Helmikuun 2024 sommelier on Leo Blosseville

My name is Leo Blosseville and I am a junior-sommelier in Scolare, an Italian restaurant that just opened 4 months ago in Helsinki. The restaurant is run by Kirsi Kedonperä. Kalle Tanner is our Executive Chef and we have a team of two sommeliers, Tiziano Mancini is the head-sommelier and I am his junior.

I am also currently working on Ego‘s new wine list, as the restaurant will reopen next month with a brand new concept and design.

I had been working in the industry for almost 10 years in France before I moved to Finland in 2022, but surprisingly, I really discovered wines and took a deeper interest in them upon arriving here. When working in France, I was always studying on the side. I studied in Caen, Normandy, not far from where I grew up, the land of Calvados, cider and all things apple.

There I studied Russian literature first, then history and philosophy, which I was still studying when I came to Finland. It wasn’t until I started working here in Finland that I started to enjoy my job again to the point where I felt like I could give it my all. Perhaps it is also when I discovered a higher level of cooking and the world of wines with all its complexity that I felt like my thirst for learning and studying could be quenched in and for my job, and not on the side of it.

From very basic beginnings on the kitchen side, as a dishwasher, when I was 17, to working on stations, cold side, frying station etc., before switching a few years later to the front of the room, first as a waiter, then as a bartender (not a mixologist), up until today, now working as a junior-sommelier and a shift manager, I didn’t really choose the trade, as much as I gradually fell into it.

I met some amazing people who led me to be passionate about this field. First in France, with Stéphane Calbry, one of the best and most hard-working hospitality person I have met, and Nicolas Lecapelin, an erudite in wines, spirits and bar techniques who taught me a lot.

Then it was here in Finland that I got a chance to focus on wines, with Dimitri Frolov, Emo’s sommelier, who really introduced me to the world of wine and invited me to make up my own mind, explore and trust my taste, and Tiziano Mancini, with whom I am working at the moment, who has introduced me to the world of italian wines and especially artisanal, low-intervention, hand-crafted wines.

At the moment I would recommend a wine pairing for the dessert, because unfortunately dessert wines are going through a tough time.

Sweetness has not been in fashion for the past decades, which overall is a good thing, people are more attentive to their health, but sadly it puts sweet wines in the shade, and some wines may disappear because the market is not just there for them anymore.

I would recommend a tiramisu, the very traditional one we serve, generous and with a luscious texture, with a sweet wine from Menti, a Veneto based winery, who does a wonderful job focusing on one varietal only, the Garganega grape. Their Albina, a sweet wine made in a passito style, has beautiful overripe stone fruits, herbal undertones of thyme, rosemary, brings out generosity and tension to desserts that are lavish and rich like the tiramisu.

Last year in Emo, we had the visit of Olivier Poussier, who was the best sommelier of the world in 2000, and I remember going to the table, stressed out and apprehending, to present the wine they had chosen, a simple yet good and fresh Grüner Veltliner from Anna and Martin Arndorfer. He and his wife turned out to be very nice, and enjoyed their meal very much, they were interested in what I had to tell them and I was amazed at how humble Olivier was for a sommelier of his stature.

This impression has been the first but not the last, and throughout my very short but already eventful sommelier parcours, I have only met passionate people, eager to share and contribute to the drinking culture, and this, from the sommeliers in the smallest most humble bistros, all the way to the Master Sommeliers I met recently while training in Bristol.

Another customer experience I think of often is not a single event but something that happens on many occasions. When working in fine-dining, we have customers and guests who can afford luxuries, and pay for some prime wines and foods, and it feels great to provide them with these products and serve them in the best way possible.

But it is often the more modest tables, where people are not used to fine-dining or even to eating out in general, where I feel like my job matters the most. I put a special emphasis on treating everyone’s the same way, and presenting a simple bottle of wine the same way I would present the best cuvées on our wine list, making sure that the experience the guests are going through is the best possible, especially if it’s a once a year, once in a decade, or once in a lifetime event.

Elio Altare is a winemaker I would love to meet, because he contributed so much to the winemaking scene in Piemonte. His wines are beautiful but especially he is a testament to how committed you can be to the wine and drinking culture, not afraid to stand by his choices and go all the way, despite his family being against him.

Giulia Negri is a winemaker I would love to meet, as she produces one of the best Barolos I have ever tried in my life, and I would love to know how.

The Menti family I mentionned earlier are also people I would be eager to meet someday as they encompass so much of what makes the wineworld vibrant these days, making natural wines the same way their grand or great-grand-parents use to in the beginning of the 20 th century, but through rediscovering the natural and low-intervention processes in the early 2000’s. An ancient way of making wines, that happens to be very modern, a beautiful link between wine’s past and its actuality.

I will once again mention desserts, because I think these are often left out when it comes to pairing.

I will mention a product from my home region, Normandy, which is of course not a wine producing region, so in that case, it is not a wine but a cider I will mention. When having a Tarte Normande (a hearty apple pie with Calvados) or Tarte Tatin, an excellent pairing is an apple cider, in a farm style, something that will dry out the very sweet plate and bring out those bruised apples, earthy barnyard and farmyard aromas, which you only get in wines that have had a lot of development but come really fast when it comes to cider.

French cider, rather it is from Normandy or Bretagne, is really something I would love to see more in Finland, as it is a true expression of terroir, with tradition dating back to centuries if not thousands of years, and used to be such a popular practice that every family in a village or a street would gather to the pressoir (the press) to grind their apples and make their cider.

One of my favourite cocktail is a cocktail we used to have in Emo, which was a twist on the very Finnish Kossu-Vissy (known as Skinny Bitch internationally), which is basically just a vodka soda with lime, and is so popular in nightclubs, probably the most drunk cocktail in Finland.

The twist was that the lime was combined with a spruce cordial, (Kuusenkerkka), that Jani Koskela, our bartender at the time, had foraged and transformed himself. Made a very simple cocktail bloom and tasted of Finland’s spring.