Luca Gardini is in the same family of Lionel Messi, Sebastian Vettel, Matteo Manassero. He is predestined. That is, a guy of immeasurable talent to whom fate also entrusted the perfect tool with which to express, the most natural implant, the complement that fits like the little shoe to Cinderella. If those three were immediately at ease with a ball, a steering wheel or a golf club, Gardini is now indistinguishable from the glass of wine he fills, rolls, sniffs and sips.
Then comes the most complicated part: to express the nose-palate sensory verbs, a task the boy (born in 1981) performs with instinctive didactics and the presumption of a veteran. But never conceited. In fact, in speeches he always prefers to say "almost" before every natural descriptor, "almost a mulberry, almost a blackberry, almost a hydrocarbon,…" because it’s better not to pretend to be too scientific with words.
However, in order to know the history and geography of wine, talent is not enough. And if, then, Gardini knows every vined nook and cranny of Chianti, Burgundy or Georgian Kakethi, it’s because he was routed to the practice and to a “mad and very desperate” study by his father Roberto, behind neon-sign of their family restaurant in Cervia. This happened before the baby sommelier took off on the way Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence and to Restaurant Cracco in Milan, going to give shape, with the chef Carlo and his sous-chef Matteo Baronetto to an unattainable trident, a sort of Didi-Vavà-Pelè of contemporary Italian cuisine.
Always with his father, he shares then the title of Best Italian Sommelier: Gardini senior conquered it in 1993, Luca just 11 years later. But the son just filled his showcase also with the title of Best European Sommelier and Ambassador of the Italian sparkling metodo classico. Anyhow, Gardini doesn’t really care about trophies: they’re just a consequence of a hard work. And what about the ultimate challenge? To handle with the "new" objects that crowd the planet of sommelerie 2.0: tea, water, distilled...
by
born in Milan, 1973, freelance journalist, coordinator of Identità Golose World restaurant guidebook since 2007, he is a contributor for several magazines and teaches History of gastronomy and Culinary global trends into universities and institutes. twitter @gabrielezanatt instagram @gabrielezanatt
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Carlo Cracco, in a picture by Brambilla - Serrani, peeks from the entrance of his new restaurant on the Ottagono of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan. The restaurant, a building site when we at Identità Golose had a very first preview, is expected to open in mid December