Oeno Wine Team Judge At Sommelier Wine Awards

Two members of Oeno’s fine wine team, Olivier Gasselin and Mattia Tabacco, have been judging at this year’s Sommelier Wine Awards over the past couple of weeks. Olivier is our Head of Trade and Mattia has recently joined OenoTrade to work on account management and development for our hospitality partners. 

Olivier Gasselin previously worked for Hakkasan as their UK Manager of Wine Operations while Mattia was a senior sommelier also at Hakkasan. Both have years of experience working as top sommeliers which they put to good use by judging at the Sommelier Wine Awards. 

The Sommelier Wine Awards competition is held over three weeks and brings together around 100 sommeliers and wine experts who judge hundreds of wines. All of the wines are tasted blind to ensure impartiality and they are segmented in categories to allow the judges to assess typicity and comparative quality across the entries. The judging is lead by senior judges who provide guidance and mentorship to those who might be newer to the judging process.

The rigorous judging process puts wines through several rounds of tasting with wines progressively eliminated to leave only the highest-rated ones in the running for the gold medals. This approach makes sure that the judging is conducted to an exceptional standard with each judge tasting almost 200 wines over the three-week period.

Share This