Meet the New Generation of French Sommeliers

Wine advice in restaurants is evolving, with affable hospitality replacing haughty instructions. Alexander Lobrano attends the world championships, and asks if this is the end of the ‘whine list’ about French sommeliers.

In France, a new vintage of sommeliers is completely changing the way that this most Gallic of métiers is practised: instead of lording it over a wine list, they aspire to become your partner in pleasure. Even though sommeliers have been a major part of my life as a food writer and restaurant reviewer in France for more than 30 years, it wasn’t until I attended an unexpectedly adrenaline-pumping competition, the Meilleur Sommelier du Monde, at La Défense Arena in Paris last winter, that I fully understood and appreciated the complexity of their work. Run by l’Association de la Sommellerie Internationale since 1969, the triennial competition is the most prestigious event in the world of sommeliers, and to say that the profession is in full evolution is to put it very mildly, too.

My first experience of what was then the prevailing whine list about sommeliers was the behaviour of the one at Le Charles V, a long-gone fancy French restaurant in New York City. This whippet-like man theatrically refused to believe an attractive blonde American lady (my late mother) could know anything about wine. Demurring at his dull suggestion that she and my aunt drink an Entre-Deux-Mers, a rather ordinary white Bordeaux, she’d instead chosen a Vouvray to accompany their lunch of asparagus in Hollandaise sauce and grilled sole.

A perfect pairing

“Mais, non, madame,” he said shaking his head. “Mais si, monsieur,” she replied. It wasn’t until the hawk-eyed maître d’hôtel came by the table to make sure everything was all right that the sommelier relented, storming away in protest. It was the maître d’hôtel who served the wine, nodding approvingly as he did so. “A very good choice, Madame,” he said quietly and sincerely and having the same meal 20 years later, I would agree that it was.

“Their ostensible job is to help you select a wine that suits both the meal you’ve ordered and the amount of money you want to spend,” my mother explained to me and my brothers after lunch. “Unfortunately, even though they know a lot, too many of them are stuffy old bores who take pleasure in humiliating their customers. Some day women will break into the profession of sommelier and make it what it should be an exchange of learning and pleasure for people who love wine,” she predicted.

My father dodged the sommelier problem with a stock disclaimer. To my mother’s recurring irritation, because she might have chosen the wine, he always said the same thing when the sommelier in any restaurant approached our table with the wine list. “You know much better than I do, sir,” he’d say, holding up his hands in surrender. “Just keep it between $30-$50,” which was a decent amount of money at the time.

Waiting to be admitted to the auditorium for the finals of the four-day Meilleur Sommelier du Monde competition on a blustery Sunday afternoon with 4,000 other people, I remembered something the talented Argentinian-born sommelier Paz Levinson, head sommelier for all of chef Anne-Sophie Pic’s restaurants, said to me last year.

“I think restaurants should be schools,” she told me. “Everyone who works in a restaurant should be a teacher. Wine is my passion, so I am a teacher of wine. It gives me great pleasure to share what I know.” Many years later, my mother’s hopeful prediction has come true. Women are changing the world of the sommelier in France, as are men like Florian Guilloteau, who looks after the wines at the recently-reopened Espadon at the Ritz in Paris.

Communication is key

“The most important thing I do in my work is having a dialogue with my client,” says Guilloteau. “This way I can understand his or her tastes and personality.” This means Guilloteau’s approach to wine service is both didactic and complicit, and also very charming, which makes drinking here a particularly pleasant part of a meal, especially since he works so closely with chef Eugénie Béziat to create original wine and beverage pairings. “My goal is to break the old codes of wine, and to lead my clients to great wines from regions they might not think of, including Alsace, the Loire and the Jura. I also love serving beverages other than wine. Mead, a fermented honey drink, pairs beautifully with certain desserts,” says Guilloteau.

At La Défense, the crowd of vinophiles, among them the general public and some 450 young sommeliers graciously invited to the event by Philippe Faure-Brac, President of the Association of Parisian Sommeliers, was bristling with excitement. A French woman had made it to the finals: the brilliant, much-loved New York City-based sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier, whose impressive career includes having become a Meilleur Ouvrier de France Sommellerie and Meilleur Sommelier de France in 2018. A Frenchman or woman had not won the Meilleur Sommelier du Monde competition since Olivier Poussier in 2000, so Lepeltier was clearly the one the crowd was rooting for as we streamed into the auditorium and took our seats before the slick black-and-white stage. The stagecraft of the event, which is often called the Olympics of wine, was highly professional and very dramatic in terms of lighting, music, choreography and sets.

The four-day whittling down of the original 68 candidates had been harrowing and even a little bit hazing, with blind tastings galore and service tasks aimed at putting them in professional situations to evaluate their skills and abilities. Their wine and beverages knowledge was put to the most exacting test with quarter-final exam questions including: What is the sensory threshold for acetic acid in wine? (140mg per litre); Identify the native country of this cépage – Yan (China), Bishty (Uzbekistan), Chinuri (Georgia), Cienna (Australia) and Anab-e-Shahi (India); Indicate the dominant soil type of these famous wines or wine regions – Masseto (blue clay), graacher domprobst (slate), monteverro (red clay). One question many candidates got wrong was, What is makgeolli? A Korean rice alcohol, of course.

“Taste is one thing,” explains Philippe Faure-Brac, “But this competition isn’t just about being the best taster in the world. It’s about the métier of sommelier in terms of all the facets that must be mastered – knowledge, management, running a wine list and cellar, food and wine pairings. It’s also about the behaviour of the contestant – their savoir-faire with their clients has a big impact on the success of their candidacy.”

Food writer Vincent Ferniot, host of one of the testing sessions, adds that sommeliers are also “judged according to their ability to psychologically analyse their clients and also according to their talent for good story telling”. Or in other words, good sommeliers give wine a voice. Of the original 68 candidates from 65 countries, four semi-finalists remained: Reeze Choi (China), Nina Jensen (Denmark), Pascaline Lepeltier (France), and Raimonds Tomsons (Latvia).

After welcoming remarks by William Wouters, the President of l’Association de la Sommellerie Internationale, the crowd were on the edge of their seats to know who the three finalists would be, and a huge collective groan went up when Pascaline Lepeltier was eliminated. The contest continued, however, with the audience perceptibly shaken.

A gruelling competition

Next, the three finalists were subjected to a series of intense, high-pressure tests, including acting as sommelier to three tables of guests made up of fellow sommeliers and past winners of the competition. First up was Reeze Choi, who was thrown for a loop when he was informed that due to a staff shortage, he’d have to handle all drinks for the three tables by himself. When a table of four ordered a Margarita, an Old Fashioned and two glasses of sparkling wine, he went to the bar to order. The bartender asked if the guest wanted the Margarita up or down and with or without a salt rim. Choi hastily returned to the table to check, then went back to the bar to say “up with a salt rim”.

Next, the bartender asked if the Old Fashioned should be made with rye or bourbon… All of these back and forths dented his score, since his lack of efficiency was also judged to be possibly exasperating for his clients. Next he had to serve a bottle of red Bordeaux and comment on it, and finally do a blind tasting of four different white wines, identifying them by cépage, region and vineyard with as much additional commentary as possible in the allotted time. Gracious and polite as he was throughout the exam, it was clear that he occasionally stubbed his toe in terms of understanding the English in which the tests were given (no one is allowed to compete in their mother tongue and must choose between English, French and Spanish).

As it turned out, all three of the final candidates failed the blind-tasting test of four white wines, and ultimately, even though the crowd seemed to be hoping that the very earnest Dane Nina Jensen might become the first woman to win the competition, it was the very suave and impressive Latvian sommelier Raimonds Tomsons who became Meilleur Sommelier of the World 2023.

Experiencing this fascinating contest left me with a lot to think about. Among my takeaways were that sommeliers today are expected to have a deep knowledge not just of wine but of all of the world’s drinks. “Cocktails, sake, spirits, cider, beer, wine and water are now all part of the métier,” says Philippe Faure-Brac. This means that today, any really good sommelier will be as successful at serving vegan clients, who can’t, for example, drink red wines where egg whites have been used as a fining agent, and people who don’t drink alcohol full-stop, as they are at choosing the perfect bottle of wine to pair with turbot roasted in milk or a truffled roast chicken. I also understood that the sommelier’s role has evolved to have an important hospitality component, something I first experienced when I met the delightful sommelier Estelle Touzet when she was working first at the Hôtel Meurice and then again when she became the first female sommelier at the Ritz.

Writing about his own encounter with Touzet, French food critic Gilles Pudlowski said that he was “amazed by her vivacity, her naturalness and the pertinence of her (wine) choices in a Michelin three-star restaurant. Thanks to her, a dream meal was even more memorable”.

I agree. Touzet’s enthusiasm and excitement about the wines she poured, including a beautiful Vouvray, as it happened, and a rare Xerez (one of the most spectacular wines I’ve ever had) with dessert, made our excellent meal enchanting, so that for the first time I experienced what a huge difference a delightful sommelier can make to a meal. Happily, Touzet’s style is increasingly preponderant among the younger generation of sommeliers in France. “In the end, the whole wine world should be about inclusivity, gathering together, quality communication, conviviality and passion for good wines,” says Faure-Brac.

Or as Pascaline Lepeltier says when summing up her work as sommelier at Chambers, a restaurant in Lower Manhattan: “My role isn’t to give lessons to my clients, but to initiate them into the pleasure of the palate. By tasting and paying attention to what we eat and drink, we can derive an incredible satisfaction at being in this world.”

From France Today Magazine