Our Interview with Lucy Meza Ortega, Head Sommelier at 67 Pall Mall

Today we are very delighted to have Lucy Mezo Ortega who is the head sommelier at 67 Pall Mall in Verbier sitting with us today and she will be sharing her expert opinion of all the wines that are in our box and we feel really honored that she's here today to taste with us. Thank you so much for coming and chatting with us today.

Lucy: Yeah, with pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Always a pleasure to discuss wine. And I think we have a really nice selection

Hannah : Can we start first by you telling us a little bit about your journey into the wine industry and how you ended up in Verbier?

Lucy: I've been working in hospitality for nearly half of my life now. I started when I was about 14, 15 back in Belgium and just, you know, little ad hoc jobs in restaurants and I realized that I really enjoyed providing great service, making people happy and just launched my career in hospitality.

So I first went through the whole restaurant management side and more and more working close with sommeliers, with the wine and the whole beverage side actually made me really think about a change of career more and more. And so at some point I was working for a company as assistant restaurant manager and they needed help with one of their sister hotels.

They knew that I had a little bit of interest in wine at that point. So I went over to help and was paired together with the head sommelier, which later became my mentor, Eric Zwiebel from Alsace. So he will be delighted that we're drinking Alsatian wine today. And I think he really saw my interest and made it grow into a passion. So I stayed with him for about three months.

We were studying every day. And after those three months, he told me, listen, I mean, do whatever you want, but you seem to have more interest about wine than most people I know that actually work in wine. And so I quit my job and started a junior sommelier position. My partner told me, what are you doing? This is completely crazy, but actually, it turned out pretty well. And yeah, haven't looked back since.

Hannah : And how many years ago was that, that you started the sommelier position?

Lucy : About three, four years ago. So yeah, it's starting to have been a while. I haven't done any qualifications prior to that. It was more self-learning, which is a bit different to most courses that you find nowadays. I've been studying by myself and also going through the CMS, the Court of Master's Sommelier, where basically they tell you what you need to know, and then you have no books, no classes, and you just arrive at the day of the exam and do whatever you want.

Hannah : No, really? So I know a lot about the WSET diploma stucture. I had no idea that it was completely different.

Lucy : It's basically the completely opposite take, because for them, wine, as it's a always evolving industry, they believe that even if you have a book that says a certain information, you can't trust it 100% because that information might have changed in the meantime. So the whole point of that is to teach everyone who wants to learn more about wine to continue researching and studying constantly as the wine world evolves.

Hannah : Wow. Fascinating - can you tell me how you begin preparing for that?

Lucy : Well when when I had my first job as junior sommelier after a few months My head sommelier at the time told me well listen Lucy doing great but would be good if you would you know take it up a notch, some of your colleagues are passing the exam in four months, I think you should join them. Worst case scenario, doesn't work out, but at least you get a bit of studying into you. And so we were working together back in London at the time. We all studied together and then we all passed together, which was really nice. And that was the first dip into the CMS world. And yeah, still going.

Hannah : How long does it goon for? When does it stop?

Lucy : Well, it depends on people. The final, it's in four levels. Okay. So there's Introductory, Certified, Advanced, and Master. Master, okay. Master sommelier is considered to be one of the hardest exams to pass in the world just because of the extremely low pass rates. So I think the first exam was in the 60s and there's only been about 180 people to ever pass this exam. So not everyone wants to go to that final step. It takes great dedication. I mean some people take up to over 10 years to pass it. Just trying every year again and again and you really need to have full dedication. I think it really depends what you really want to do with your life. But anyway, at least for the first few steps it's really fun, you meet great people from around the world who are as motivated, want to know more people, you get relations, it's a really fun trail to go on.

Hannah : Cool, it sounds fascinating and such an interesting exam way of examining. So you've traveled all over haven't you, you're in London and now you're in Verbier, how long have you had this role?

Lucy : So I was in London previously at 67 as well and then I prior to that I've moved quite a lot. So I had lived in Switzerland for about five years, four in Crans-Montana, also in Valais, one of them in Geneva. And then I moved, worked for a bit in Chile, South America, in Japan as well. So I ended up moving to London, where, which has greatly influenced the way that I perceive wine to this day. I mean, for example, I really love to drink very old wines.

It's well known that in England we drink wine nearly dead, as they say, which was a bit of a shock coming to Switzerland, where you drink wines very young, but I mean, slowly adapting here.

And so 67 Pall Mall Verbier opened in December of 2021. It all happened quite fast. It was a very fast takeover of the club that was here previously. The owner went to see our owner, Grant Ashton, and told him, listen, I think that a wine based club would do really well in Verbier. How about you take over? So we learnt the news in October. We were here in November and then on the 4th of December we did the opening.

Hannah : Oh my goodness, so quick!

Lucy : Yeah, very intense and fast opening, but it was such a fun time, really exciting. And yeah, I mean, from my previous time in Valais, it was really here that I had tasted Swiss wines for the first time, really enjoyed them. But obviously, as you know, very little Swiss wine is exported. So while I was in London, I wasn't drinking that much. We had a few wines, maybe a couple Swiss wines by the glass, at any one time in Pall Mall, London, and then I came here, and now we have about a third of our list, which is Swiss. Yeah, it's amazing. A bit of a shock, a lot of information to take in at the start..

Hannah : Like you were saying, like 2% of wine is exported as Swiss wine so it really is hidden industry in the wider global context and you have to really delve and do a lot of research to get your head around it.

Lucy : Definitely, I mean before opening here we held a Swiss wine event in London as a celebration of the future opening of the Verbier Club and I remember we had a Riesling Silvano that we were serving and so on the label was written Riesling Silvano Muller Thurgau and no one could figure out all the guests were so confused because why are there four names on this label and yeah it's just the intricacy of Swiss wines which once you manage to wrap your head around it really um yeah really bring out a beautiful story

Hannah : Could you tell us a bit about your day-to-day life as a sommelier? I think a lot of people think they know what a sommelier does, but I think the reality is very different.

 

Lucy : Yeah, as you say, I think a lot of people, when I tell them I'm a sommelier, they tell me, oh my God, how amazing, you must be drinking wine all day. And although it's true that we're tasting a lot of wines, especially during very busy It's purely on an objective point of view. Is the wine in good condition? Is it not? We don't really take the time to enjoy wine that much. It's more on the off time that we really get to analyze wines. I mean like today this is going to be really fun because we're going to take the time to go through the wines and enjoy them. So usually I arrive here just before lunch service, make sure that everything is stocked up, have a look at our current wine list.

So here in Verbier and in 67, the whole concept is that we have a very large by the glass selection. So in London, we're just about 1,000 wines by the glass. Here in Verbier, unfortunately, we're maxed out at 350, just because we don't have enough physical space to store any more bottles. So yeah, just checking the list and what's really fun with this job is that our by the glass selection rotates constantly.

So if one day I feel like, oh you know, well it would be super fun to have this or this wine by the glass, then we can always add it to anything as long as it makes sense in our selection obviously and then we start service it's a lot about talking to the guests trying to understand what people really want which might be quite must be hard no yeah well I think that a lot of people know what they want but the difficulty in wine is really how to express it.

So a lot of people, for example, don't want a sweet wine in that sense that they don't want a fruity wine. So wine is quite tricky because it tricks literally your brain into thinking that there are some things that aren't there. So through the process of fermentation, the molecules in the grape juice actually realign and give you different aromatics that aren't there, which is why you can smell for example strawberries, raspberries and some red wines.

So some people tell us, oh I want a really dry wine, just because some wines have more exotic fruit palettes. So even if the wine is bone dry, then just the impression of ripe fruit, your brain associates ripe fruit to sweet fruit and then obviously you're going to think that the wine is sweet. But I think once you learn how to really talk to guests, understand what they want, then it makes the job much easier.

Hannah : Do you have to study the food menu? Or is it more making sure the guest has found something that they're going to love, regardless of what it's matched with?

Lucy : I think it's a bit of both. As I mentioned, we're really lucky to have quite an extensive by the glass list. So we're able to really cater both to the meal that the people are having, as well as their own personal taste. Obviously I think, well, regardless of the position that you hold in a restaurant, as long as you're guest-facing, or even not to be fair, you should know everything there is to know about your menu. And yeah, it's really trying to understand the flavours, understanding as well what the guest is looking for.

As this is a private members club we have a lot of repeat guests which makes my job a little bit easier because now I don't need to ask all these questions I know exactly what each person prefers. So they tell me okay well Lucy today I'm having a mushroom risotto pick whatever you want and then from then on we can start having a little bit of fun with it. Its really, it's fulfilling when we have some new guests who come in and then I mean and it's really, it's fulfilling when we have some new guests who come in and then maybe at the beginning

 

You can listen to the rest of Lucy's podcast on Spotify