Italy is finally among the Masters of Wine thanks to Gabriele Gorelli

Roberto Gorelli and the Masters of Wine

In our international travels we have often been posed the same question: "Why is there not one Italian among the Masters of Wine?" With reference to the powerful institute born in London in 1953 that promotes excellence, sharing and knowledge between the different sectors of the global wine community. In answering we sought reasons in different aspects: difficulty of the English language, in which we certainly do not excel; our purely Italian and Euro-centric vision, and a wine narrative that's much more linked to humanistic aspects than to commercial or quantifiable ones. Despite all these arguments, we too continued to have questions.

All doubts were dispelled on February 26th when the institute announced 10 new Master of Wines. Here they are: James Doidge (UK), Susan Lin (USA), Moritz Nikolaus Lueke (Germany), Sophie Parker-Thomson (New Zealand), Álvaro Ribalta Millán (UK), Tze Sam (UK), Melissa Saunders (USA), Kryss Speegle (USA) and Clare Tooley (USA). And finally, Gabriele Gorelli! Italy for the first time finally has its own Master of Wine. The Masters of Wine in the world are now 418, with 32 countries represented. Leading the ranking are the United Kingdom (210), United States (56) mainly Australia (28), France (18), New Zealand (15) and Canada (10).

Gabriele Gorelli

Born in 1984, Gabriele Gorelli was born and raised in Montalcino. In 2004 he founded Brookshaw & Gorelli, a communications, video and photography agency focused on the world of wine. In 2015 he founded a sales and marketing consultancy firm focused on the Asian market, KH Wines. He is both a designer and an excellent communicator, with invaluable international knowledge, including a degree in foreign languages. It was laboursome to get there where no other fellow countryman had gone. With a lot of work, method and organisation, on a journey that started in 2014. Gabriele Gorelli's final thesis, the one that concluded the long road that leads to the title of MW, was on the precipitation of quercetin, a flavonoid belonging to the flavonol group, and on the organic clarification options in order to prevent this phenomenon from occurring in the bottle, in Brunello di Montalcino. "Historically, the role of the Masters of Wine is certainly not to bend the production of wine to the prevailing taste. On the contrary, it's to make excellence accessible and understandable to all, featuring and creating added value for them throughout the supply chain. It is essential that a complex country like Italy, from an ampelographic, historical, stylistic point of view, can count on an ambassador who represents it internationally," commented Gabriele. Our warmest compliments from all of us who work at Gambero Rosso go to him.