I am in the company of the best sommelier in Italy Stefano Berzi.
Hello and thank you for the invitation.
How was your passion for wine born?
I was born in a family tavern per se so I was born in a place that sold wine, that poured wine and my father in turn has been a sommelier since 1990.
Consequently we say that the passion was transmitted to me by him and it was something a bit intrinsic from that point of view.
Good. And what did this passion for wine then lead you to, where is it today?
This passion led me, as I can say, to undertake this path of competitions that led me to win last year.
It was a bit of the desire to get involved too, the desire to want to demonstrate, also want to grow professionally through the comparison with colleagues and this passion that is a bit my life, is what leads me to move forward , to always want to learn in this wonderful world.
How do you get to become the best sommelier in Italy, to reach this ambitious goal?
The main thing is passion in my opinion, in the sense that passion is what makes you move in the end, makes you stay awake in the evening to study, makes you take the car and go around winemakers to get to know territories and people.
So passion is the main thing and then wanting to continue learning in the sense of “knowing not to know Socratic”, trying to always want to know something new and therefore the comparison with colleagues, drinking together.
I always like to say that we are a bit like the guts of our customers so to choose 100 labels we have on the menu they drink 1000, so the comparison, drinking without preconceptions, everything is very important in my opinion to have a beautiful culture, in so you can then afford to make contests of this kind.
What advice can we give to those who would really like to understand something more about wine?
So surely, as mentioned, drinking without preconceptions, drinking without filters, tasting many things is very important, as is going to meet with colleagues, with friends.
I remember that to prepare for this competition I found myself many times with other colleagues in which everyone brought something to drink blindly.
Blindly means a covered tasting where you have to try to understand the wine without reading the label.
This is very important and logically then doing a course like AIS structured on three levels really gives you a great foundation to be able to start then deepen and improve your knowledge.
Before we mentioned a winery here and if I find myself for dinner one evening in his restaurant what will I find in the wine list?
So thanks for the question in the meantime. Ours is a small tavern, we are in the province of Bergamo, consequently people come here on purpose, because they find something that maybe they don’t find in the city. of logically perhaps known areas of reference but also of less known areas lesser known vines we try to give the public something perhaps less usual this is obviously with regard to Italy but there is also a lot of space on France and also something of other nations such as Spain, Germany, Austria to give an idea.
Did you have any surprises from some customer who perhaps suggested some grape variety, some wine that you really didn’t know?
It is a very vast world, very wide so you cannot logically know everything and it is always nice when there is some customer who gives you some advice and then you go and taste the wine they recommended because as I say and I like to repeat yes he always learns from everyone, both from colleagues who have achieved great goals as well as from the person who has just about to enter this world.
There is always to learn in my opinion, always to discover so this thing can happen absolutely.
In this description of the card you gave us, do the name and the label really count in the customer’s choice of wine?
There are two very different customer groups, one includes those who perhaps look more for the label because in the label they find a point of reference, a consolidated name and consequently a fairly safe quality unlike other customers who instead want to discover, want taste new things and consequently they really let themselves be advised.
Here, as a tavern, as our wine list, I am more on this point of view, in the sense that we have the utmost respect for wineries that have made the history of Italian and non-Italian oenology. But we like to work a lot with the little ones, so it is easier to find wineries with us that the customer often does not know so much. Often and willingly, rather than looking at the card, we are asked, do you bring us some ideas to the table and we think about it together.
This is also a nice aspect perhaps in having a restaurant, this constant contact with customers almost becomes an exchange.
Instead, let’s talk for a moment about wine and food while always staying inside the tavern, is there a favorite combination?
This is a really good question.
I really like going on a very territorial combination.
What does it mean? That even when I move myself I often and willingly like to eat a cuisine of a territory and pair wines from that territory. So if I have to think about the tavern, I basically like to propose some combinations that can be territorial as it can be the Moscato di Scanzo, if it is also vinified dry, therefore wines almost for bread and salami.
We know that we Bergamo people are also people for bread and salami and therefore it is a very nice snack pairing in my opinion, salami and dry Moscato di Scanzo.
If we were to think of a whole meal wine, also thinking a little about Chinese tables where it is difficult to combine a wine with a single dish since the courses arrive all together, which one could we suggest?
Certainly Chinese cuisine is a very broad cuisine rich in history of cultural traditions and consequently having a single combination is difficult but what I can recommend is to take a category such as a denomination such as Trento DOC and therefore mountain bubbles.
Today, bubbles are perhaps the category that can be used throughout the meal because they come in various types that are more dosed or less dosed, white and rosé.
So I really think that Trento DOC from that point of view can adapt very well to Chinese cuisine precisely due to the wide variability of the offer that can adapt to the wide variability of Chinese cuisine.
But what does Stefano Berzi drink?
It is a question I like to answer in this way I see wine a bit like music in the sense that there is not always a piece that we like to listen to or rather there is not only one but we like to adapt depending on the situation, it depends on who I am, what outing it is, what I’m eating, my state of mind you don’t always want to rock, sometimes you want jazz, classical music, pop music.
It is normal that if you are on a romantic date you drink one thing, if you are on a date with friends you drink another, if you are in a tavern you drink one, if you are in a starred restaurant you drink one. other, that is, in my opinion, it always depends on the situation, on the environment so there is not a favorite wine of mine or that I like more than the others but it depends a lot on the situation.
So let’s go round the question for a moment, if it were a wine what would it be?
So if it were a wine which one would it be? Ok, I would always like to answer in this sense but it would not be correct, I like to define myself, but it would be more correct for someone else to define myself because it would be a more correct thing.
I like to think of myself as what a Pinot Noir could be, I like to think of myself as a person who is still shy at first glance, but who once known can show his personality here.
I am a bit shy to give this answer because I generally prefer others to define me.
Thanks Stefano, one last question before saying goodbye. What’s in Stefano Berzi’s future and also in wine?
So I answer with two answers, in the sense that in my future the best sommelier in Italy was both an important arrival point, a great success but it is also a starting point towards many things that can be born this year, consequently I want to continue to work in the world of wine logically, I want to continue to be a wine communicator and therefore my future is still being defined but let’s say I still feel young and I absolutely want to bite into this world and try to do well .
In the future of Italian wine, I believe that today we are always going towards a greater search for wines, perhaps with a slightly lower alcohol content and played more on the verticality of the sip but therefore outlined by a great freshness so surely we will look for different vineyard processes, maybe you will begin to go towards a slightly higher altitude. So it is a world that is changing but I believe that the various producers are adapting to this changing world.
I can only be and I want to be positive in that sense.
Good. Thanks a lot Stefano, thanks for taking the time
Thanks again to you and good continuation