Bordeaux consultant winemaker switches to selling wines after losing her sense of smell due to Covid

amille Mourgues Berguedieu, a consultant winemaker for the Enosens laboratory in Grézillac, Gironde, lost her sense of smell three days after catching Covid-19 in April 2021. “I could still distinguish between sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, but I could no longer recognise flavours”.

She immediately contacted a speech therapist and now also sees a smell therapist who already specialised in anosmia and agueusia before the pandemic. “She tries to stimulate my senses, for example by making me smell a lemon while I look at a picture of the fruit, associated with its description”.

Twice a day, Mourgues Berguedieu practices with 5 smells, equating to 70 per week. “I have made progress and I am able to taste wines, but I am not yet able to provide granular advice to winegrowers through tasting”.

Her colleagues have given her a lot of support, especially during the harvest. Mourgues Berguedieu has tried to compensate by doing more administrative work and increasing her work in the laboratory.

After regular meetings with management, she took on a new role on 1 September. “It was becoming too difficult to organise things for my customers. But Enosens never gave up on me. I am now a sales developer for the group”.

Not many people come forward and recount their experience, but Covid-19 has turned the careers of many wine professionals, from merchants, winegrowers and winemakers to sommeliers, upside down. This is a little-known disability, which the French oenologists’ organisation would like to see recognised as a work-related illness. According to a survey carried out between May and July 2020, out of 2,526 winemakers and sommeliers, 68% of those who caught Covid-19 had lost their sense of smell after the first wave. 61% quickly regained their faculties in less than a month, but 38% of the total number of industry members affected admitted suffering from it in their work life.