STORIES EVENTS
How to build a contemporary wine list by Lorenzo Ruggeri
The Villa Sandi Contemporary Wine List Award is the prize we reserve for the most current, brilliant and user-friendly wine lists in our Top Italian Restaurants guide, dedicated to the best of Italian dining in the world. While waiting to resume awarding venues around the world, we’re offering an educational journey through the multi-colour ‘Jurassic Park’ that is Italian viticulture. We’re proposing a series of themes, with practical advice and suggestions, published every two weeks on our international website www.gamberorossointernational.com
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et’s start from the wine list. What constitutes a winning wine list today? What is changing? Certainly, an encyclopedic wine list is no longer necessary, but a rea-
soned selection, overcoming the widely consolidated rule that markups serve to cover many other of the venue’s cost items. Meanwhile, the menu must have a philosophy in contact with the cuisine and the soul of the place. The wine list
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has two main contacts with which it must know how to communicate: the kitchen and customers’ pockets. Thus we have identified 5 main directives to properly evaluate a wine list. Let’s see them, point by point.