Juliette LEBLOND

Sommelier : La Bise A passionate sommelier who truly enjoys interacting with customers, Juliette Leblond has played a key role in the success of La Bise restaurant in Le Havre.

Presentation

“I grew up in a small village near Lillebonne, in Seine-Maritime, with a mother who was a manager at La Poste and a father who worked at Total. Nothing about my background suggested I’d end up in the restaurant business. ” And yet, once she had earned her STMG high school diploma, the young woman became fully confident in her penchant for working with customers. She took a refresher course at the vocational high school in Douvres-la-Délivrande, near Caen, where she chose the hospitality track and learned the basics of wine tasting—a subject that quickly became her passion. “Still, the people around me tried to discourage me. With the irregular hours and working weekends, they tried everything to get me to change paths.”

An Enriching Interlude in Étretat

Nevertheless, she enrolled at the Canteleu Hotel Management School, in the suburbs of Rouen, to pursue a specialized track in sommelier studies, while working part-time at one of the region’s finest gourmet restaurants, Le Donjon, perched on the cliffs of Étretat. Working alongside the chef at the time, Gabin Bouguet, and his sommelier Arthur Briand, the young Juliette learned quickly and tasted a lot, all while picking up extra shifts at Le Bel Ami in downtown Étretat, also owned by Omar Abodib. “At Le Bel Ami, the idea was to guide guests through the wine cellar and chat with them to help them choose their bottle. “I loved that,” the young woman recalls. In the summer of 2023, however, she left the charming seaside resort to settle in Le Havre—first at Chez René in the market halls, then at Chez André, where, working alone in the dining room, she gained confidence.

By late 2024, however, she was looking to join a more ambitious restaurant with a more extensive wine cellar. She applied to La Bise, where her partner, Loïc Lourmière, is the chef (“ “but that didn’t factor into my decision,” she clarifies), and where she is now the sommelier in charge of the wine cellar—a role previously handled on a consulting basis by Meilleur Ouvrier de France Benjamin Roffet. “The restaurant’s owners, Lucie Guillot and Benjamin Dero, trust me. Our wine cellar is small—only about twenty selections—because our storage capacity is very limited, but that’s precisely what allows me to rotate the selections quickly. This prevents things from becoming routine, just like in the kitchen, where Loïc is constantly creating new dishes.”