Meet Valentin Mouillard

Head Sommelier at L’Enclume, Cartmel

Most lovers of food and drink will be quick to agree that no trip to Cumbria is complete without a visit to Cartmel - home to Simon Rogan’s renowned restaurants L’Enclume and Rogan & Co as well as his development kitchen and chef’s table Aulis and it’s no surprise it has become known as a destination for anybody who appreciates excellent restaurants and local produce. We recently caught up with Head Sommelier at L’Enclume, Valentin Mouillard.

Tell us a little about what you do

I’m the Head Sommelier at L’Enclume.To keep it simple my role in the restaurant is to look after the beverage programme, together with my team of sommeliers, we ensure that all our guests are able to enjoy the drinks we offer. As we do with our menus at L’Enclume, we like to take our guests on a journey of discovery.

What was your first ever wine job and what inspired you to become a sommelier?

My earliest memory was helping my dad pour a champagne fountain at a wedding. That’s the first time I realised I wanted to work in hospitality, and from there I moved my way into wine learning how to be able to explain the beauty of this beverage, which brings people together at celebrations, dinners and other occasions. Which personality traits are the most important in becoming a good sommelier: psychologist, counsellor, artist, performer?

I think counsellor is one of the most important personality traits, as a sommelier you are there to guide your guests. Every wine list is different, and no one can know all of the drinks available within a given list. So, we are on hand to offer guidance everyone who requests it. After selection, of course, we have an opportunity to unleash our artistic/performance traits during service when we run ‘the show’ as we call it.

How do you work with the chefs and kitchen to marry wines/drinks and their creations? What are your tips for menu pairing?

At L’Enclume, we enjoy complete freedom with our pairings, as Simon trusts us to find the perfect drink to

Simon’s, head chef Paul Burgalières and the team come up with new dishes, introduce them to us and we play around with interesting beverages and new discoveries to create our pairings (3 wine pairings and a soft drinks pairing)

To find the best possible food pairing is to fully to understand the dish you are trying to match – that means to identify the main component that brings flavour into the dish. The question you then have to answer is if you want to highlight that ingredient or make another dish component shine more?

As a sommelier you taste lots of wine, what do you feel makes a truly great wine and can you tell from that initial tasting?

What I’m usually looking for in a wine is its elegance or clear expression. The bouquet needs to shine and start to tease your nose. The palate will have beautiful acidity at the beginning, which will attract you, then you discover the first fruit flavours, which will continue to develop in your palate. This will be your anchor and will start to give you an opinion. If the wine shows more flavours and develops more interesting aspects later, then it is an outstanding wine, if not then it was a great wine anyway.

How do you analyse something like a wine which is a very subjective experience?

There are different ways to analyse for me... The first being does the wine profile correspond to the wine area, appellation, or the main grape variety which will let you understand how it could taste. The second would be, do I like it. As mentioned before, is it elegant, is it expressive and would I order a bottle for myself?

What has been the biggest change in the wine world since you started your career?

The biggest change would be the improvement of natural wines and the acceptance of them by the public.

When I started, natural wines were starting to become more important for a myriad of reasons. A lot of winemakers wanted to begin making wines of this type but didn’t fully understand the principles. The issue is, to be able to make an organic wine, unfiltered and without sulphite you cannot just let the vines grow, press the juice, ferment it and bottle the wine. It’s actually even more complicated than being a “traditional winemaker” because you cannot hide your mistakes with any chemicals.

Now, however, it is much easier to find some good natural wines. Winemakers and governments are, in general, making much more effort towards organic and bio-dynamic processes. This allows us to be able to introduce unfiltered wines or low sulphite added wines without having the pressure of having guests refuse these wines.

What is your favourite terroir for wine?

My favourite terroir, that’s a difficult choice, I would pick two, Muscadet and Jura. Both of them relate to me, either because they are close to my hometown or where my family live. The real gems are unknown to most people and in many cases, the potential of these wines is misunderstood. In Muscadet, you can find some amazing hidden gems, which is even better knowing

L’Enclume, Cartmel