Marc Andréa Levy is the epitome of what a good sommelier should be: solid experience, great skills learnt on the job and passion for wine! But what is a sommelier exactly? Well, Marc Andrea, head sommelier at Murano, the recent opening from Gordon Ramsay’s Restaurants Empire answered this question for us. Marc Andréa also told us about his philosophy in his job, how wines should be talked about in a simple manner, and why we should discover and experience a bit more! Picture below - Marc-Andréa Levy at Murano restaurant                 Olivier Bourseau: Marc-Andréa, thank you for taking the time to speak to us for this interview. You are head sommelier at Murano restaurant which opened recently. Can you tell us what a sommelier exactly is? Marc-Andréa Levy: A sommelier is the person in charge of creating the wine list in a restaurant, and also deals with buying the wine. The sommelier also looks after the guests during service time. He or she takes wine orders from guests and advises on how to combine wine with the food they have ordered first. Then there is obviously the service bit of the wines at the right temperature and in the right glasses. Olivier Bourseau: In terms of your background, where did you study and where have you worked prior to the Murano? Marc-Andréa Levy: I started 5 years ago in the UK at the Ettington Park Hotel in Stratford-upon- Avon. When I arrived I didn’t speak much English at all but I had already a big passion for wine because I had been educated from my family. It was not because I had been trained professionally before but only because I had been used to drinking top quality wines so this shaped up my palate pretty young! I started at Ettington and parallel to this did some wine studies. I was then promoted to bar manager about a year and a half later once I had completed my Wine and Spirit Education Trust qualifications. Then I moved to London and worked with Conran restaurants at the Almeida restaurant as sommelier and left as restaurant manager to go to Gordon Ramsay restaurants. I worked at the Claridge’s as a sommelier, and was promoted to number 2 after a year and a half. I worked for a total of 3 years there. It was a huge operation with a team of about 14 sommeliers altogether, and a lot of reputation too in the group! And then I moved on still within the same group to open up Murano in August this year. And this restaurant has been open in conjunction with another one, York and Albany, and I am dealing with both wine lists for these two, so it is an exciting challenge! Olivier Bourseau: Food at Murano is Italian reflecting your Chef, Angela Hartnett’s Italian roots. Can you tell us about the wine list there and how you put it together? Marc-Andréa Levy: Here at Murano, Angela Hartnett is from Emilia Romania in Italy and so the focus is on Italy but also with a modern European touch. In terms of her food, you are going to have some nice home-made pastas, a bit more personal dishes like “Vittelo Tonnato” which are very simple and pure, and at the same time kind of rustic. So I have been reflecting this with the wines too. The wines are not “fussy” but simple. Obviously there is a majority of Italian wines with IGTs (Means Indicazione Geografica Tipica, a specific level of quality for Italian wines) and unknown areas of italy as well as the South of France. I would say that the wine list is mostly Mediterranean with Spain represented too. I have also diversified it with some German and Austrian wines. But it remains mostly Italian and French. Olivier Bourseau: Could you give us a tip for people who don’t know anything about wine but would like to better order wine in restaurants? Marc-Andréa Levy: What is happening often is that people usually don’t know much about wine but do not want to say it but that is fine because we adapt to this. My advice would be: keep it simple! I think it is important to talk about the style of wines guests like. This is the first step and I try to understand this. Do they like Chablis, Pinot Noirs? And so on. And once we have got this, we keep it simple suggesting other wines but while keeping the style they like and obviously combining this with the food they have ordered. So we then try and play around from the style they like and have them discover new things as well. We also try and keep it simple in terms of the words we use to that the wines are made approachable to them. So we keep it very simple from the taste they like in the first place. Olivier Bourseau: If you had to name 2 or 3 of your favourite types of wines, which one would they be? Marc-Andréa Levy: My personal taste goes for the South of France and Languedoc Roussillon. I really like winemakers such as Alain Chabanon for instance who is very pure in what he does. This region has really improved in the last 20 or 30 years and the winemakers have looked at quality against quantity with single vineyards wines and a lot of effort put throughout the process. And it is also about discovering new things away from the classics from Bordeaux or Burgundy. Everybody knows these famous classic regions, and we taste them enough in restaurants with clients spending thousands on them. But what is exciting these days are wines which nobody knows and the south of France has got a lot of these. So from the south west and Languedoc and Provence, and I could also include Alsace which I am also found of! Olivier Bourseau: Thank you very much Marc-Andréa!