“Nothing is taken for granted, every day counts”

You represent France in the Best Sommelier in the World 2026 competition. What is your feeling?

It’s an honor. The competition celebrates sommelier as an art, bringing together professionals from around the world, including from countries where wine is not a given for cultural, religious or political reasons.

What does this job reveal about you?

I first studied philosophy. Sommellerie brought me back to humans and the body. Wine is a cultural medium, which links terroir, practices and civilizations. Everything that attracted me in philosophy takes, with my job, a concrete form.

The place that inspires you to taste a wine?

In the middle of the vines, where the wine is born.

What will you never tire of looking at?

The ocean. Faced with its immensity, the ego dissolves.

The Proust madeleine from your childhood?

Fishing trips on foot with my grandfather in Normandy, near Granville. What comes back to me is the iodized smell. In New York, where I live, the wind sometimes carries a breath of the ocean.

I then close my eyes and breathe. Odors travel through time.

We give you three days, a backpack, and no car. Where are you going?

On the Pyrenean stretch of Santiago de Compostela, between vineyards and mountains. My mother is waiting for me for these steps.

A gesture of happy sobriety to share?

At the table, slow down: taste, chew, savor. In a daily life that moves too quickly, this simple gesture changes everything. We rediscover textures and flavors, we connect with those who produced the food and the land that nourished it. Eating once again becomes a conscious, almost sacred act.

The Pope grants you an audience. What would you make him taste?

A Chartreuse, without hesitation. More than a liqueur, it is a concentrate of history and spirituality. She embodies patience, transmission and mystery.

Do you have a guardian angel watching over your shoulder?

Stéphanie, my little sister who died at 11 years old. She shaped my vision of life: nothing is taken for granted, every day counts.