Luxury is freedom
Wine Storyteller
by Sophie Verchère
SOPHIE ROULÉ
INVOLUTÉ
The meeting with Sophie Roulé, founder of Involuté, takes place in the cozy bar of a beautiful Parisian hotel between the Madeleine and the Concorde. She has her habits there for the calm and tranquility.
The exchange will not take place around a red or white nectar. It is Monday, ten o’clock. It will be tea to start the day and the week with! Sophie, I met her at one of the first dinners authorized after the confinement.
She was invited to create a dialogue between the photos of the artist François Escriva exhibited for the occasion and her suggestions of wines to accompany the meal.
I remember her very poetic approach tinged with literature and artistic references.
I also remember that she exuded harmony, restraint, courtesy.
The interview is dense because this forty something has things to say. She admits to excelling in managing daily life but not being good at projecting herself. She lets herself go easily, which means she has already lived several professional lives.
Letting herself be magnetized. Before Involuté, Sophie, a Breton and hard worker, with five years of literature studies and business school in her pocket, worked in publishing and then very quickly in marketing at La Poste, international branch.
She stayed there for ten years before feeling that she had covered everything and realized that her increasingly intense schedule could harm the precious harmony of her family re fuge. And her family is non-negotiable! She activates pause mode without any particu lar objective. Her plan is to not have one in order to let her self be magnetized by opportunities.
Quite quickly, during a children’s tea party, she meets the owner of a small wine estate in Burgundy looking for «the person» who could develop exports. «Hire me!»
She knows nothing about wine. It doesn’t matter.
Her determination and her perfect skills in B to B, abroad, will win out. She spent several months training «on the job» and attended all the major inter national trade fairs. She learned quickly. Years later, her network woven from the United States to Japan via Europe and Dubai recognized her expertise. Her knowledge acquired from those who make wine also allowed her to define her convictions.
She is sensitive and receptive to committed winemakers who favor organic and natural products. Nothing to do with a fashion effect, the impact on quality is just logical and obvious. The desire to fill in some gaps tickles her. She passes the Wset (wine & spirit edu cation trust) a fast, ultra-effective and recognized training.
She strengthens her theoretical bases and acquires the technical essentials. She also refines her palate during wine tastings from around the world. With legitimacy and answers to all possible questions in her bag, Sophie goes back to her playing field but a new opportunity to seize presents itself which will be the first step towards her Involuté concept. A law firm asks her to organize a wine/cheese tasting for clients. Seventy people. The service is a success.
Everyone gives their enthusiastic compliment but what stands out is the simplicity, the chic and the emotion. Other «premium» events follow and the creation of her company. Word of mouth works because Sophie Roulé offers something other than a tasting. She offers an immersive experience to the guests, appeals to their olfactory memories, solicits their memories and their sensory baggage. No boring and divisive technique.
Wine is an art that brings people together like gastronomy. As a child, she spent a crazy amount of time in her grandmother’s restaurant in Brittany, where she masterfully ran her truck driver.
The homemade, generous and tasty cuisine was listed in the gastronomic guides. During the week, the truck drivers and on the weekend, the fishermen.
She got the formula from her grandmother that the calories linked to pleasure are useful calories.For a little over five years now, Sophie Roulé has been creating dialogues between wine and all other forms of art.
She is keen to introduce estates that respect the stages of the vine, which preserves the taste of the terroir, the taste of the soil. What she calls author wines.
She sees little interest in tasting expensive and well-known grands crus.
On the other hand, discovering a nectar from the Marcel Deiss estate, for example, also means learning why this philosophical winemaker talks to his vines and spends so much time in his cellars, why he preserves the necessary mushrooms at the foot of the vines rather than destroying them with chemicals.
Every gesture, every action has an impact on quality. With her living wines, her author wines, her nods to history and art, Sophie Roulé takes you on a journey and tells you stories of passion. And who doesn’t like great stories?
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