La Capdenacoise, based in Tarn, works in wine export, in the Toulouse suburbs, at Mano Wine Consult.
Myriam Barbette’s career is closely linked to the EGC of Rodez, the business school located in the Bourran district. This is where it all began, when the Aveyron native obtained her diploma which allowed her to take off towards other horizons. And it is with a former student of this same school that she works today, just outside Toulouse.
Born in Figeac in August 1980, little Myriam Soulages grew up in Capdenac-Gare where she attended school and college before returning to the town of her birth, at high school and entering, with a baccalaureate, the Ruthenian EGC. “I wanted to travel and I knew there was an internship abroad. I said to myself: ‘That way, my parents will be forced to let me go'”, she smiles. She joins her sister who is already settled in Rodez. It was in Rodez, too, that she met Alban Barbette, originally from Normandy, and who would become her husband.
Five years in Hong Kong
The student continues at Sup de Co, specializing in international trade, in Clermont-Ferrand. Always with this desire to see the country(ies). Which she did not take long to do, since at the end of her internship at Sagem, in the Paris region, within the Asia export department, she was hired in the Hong Kong office which had just been created. “Export was exploding at that time,” remembers Myriam Barbette who then moved nearly 10,000 km from home, with Alban who found a position as sommelier at the prestigious Jockey Club. Five unforgettable years, from 2004 to 2009. “It was great, super cosmopolitan,” she remembers. A country – then a British colony – where traditional China, with its local markets “where you can eat for next to nothing” and the Western world, with its business districts and skyscrapers, coexist.
Victor Pons
And while Sagem’s Hong Kong office is on the verge of closing, Myriam and Alban wonder if they will stay or return to France. “But the appeal of the family was too strong. And then Alban asked me to marry him.”
Marriage celebrated in Aveyron, in September 2009, in Capdenac-Gare and Livinhac, while the couple, who finally decided to settle there, launched, some time later, Sommelier Sélection, a wine export company.
“We worked with Hong Kong, thanks to Alban’s contacts. Customers, individuals or professionals, placed orders with us and we shipped.”
But the couple had ambition and took over a restaurant in Nîmes in 2013. An establishment called SKAB and soon crowned with a Michelin star. SK for the initials of the chef and AB for that of Alban Barbette who is the sommelier. Myriam takes care of personnel and administration.
But the desire to go abroad again caught up with the couple. “We were hesitating between Canada and Australia,” remembers the Aveyron native. A desire stopped dead by the Covid pandemic.
The little family – Timéo was born in 2010 in Villefranche-de-Rouergue and Mathéis in 2013 in Nîmes – then settled in Albi. And the Capdenacoise joins the team of Mathias Noguera, a former student of the EGC of Rodez, like her, within Mano Wine Consult, a wine and spirits export company, based in L’Union, in the close suburbs of Toulouse. There, Myriam Barbette uses her skills in international trade and her knowledge of wine to the position of ADV export manager.
An adventure that began in February 2021 and in which the Aveyronnaise invests herself, with passion, as she has always done during her rich career.
Until the next challenge? “With my husband,” she says, “we have always been open to opportunities. We never close any doors…”
