Cambodia & Vins: Luc Guillot, ”We need to encourage people to become sommeliers, to dream of becoming one”

Luc Guillot, Sales Manager at Celliers d'Asie, is well known in the restaurant trade for his cheerful personality and genuine passion for the company's products.

Luc Guillot, sales manager in Phnom Penh for Celliers d'Asie

Before giving a Masterclass (training) at last weekend's National Competition for Cambodia's Best Sommelier, Luc agreed to answer a few questions.

For those who don't know you, can you introduce yourself in a few words?

Of course, my name is Luc Guillot, and I'm in charge of sales in Phnom Penh for Celliers d'Asie. I've been working for them for two years now.

What does the Best Sommelier of Cambodia competition mean to you?

Celliers d'Asie is a company that is thirty years old and it's true that being a partner of the sommelier association and this competition seemed inevitable. We're distributors of wines and spirits, but our job in this context is also to take a less commercial and more generalist look at things.

The question was: how could we get involved in developing the hospitality sector and finally offer our vision as professionals to all Cambodian sommeliers, sommeliers and aspiring sommeliers, without always having to bring back this commercial component that sometimes limits the market?

Personally, what is your relationship with wine?

My experience in the wine world is based on experience. Originally, I'm an aeronautical engineer, but I'm passionate about the world of wine and spirits. So I learnt about wine in the same way as the sommeliers in the competition, and I was lucky enough to be WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) certified thanks to the Association of Sommeliers of Cambodia.

This training gave me a more solid and structured grounding in the world of wine. It's true that when you learn from day to day, you practise, that's good, but perhaps there's a lack of basics, a lack of terminology. The world of wine is very broad, so it's been good, with this certification, to get back to basics and a structure for describing and categorising wines.

What is your impression of the level of Cambodian sommeliers?

On a day-to-day basis, we never have enough of them, in the sense that we need many more in the field. Now, those who are there, those who spend time on a Sunday to learn more about wines or to take part in competitions, are quite impressive. It's also a young market where there isn't much training yet. So it's all a bit self-taught and that's what impresses me the most: that these young people take so much time and energy to learn.

Thanks to the association, energies have been gathered and I think that's great. I think that, gradually, the number of sommeliers will increase, and that's another reason why we're taking part.

“I think we've still got a few years to go, but that's what we should be aiming for: a nice title that's important in every business and which is sometimes a little forgotten. So we need to encourage people to dream of becoming sommeliers.”

What would be Celliers d'Asie's flagship wine, or your favourite?

At Celliers d'Asie, we sell a lot of red wines, so it's difficult to find a flagship product when we have 500-600 references. During this Masterclass, what's going to be interesting is discovering varieties that are rarely used at 100%, often used in blends. ‘In Portugal mode’, with Quinta de Noval we'll have a Petit Verdot, which is generally not used very much, a very small percentage in Bordeaux wines, and a national Touriga, which is typical of Portugal and used in port wine. So, for me, these are my two favourites at the moment because they're products that people know very little about. So, we're going to highlight something, we're going to educate with these products because ultimately, as we're not used to drinking this type of product in classic wine, it's a way of really discovering and finding out more about the end product.