Pascaline Lepeltier
This year’s Decanter Rising Star combines academic diligence of the highest level with a deep sensitivity for nature. One of the world’s best sommeliers, Pascaline Lepeltier has brought a wealth of knowledge and love for wine to her guests over the past two decades. In 2022, she published Mille Vignes, her first wine book written as a sole author. One Thousand Vines, its English translation, comes out this autumn (£45 Mitchell Beazley, late October in the UK). Pensive, philosophical, yet very approachable, it’s without doubt one of this era’s seminal works on wine.
Lepeltier grew up in the Loire, but she wasn’t born into wine. With a love for studying, she began learning ancient Greek at school aged 10. Her intensive education was ‘extremely formative’, she says, giving her the analytical skillset that would later prove so helpful when writing Mille Vignes. A philosophy degree at Nantes University was followed by a master’s by age 21, with a thesis on French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose work still inspires her.
Lucky detour
Next was going to be a PhD to pursue a career in teaching, but as Pascaline was still young and lacking in confidence, her teacher encouraged her to take a break – to do something with her hands. She returned to Angers, where she met Patrick Rigourd, the head wine merchant at Des Halles et des Gourmets, who introduced her to wine and became her mentor.
She took another master’s in hospitality management, then a sommelier diploma. An experience with a bottle of 1937 Château d’Yquem was her sliding door moment: her way forward in life was to be in wine. While studying, she interned at chef Jacques Thorel’s two-Michelin-starred L’Auberge Bretonne in La Roche-Bernard. She recalls: ‘Growing up, I didn’t go to restaurants with my parents; I discovered the world of gastronomy during my internship. I became fascinated by taste and the power of the palate, and really saw it as an anthropological study. I realised this is the centre of life, the centre of culture, the very centre of civilisation.’
Working with an incredible wine list, she began honing her palate by tasting wine from domaines such as Domaine des Comtes Lafon, Trimbach, Henri Jayer, Domaine Leroy, Pétrus, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Egon Müller, Château Musar, Ridge and more. In the Loire, she worked harvests with Domaine des Griottes and Benoît Courault.
Passion for organics
During this period, she spent two days a week in vineyards with winemakers such as Mark Angeli of Ferme de la Sansonnière and Nicolas Joly: two of France’s foremost proponents of organic and biodynamic agriculture. ‘Right away, I was convinced by the differences in terms of soil and plant health I was seeing in organic and biodynamic vineyards, and the result was in the bottle,’ she says. ‘I was blessed from early on to meet winemakers who became very dear friends. I couldn’t not want to champion them.’
After working at Rouge Tomate in Brussels and the George V, Paris, in 2009 she became beverage director for Rouge Tomate in New York. There, she composed one of the world’s most celebrated wine lists, while also becoming an advocate for healthier viticulture. In 2014, she passed the Master Sommelier exams, but following the revelations in 2020 of abuse of power and sexual harassment by some Master Sommeliers in the US, and feeling increasingly disconnected with the way wine was being taught, she decided to no longer be an active member of the Court of Master Sommeliers.
Angeli says: ‘Pascaline is one of very few sommeliers worldwide who masters all aspects of the profession, above and beyond the norm. This precious quality, combined with an encyclopaedic knowledge, allows her also to be a winemaker and a writer, and to foil the falsehoods so commonly found in wine. Without her and her holistic approach, Anjou would still be in the limbo of anonymity and in the throes of poor sales.’
At Rouge…
Source : https://www.decanter.com.master.public.keystone-prod-eks-euw1.futureplc.engineering/magazine/pascaline-lepeltier-decanter-rising-star-2024-538801/
