Florent MARTIN

Head sommelier : 1 restaurant

Presentation

Florent Martin has been working in the restaurant business since he was a child, both at his aunts' hotel in the Gorges du Verdon and in his father's bakery. But it was to sommellerie that the young man turned:"I fell in love with it," he explains. During his professional bac, he honed his technique with the Haeberlin brothers, working alongside Serge Dubs, the World's Best Sommelier 1989, before moving on to Alain Ducasse's Louis XV in Monaco. He then joined Patrick Fioramonti's restaurant at the Grand Hôtel Cala Rossa, near Porto-Vecchio.

At 18, he moved to London to work at Claridge's with chef Gordon Ramsay. "I discovered that people there were very open to wines from all over the world."A year later, he returned to the Louis XV, this time as first assistant sommelier."They have a cellar with lots of vintages, so I was able to really assimilate the different wines, it was very enriching."

In 2009, Florent Martin joined Éric Beaumard and Thierry Hamon's team at the George V restaurant, Le Cinq, in Paris. "As soon as I arrived, I entered the competition for France's Best Sommelier, reaching the semi-finals. After that, I took part in a series of competitions almost every year, always reaching the final, but never winning"... Until 2021, when he was named France's Best Sommelier.

On the strength of this award, Florent Martin became head sommelier at L'Oiseau Blanc, at the Peninsula Paris.I'd become more confident," he says, "and I wanted to take things to the next level, to express myself more."His list of achievements has recently been enriched by the Sommelier Île-de-France Gault&Millau trophy and the prestigious title of Meilleur ouvrier de France. "It's the culmination of all the work I've been doing since 2009, all the years I've been trying to go further in my passion."

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