now a trial lawyer at Haynes and Boone, Robertson developed a passion for the history, production, and marketing of wine while working as a waiter and bartender at a bistro in Oklahoma City. He was biding his time before starting law school, and began to consider becoming a professional sommelier instead. “My parents are happy that I chose law,” he says. He didn’t give up his passion for wine, though, and in 2018 became a certified sommelier. “I love
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