Top Sommeliers 2019
Will Palmer and Ian Campbell
There’s a certain comfort in going to a favourite pub or bar or restaurant and knowing that a certain dish or drink, one that pleases you, will always be on the menu come what may.
Laure Patry
French-born Patry cut her teeth in the hospitality industry in the Loire. Studying catering, her teacher suggested she spend a year as a sommelier, so she did.
Michael Sager
It’s a fairly reasonable claim to make that before Michael Sager and his then wife, Charlotte Wilde, set up Sager + Wilde on Hackney Road in 2013, east London, for all its gastronomic edginess, lacked a decent wine bar.
Diego Muntoni
It’s a salient fact that London’s most famous buildings are either Restoration or Regency paeans to classic design, bridges or former power stations.
Sabrina Manolio
Italian wine is one of the world’s great joys and also one of its greatest headaches. It’s claimed that even most Italians don’t fully understand it, but one who does, luckily, is Sabrina Manolio at Covent Garden restaurant Margot.
Mark Andrew MW and Dan Keeling
It all started with a magazine. Those who have stopped by at Noble Rot in Bloomsbury’s Lamb’s Conduit Street might think it is a standalone outfit but it’s much more than that.
Matteo Montone
Having started out with the aim of working in tourism, Montone sensibly decided that wine was his true passion and threw himself into the subject.
Gino Nardella MS
Master sommelier Gino Nardella began working at the Stafford London in 1976, and over the past four decades has helped shape its vast wine cellar.
Sandra Bein
Born into the hospitality industry, having grown up in her parent’s family-run hotel in Austria, Sandra Bein was initially reluctant to continue working in the business.
Rémi Cousin
Originally from France, Rémi Cousin had intended to become a chef. After a stint in the kitchen of the George V in Paris he decided instead to join Le Meurice as a trainee sommelier, and after tasting a Château D’Yquem 1988, his career path was set.
Seamus Williams-Sharkey
Seamus Williams-Sharkey has chalked up an impressive CV, made all the more remarkable given he was only born in 1991. Growing up in the Midlands, he began his career in hospitality at The Dormy House in the Cotswolds aged 19, where he began studying for his first WSET qualifications.