The Sommelier
I love meeting people who have a career and then one day they go on a trip or meet someone and it totally changes how they spend their days making a living.
Eleonora Jezzi set up the very popular bread and wine bar, Pain et Vin in Buenos Aires a couple of years ago with her Israeli husband, Ohad, who bakes the amazing artisinal bread they sell in their Palermo wine bar and bakery. A sports teacher in her former life, it was on a holiday to Mendoza seven years ago where Eleonora had her first sip of wine and became hooked. I interviewed her for Monocle 24's The Menu where we discussed how Argentina has so much more to offer than just Malbec. And here she tells me how she became a sommelier and how learning about the global wine business is that much tricker in such a closed-door country as Argentina.
How did you make the switch from being a teacher to a wine connoisseur - was it a gradual change?
It was a gradual change and I was doing both things. During the day I was teaching kids and at night I was going to restaurants, ferias, whatever I could do to gain experience in the wine trade. At first I thought it was really different, but now, I see I am still teaching, the sommelier is a great communicator of wine. We don’t make the wine, we tell people about the wine and it feels great.
What was it about wine that really attracted you?
First of all I had never had a sip of wine until I was 28. And from that point I discovered a lot of new flavours and aromas, everything was new so it was amazing…one day I think I was having an asado with friends or family and I had some wine with the meat and it felt really good… I discovered I could share some really good conversation, or some really nice company with wine and of course being in Mendoza at that time was the perfect context.
As a sommelier, you have to train, you have to attend classes where you study the anatomy of your senses and how you get to connect aromas with memories, to get to know the grapes, the geography, the technical language of wine, the elaboration of wine and the service of wine…
Unluckily for Argentine sommelliers its not easy to get to know wines from all over the world, we are going through a protectionist era [in Argentina] so its more expensive. We make a lot of wine and so many good wines but at the same time specifically when it comes to wine I would never say no to importation because some amazing wines only belong to certain places and you cannot emulate those in some other places so everyone should be able to try them all no matter if you have to pay more money, but we should be able to do that.
Tell me a bit about Pain et Vin your wine bar - how would you describe it?
On the same trip I met wine, I met my husband who is making the sourdough bread in Pain et Vin.
Ohad is from Israel, and we met on that trip to Mendoza, he was backpacking like any other Israeli guy who has finishes the army after 3 years. He was not cooking and I was not a sommelier. When he came to Buenos Aires to live here with me it was not so easy to work in the conditions he wanted to. And when it came to wine I was really not pleased by the experience I would have in many places….Argentina is really good when it comes to service and sommeliers – I mean it's not paris, but sometimes you see that the wine in restaurants, it's always the same.
So I wanted to do something different and as Argentina has so much wine and so much good wine you have to spread the word about it. And I always wanted to promote all the wine projects - I feel they are noble and very interesting, they are done with lots of passion and knowledge of course, so I felt we could have that kind of place. That’s when it comes to wine but also with the bread, that sourdough bread it's really unusual to see in Buenos aires and its funny because its really the most ancient way to make bread but it just doesn’t exist much in this city.
We are very happy that the things we dreamed about are happening and we are still not massive, but people come to us and we feel we are part of a movement – the love for simple good things. That’s being gourmet for me. I don’t need many options on a menu. I want little but good.
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