The Current23:23A Canadian Sommelier in Paris
If you visited Pier-Alexis Soulière at home, you might not realize he’s one of North America’s most decorated wine experts.
The 35-year-old produces and distributes his own maple syrup line in Sainte-Pierre-Baptiste, Que., named The P-A Soulière Sélection. He works mainly out of a sugar shack started by his wife’s grandfather over 50 years ago. His usual work garb includes heavy flannel, gloves and scarves like a lumberjack.
His other job, however, is head sommelier of Le Clan restaurant in Quebec City. He’s worked around the world as a sommelier over the course of two decades, including at prestigious Michelin star restaurants.
In 2020 he received the title “Best Sommelier of Canada.” That earned him a ticket to Paris earlier this month to compete at the Best Sommelier in the World competition.
And during an ad hoc wine tasting for a 2014 Riesling, he connects the dots between his two specialties.
“It’s not that different from maple syrup, isn’t it? Like [there’s] caramelization … it’s like burnt by the cold — you know, harvested in the middle of December, maybe January,” Soulière told CBC Radio.
“It’s very lush, it’s very sweet. But at the same time, it’s not like we would be drinking maple syrup — it would be too sweet, because there’s no acidity in maple syrup.”
This is his second time at the Worlds; in 2019, he finished ninth. What would it mean for him to win on the world stage?
“You should ask what it meant when Jacques Villeneuve won Best Formula One driver in the world,” he said. “It means pride of a nation and of a culture. It’s not about me.”
Ultimately, after a grueling six-day series of tests and competition, Raimonds Tomsons of Latvia took the top prize on Sunday. Soulière made it as far as the quarter-finals.
The Olympics of wine tasting
The International Association of Sommeliers founded the competition in 1969 to “develop and promote the sommelier profession around the world,” according to its website.
The event is held every three years, in a different city across the globe each time. Competitors are put forward by participating countries and continental bodies with their own sommelier organizations.
“It’s a little bit like our Olympics,” said Veronique Rivest of Gatineau. Que. Rivest is the sommelier for Air Canada, and part of the Sommelier Competition Committee, organizers of all the international competitions for ASI.
No one from North America, let alone Canada, has taken the prize. A French competitor has won six times; the second-most winning country, Italy, has only half that, with three.
Rivest remains the most successful Canadian at the competition, landing in second place in 2013 when it was held in Tokyo. No woman has ever placed higher than Rivest.
Week-long competition
This year, competitors gathered at The Hôtel de Ville de Paris — Paris’s city hall — for the event. They took part in three elimination rounds, including written tests, mock service, and tastings, before the top three winners were announced.
In between, participants and attendees take group tours of restaurants, while they wine and dine with fellow sommeliers and potentially lucrative wine sponsors.
During the written exams, all participants sit at long tables, looking as though a university exam broke out during a banquet.
The tests include questions and prompts such as: “describe the typical aroma of each of the listed wines,” and “name the country of origin for each of the listed grape varieties.”
Soulière is known for his intense focus and concentration when preparing for high-level competitions like this. Some of his friends told CBC Radio that in the lead-up, he won’t talk to any of them.
“Pier-Alexis is a real competitor,” François Marchal, a wine expert and blogger from Montreal, said while attending the event. “He’s really focused in his bubble and he’s tasting in his room. He’s concentrating on the competition.”
Soulière recalls the first time he tasted “great wine” was with his brother, who was studying in university at the time. The bottle cost $40; a fortune in his eyes.
“It was a game changer. I always grew up on $10, $12 bottles of wine. Like, not bad wine, but simple wine. And then suddenly I was like, ‘Oh, there’s a world of difference here,'” he said.
“It’s like growing up on fast food fries and ending up in Belgium and having this old woman cooking fries in beef fat. You know, it’s just second-level.”
Soulière would go on to earn multiple sommelier accolades in Quebec and internationally. In 2013, he passed his wine diploma at the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in London. In 2016, he became a master sommelier at age 28.
Despite the accolades and working in a nigh-aristocratic scene, Soulière also got his hands dirty in vineyards from France to California’s Napa Valley. And he says that work gives him his unique edge over would-be rivals.
“I had a very important moment in my career where I realized that those people were farmers. They were just like my people,” he said, likening it to his work among the maple trees in Quebec.
“That’s maybe one of the connections that a lot of people in the wine world don’t have. We understand each other because we come from the land.”
‘It’s nothing like home’
Soulière wasn’t completely happy with his performance, but noted many other top-tier sommeliers also only made it as far as he did.
Before the competition in Paris, Soulière was at his sugar shack in Sainte-Pierre-Baptiste, staring at a family of ducks in a nearby lake.
The sight of them toughing it out on a cold January day may have held special significance for him. He’s been considering retiring from the sommelier competitions, as he and his wife are expecting a baby in a few months.
“They are the toughest badass ducks you can find because they stay on the frozen lake. All the weak ones? They went down south. But they stick together,” he said.
“I could have lived in California, lived a Californian dream, had a good time there. But it’s nothing like home, man. It’s nothing like home.”
