Thomas BRIEU

Head sommelier : À 4 Temps

Presentation

For the new brasserie, À 4 Temps, which Michelin-starred chef Franck Putelat opened earlier this summer in Carcassonne, Thomas Brieu asked his winemaker friends from the Aude and Hérault regions—who are part of the “Changer l’Aude en vin” collective—to create special vintages. “ I’m crazy about the wines from this region,” admits the sommelier, who works tirelessly every day to get this 80-seat restaurant—ideally located at the entrance to the lower town—off the ground.

While there’s no question of offering hundreds of premium bottles like at the fine-dining restaurant *Le Parc*, where he previously worked, the brasserie offers a wide selection of wines ranging from 15 to 150 euros. For the fall menu, he decided to do away with “bottles priced over 100 euros.” Now a partner with Franck Putelat, the chef’s right-hand man has quickly learned to bring a sense of economic realism to his wine selection. “ The chef’s or sommelier’s bottle choices aren’t always the same as the customers’,” muses Thomas Brieu.

He himself admits that his tastes have evolved over the years. “At 25, I liked full-bodied wines—true aromatic jams. My palate has become more refined,” says the 37-year-old new father. Today, he pays tribute to his teachers in Mazamet and Toulouse, who set him on the path to working in the dining room and then as a sommelier. He had actually envisioned himself behind the stove when he entered culinary school. Thomas Brieu has always worked in the region, but he has traveled extensively through the wine world. “To do this job, you have to be passionate about geography,” he says. He knows the estates and producers behind every bottle he recommends intimately. “I sell the winemakers’ terroir,” argues this advocate for wines that are as ‘natural’ as possible—vines cultivated using organic or biodynamic methods, sulfite-free cuvées, and so on.

The Carcassonne sommelier champions winemakers over labels or appellations. “ The current system of specifications no longer means anything. There are people who do poor work in every appellation, and crazy people everywhere.” ” It’s clear that Thomas Brieu has a soft spot for the latter.

Those who occasionally break the rules set by their neighbors and elders to experiment with new approaches, far removed from the trends of “marketed” products designed to appeal to the masses. More Nossiter* than Parker in today’s “Mondovino.” He is therefore very proud to have been able to buy a few bottles from an unconventional Minervois producer, “who shuts his shutters the moment he sees a journalist.” That said, Thomas Brieu denies being chauvinistic. He recalls, for example, his first great wine-tasting thrill, which came from another region: a Gevrey-Chambertin. An incredible wine, isn’t it?

S.T.