“AI can’t tell you the best vintages of Pavillon Blanc over 100 years.”

By Hilary Armstrong

In the latest edition of CODE’s Generations series, sommelier Roxane Dupuy – executive head sommelier at two Michelin star restaurant Row on 5, winner of the Michelin Sommelier Award 2026, and one of CODE’s 30 under 30, Class of 2024/25  – sits down with her mentor, Frederic Brugues, Director of Wine at three Michelin star restaurant Sketch since 2002. The good friends and industry colleagues reflect on exchanging knowledge, navigating change, and why generational shifts are the lifeblood of wine.

When did you first meet?

Roxane: “The first time I spoke to Fred was actually over the phone for a job interview for the position of sommelier at The Lecture Room. We had a good chat; he asked a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer! Back then, I was working in Switzerland and the big talk was about The Lecture Room and the work that Fred was doing here, and so I really wanted to join his team. That was 2017, 2018. I was here for three and a half years.”

Fred: “Roxane was extremely motivated to join the team. It’s not every day you have somebody who has the mindset. You could see that she had a lot of hunger to come to London and to be part of this. I was quite quick to set my mind on her. She was a breath of fresh air. I liked the fact that she was a wine person; it was a career, it wasn’t just a job. She got promoted extremely quickly, one of the fastest promotions that I have seen in The Lecture Room. She just went for it. She wanted it, she got it. Simple as that.”

Roxane: “It was my first job in London. On my apprenticeship, my mentor there always told me: “You have to go to London. They have some of the finest wine lists. You can taste wine from all over the world.” One thing on Fred’s list that always blew my mind, you had some old wines from Chile, some from China, some from Argentina…it was a very exciting list with a lot of back vintages as well. A 1926 Pavillon Blanc du Château Margaux – crazy!”

Fred: “That’s so important. It’s one of the greatest things that we can share together. It’s an asset which the evolving world – which is a screen; AI – can’t have. If you ask AI to give you the best vintages of Pavillon Blanc over 100 years, it can’t do it. A deep understanding of past vintages is very important to me; it’s something I want to share with [my team] because it is the base of our knowledge.”

Fred, you are a mentor to Roxane. How have you been able to support her?

Fred: “Why is it that it has to be what I did for Roxane? This is the thing! It is all about what Roxane did for me not what I did for her. Mentoring is an exchange. It’s like when you have kids; it’s not all about what one gives to the other. On my side, it’s about getting fresh air. Young blood! Younger mindset. Things are moving so fast even though the wine world is, gosh, probably one of the most static subjects that there is.”

Roxane: “His palate, his knowledge, his understanding of the market is very on point. If I have a question regarding a supplier or allocation or any en primeur that Fred will go for, his palate, his knowledge, matters a lot. Last time we went to the DRC en primeur, we had a really nice chat after about Burgundy, where he places his allocation for the year, it’s really something that helps me in terms of my purchases. Even though we are not working together any more Fred has an impact on my purchases.

Fred was always taking at least half an hour a day just to sit down and let all his knowledge go. It was the time when we could ask questions about the difference between this premier cru and that premier cru; or we were looking at maps of Burgundy. Two weeks ago, I opened some old books and saw my notes. It’s just so nice to have someone taking the time to tell you about wineries that are not as known and wines that are mind-changing.” 

Fred: “Wine is about sharing. It’s not just the consumption of wine that is about sharing. It’s talking about it.

Wine is sometimes perceived as a dying subject and I don’t really like to see it like this. When I started in wine, the image of a sommelier was of a small fat chap with a chain around the neck and a cup and a red nose, being an alcoholic. It became glamorous after the movies Sideways.

I remember asking my teacher at hospitality school and I had the choice between doing bar training or sommelier. He said if you do bar, you’ll have money when you’re young, then when you to 40 or 50, you’re going to be quite obsolete; if you do sommelier, you’ll be the least paid when you’re young, because your knowledge won’t be there when you start.”

What did you learn from working with Fred?

Roxane: “Thanks to Fred, my palate got definitely sharper. Being head sommelier in The Lecture Room was a lot of pressure; he put a lot of trust in me so I learned a lot thanks to that. Fred also gave me a lot of visibility with suppliers. He also taught me the back office part. When you are a sommelier, you are also an accountant. You need to make money so that the business survives. It’s one thing that you perhaps don’t always think when you are a somm or an assistant but in the position I am now, it’s definitely something that has a lot of worth. I think Fred is an amazing sommelier and a very good accountant as well!”

Fred: “It’s a beautiful world, hospitality. It’s such a fantastic world that sometimes people forget that it is business. It’s not about making buckets of profit; it’s about not losing money. People sometimes forget that because of the glamorous side of the job.”

What are some of the wines that you’ve introduced each other to?

Roxane: “The wine Fred introduced me to is the Clos Joliette and I think my favourite wine now is Clos Joliette, the old Clos Juliette. When you have worked for some time with someone that inspires you, it’s normal that you take a bit of Fred’s soul, Fred’s love for wine, in my wine list. You can feel it that I was in the school of Fred.”

Fred: “She convinced me about Hartmann Luxembourg Rieslings. She’s got a strong palate on Rieslings. She’s much stronger and I think that’s where I was quite weak myself. Many people call Riesling the kind of white; funnily enough, for a very long time it was a subject I was not comfortable with and I became more comfortable with Roxane. There’s no point to get somebody on your team who has the same skill you have; you don’t bring any complexity, any diversity. It’s very monotone.”

What differences do you see today with the new generation?

Roxane: “In terms of the differences between the generations of consumers, we’re seeing a difference in what people drink; more non-alcoholic pairings.

Fred: “It’s true. It’s something we realised a long time ago that it was emerging. I don’t think think we are there yet.”

Roxane: “The biggest change in wine is that the quality is going up but the quantity is going down. We have bigger sales of wine by the glass than we had before. What I remember from the beginning of my career, ten years ago, there were bottles of wine on every table. Now there are lots of glasses of wine on tables, fine wines.”

Fred: “You’re doing more work when it’s wines by the glass than when it’s just 20 tables, 20 bottles of wine.”

And with the new generation of sommeliers?

Fred: “We can’t ask somebody from a younger generation to be and feel exactly like the one growing up 20 or 30 years ago. It’s the very same with kids. It doesn’t mean the new generation is bad. It’s a normal thing, a good thing, we’re changing how things can be, how things can work. It doesn’t mean that my ways are the best. Maybe an exchange between her way of doing things and my way of doing things, makes thing work.”

Some people think the younger generation is not so hard working, that they have it easier.

Fred: “There are two ways of seeing it. Yes, they have it easy because they have so much information at their fingertips. This is the easy part. The much harder part that no one ever talks about, when we started, it was easy for us; we were the king of the world. There was much less competition. Restaurants too. When Sketch opened 24 years ago, how many big places were there like this in Mayfair? There are so many now; nearly every month you get a new one. Roxane has to fight at Row on 5; [it’s harder to shine] when there are so many more people competing. For that, wow, I have a lot of respect. A lot of respect. It’s much harder for them.”

When you welcome each other at your restaurants now, how do you surprise or wow each other?

Roxane: “When Fred came to Row on 5 to eat, I know he likes older, more mature wines, so I made him taste a ‘69 Huet Le Haut-Lieu that was tasting very well. It was also important to me that everyone was aware from the briefing who Fred is, everyone comes and greets him, and that it was important to me to show respect to him and to his wife Elise as well.”

Fred: “Me, I would try to surprise her with something that she doesn’t know. It’s very selfish because I’ll take pleasure from it and I know that she’ll enjoy it as well. We don’t agree about all wines but that’s the beauty of it. When you discover a new winemaker or a forgotten subject, it’s like winning the lotto.”