Four years after their first interview, Anaïs Bourg is back on berlindetoi, this time not as a guest passing through, but as the owner of the space we’re sitting in. A few months ago, Anaïs opened Pépite Weinhandlung in Prenzlauer Berg, and this episode is a conversation recorded right there, among her carefully chosen bottles.

Anaïs walks us through her path in Berlin: leaving behind a completely different career, discovering her love of food and connection while working in a French cheese shop, retraining as a sommelier, and the three formative (sometimes gruelling) years she spent working in a Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s an experience she credits with teaching her precision, service, and the quiet beauty of repetition, but also one that convinced her wine shouldn’t be reserved for people with money to spend on rare bottles.

That conviction is at the heart of Pépite. Anaïs explains why she wanted a bright, open space where no one, whether a total beginner or a seasoned wine lover, ever feels intimidated or judged. She talks about her hand-written descriptions on the bottles (a nod to the indie bookshops she loved as a kid), her hosted tastings and workshops, and her hope of building a real « third place » in the neighbourhood: somewhere people come not just to buy a bottle, but to talk, taste, and connect.

The conversation also digs into the less glamorous side of entrepreneurship: the loneliness of running a one-woman shop, the discipline it takes to protect one day off a week, and what it means to carry forward a space that was a beloved wine shop for 25 years before her. Anaïs reflects on being French in the German wine trade, on conscious drinking (« less, but better »), and on why she believes independent shops are quietly essential to a neighbourhood’s social fabric.

A warm, honest conversation about passion, female entrepreneurship, and what it really takes to turn a love of wine into a place where people want to come back.