The sommelier Dana Gaiser completes a blind tasting in a scene from Esquire Network’s new original series, “Uncorked.” Photograph courtesy Esquire

Each year, approximately two hundred sommeliers from around the world submit themselves to a gruelling three-part test of wine expertise known as the Master Sommelier Exam. They must first pass an oral test of wine theory, in which examinees are expected to show encyclopedic knowledge of wine-growing regions and styles. That is followed by the service portion of the exam, in which sommeliers are judged on their courtesy, charm, and salesmanship as they serve tables of judges who try to trip them up with fussy demands (“Monsieur would like to pair his five-course tasting menu exclusively with rosé”). Then there’s the most notoriously nightmarish section of the test, the blind tasting, in which contestants must identify three red and three white wines based on flavor and appearance alone. Those who pass the test are instantly recognized among the best in the business—the wine-world version of being knighted, or made in the mob. But the vast majority of the wine pros who take the exam each year will fail it. In the test’s forty-five-year history, a mere two hundred and thirty people worldwide have succeeded in becoming Master Sommeliers.

The new reality TV series “Uncorked,” which débuts this week, on the Esquire Network, trails six New York City sommeliers as they sacrifice their sleep, social lives, and sanity to prepare for the exam, sometimes for the second, third, or ninth time. (Like the bar, the Master exam imposes no limits on how many times candidates can attempt it.) There is Josh Nadel, a wine director of six New York restaurants, whose years-long preparations for the exam have cost him friends, hobbies, and quality time with his wife. There’s Yannick Benjamin, a thirty-seven-year-old French-born somm who, despite being paralyzed from the waist down after a car crash, in 2003, has been undeterred in his quest to become a Master. Morgan Harris, a somm at Aureole, has a habit of delivering impromptu wine lectures to strangers in bars, and Jane Lopes, a twenty-eight-year-old straight-A student-type and the only woman on the show, keeps color-coded binders containing her notes on wine theory (“I kind of like to create my own textbook,” she says). Dana Gaiser, a blind-tasting savant whose laid-back Miami beach vibe sometimes clashes with his buttoned-up profession, is the chill foil to Jack Mason, a churchgoer from rural Texas whose nerves frequently get the best of him.

Where other food-TV shows revolve around contestants juggling bloody hunks of meat, screaming at hapless assistants, or hustling over open flames, “Uncorked” finds its tension in subtler and nerdier forms of suspense. (The conceit of “Uncorked” is borrowed from the 2012 documentary “Somm,” which followed four sommeliers in their final weeks cramming for the Master exam.) The contestants spar over the finer points of wine aromas in group study sessions—is that really a German Riesling, not an Austrian one?—practice blind tasting with Master somm mentors, and face off in competitions and challenges meant to mimic the format of the Master’s exam. As they spit and pour, the stars of “Uncorked” also explain the intricate rules governing their craft, so that even wine neophytes learn to cringe when Nadel presents his table a bottle with—the horror!—its neck’s metal foil already removed. The deceptively simple act of pouring wine becomes a high-stakes performance as Harris, hands trembling, attempts to transfer an eight-hundred-dollar bottle of Cabernet into a slim-necked decanter without spilling in front of the judges. The appeal of the show is less “Top Chef” than the Westminster Dog Show with booze: a window into a subculture based on esoteric minutiae and an obsessive, borderline masochistic drive for perfection.

“Uncorked” arrives at a time when seemingly every corner of the restaurant world has been mined for reality-TV potential. The networks’ Master and Top chefs have long shared the spotlight with restaurateurs, bakers, pastry chefs, butchers, even foragers, who, on the new Discovery Channel show “Unearthed,” have camera crews follow them as they stalk black truffles through the Oregon forests. The dude-oriented Esquire Network has lately been mining the beverage world as well, launching shows about craft brewers on the hunt for weird beers and the bartenders who staff watering holes across America. But the arrival of “Uncorked” also reflects a larger shift in the status of sommeliers. Until recently, the profession still evoked stuck-up men in stuffy French restaurants, whose job title seemed unpronounceable (Somalian? Somm-leeay?), and whose duties seemed to consist mostly of ferrying bottles from cellar to table. Now, a number of the wine world’s leading pros are becoming food celebrities in their own right, parlaying their dining-room flair into book deals, endorsements, new restaurants, international conferences, and devoted Instagram followings. Aldo Sohm, the wine director at Le Bernardin and the most recent winner of the Best Sommelier in the World competition, offers Sohm-branded glassware and corkscrews at his namesake wine bar in midtown Manhattan. Figures like Rajat Parr, who oversees wine for the Mina Group in San Francisco, and Patrick Capiello, the champagne-sabering wine director of New York’s Pearl & Ash and Rebelle, are building mini-empires in the model of Daniel Boulud or David Chang. Though he resists the comparison, Geoff Kruth, a Master sommelier who appeared in and helped produce both “Somm” and “Uncorked,” is emerging as an Anthony Bourdain for wine, propelling sommeliers’ status and feeding mainstream curiosity.

Many members of this new star-sommelier generation fit the archetype of the irreverent food-world personality. Capiello quotes rap lyrics when posting about bottles on Instagram and shows off tattooed arms in the video wine guides he hosts for “Playboy.” Parr captions photos of digéstifs and 1988 Pinot Noir with hashtags like “#nextlevelshit” and “#oldskool.” In today’s self-consciously casual restaurant world, there’s room for attitude even with your Château Haut-Brion. But “Uncorked” introduces us to a wonkier side of the sommelier profession that is no less compelling. The show’s biggest feat might be that it makes unapologetic wine snobs seem sympathetic, and exposes the hard work and fanatical training behind a profession that can seem like pure hedonism. You might find yourself craving a glass of wine to take the edge off the vicarious test anxiety. “Masters is a mind game,” one judge tells Lopes. “The only thing that will get in your way is you.”