Hugo SIGNORI

Head sommelier : 1 restaurant Together with his partners, Vivien Sonzogni and Noémie Paris, Hugo Signori has breathed new life into La Table du Grapiot, whose reputation now extends beyond regional borders.

Presentation

The anecdote is too interesting to leave out: ever since he was a teenager, during large family dinners where bowling enthusiasts would talk endlessly (his grandfather, his father, but especially his uncle), Hugo Signori would take part in the tastings “but always blind—it was a tradition in our family ,” recalls the former student at the Poligny Hotel School in the Jura region. “When I entered culinary school, I was torn between front-of-house and the kitchen—both aspects of the profession appealed to me ,” Hugo recalls. “I did quite a few side gigs at the 1802 in Besançon, and I also worked at the France in Villers-le-Lac, alongside the excellent Hugues Droz, where I stayed for a little over three years as a maître d’hôtel and sommelier .”

A Chance Encounter

An event in his personal life prompted the young man to leave the banks of the Doubs and cross the border: “I needed money, and Switzerland was a great place to start. But I only stayed there six or seven months before getting hired at a wine shop in Poligny. It was a new environment for me, but two very interesting years of my life, during which I learned a great deal from a manager who was passionate about natural wines.” Hugo already knew his future partners at Le Grapiot, Vivien Sonzogni and Noémie Paris. “One evening, we ran into each other at the restaurant Les Gamins in Besançon. We started talking about the future; they told me about their plan to buy Le Grapiot, and in early summer 2024, we took over the business.”

With Noémie, who is also a trained sommelier, Hugo shares responsibilities both in the dining room and in the cellar, “though Noémie is more involved than I am in HR, while I’m out in the field a bit more often trying to unearth new vintages ,” he explains. A recent favorite? The wines of Hugo Courvoisier, a former sales representative turned winemaker in Vuillafans (after working at Stéphane Tissot’s estate) in the Loue Valley: “His Terres Vagabondes Chardonnay offers exceptional value for the price. But his reds are also remarkable—very pure and full of fruit.”