Every new beginning is a significant milestone.
For the aspiring sommelier, for the lecturers and, above all, for the Europäische Sommelier Schule.
From 1 January 2027, a new team , will begin to develop educational, cultural and promotional activities.
Large in number and highly skilled across all professional fields.
A team built first on educational relationships, and subsequently on professional and partnership ties.
In 15 years of operation, since Umberto launched this project, it has guided 498 sommeliers to their diplomas and certificates. In five languages.
This fact, which we uncovered whilst organising our archives, has given us a sense of the scale of our potential.
Eleven restaurants honoured with the highest culinary accolades, out of the 19 in Berlin,are led by ESS De sommeliers.
With different position and roles such as Head Sommelier,
Sommelier or Restaurant Manager.
Over the past three years, three different ESS sommeliers have been awarded three stars for Germany’s best wine list. 
Twentyfour others have set up their own wine sales and distribution businesses.
Isabella next october will be the first partecipant at an international sommelier award.
Participants on our courses represent 38 countries.
And in a professional world still dominated by men.
54 % of our Sommelier, are “the other part“, the Sommeliere, the contrary.
The result of ESS teaching is that our fellows are not like the old men sommelier generation.
Rigid. Arrogant. Tied to outdated standards. Old-fashioned. Out of touch.
The ESS DE alumni, the students who went on to become certified sommeliers, are in close contact with one another, and every year new collaborations emerge amongst them, including start-ups, projects and …
This dynamic and inquisitive group is the future of sommelier culture.
They have been trained to recognise all the facets that, until 2026, were associated with the professional role of the sommelier.
The one you all know.
This cohort ranges in age from 22 to the point where they can manage changes in markets and communication entirely independently.
Starting in Berlin, they are already applying the tools that the most advanced markets will begin to use in fifteen years’ time.
In the heartlands of wine, still today. There are still those who debate whether a screw cap is a sign of wines from agricultural cooperatives.
Or who swear that it can never, ever be called wine if it contains no alcohol.
Meanwhile, their wine market is collapsing, and in Germany 25 per cent of the ‘wines’ sold are NoLo, No or Low Alcohol.
The average age of the 498 ESS Deutschland sommeliers is just over 30.
Some have been spotted with tattoos, and a few have been seen wearing Crocs, and it is almost certain they have consumed alcohol-free wines, because they have never been arrested after lessons. Or perhaps because this is a generation that uses public transport or smart taxi app.
But they all know exactly what they can achieve with the knowledge acquired over more than nine months, through three exams and hundreds of wines.
And above all, during those months, the students bond.
In all the months that followed, students from all courses, languages, countries and age groups got to know one another and socialised.
They keep in touch.
The School maintains constant contact and periodically invites them to trade fairs and international social and commercial events.
The result?
At the last meeting, the team was informed that, from 1 January 2027, Diego Vignozzi, sommelier and ESS lecturer, 
would formally take over as head of the Berlin branch, the main branch, the ‘house of 500’.
He will also assume managerial responsibility for the easternmost regions (in cities such as Potsdam, Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg, Jena, Erfurt and Rostock).
He was one of the first students over the past 15 years; he, too, was twenty years old at the time, and also never arrested.
The comment highlighting the cohesion of this group, and its competitive advantage over the rigid and stagnant wine market, was:
“If each of us were to invest just 10 % of our time in the School’s training and outreach projects, each drawing on our own expertise and within our own field of work, we would see a thousand percentage points of growth and the spread of wine communication culture. “.
Probably they say “With only 10% of us the School could be in contact with tenthousand people interested in wine”.
And they know how to do it.
They are already communicating today in the way that will take shape in the wine market of the future.
Communicate and inform in the actual flowing way, while other collegues with different learning background, are still in the fax time.
They speak the same language, of the today’s twenty- and thirty wine curious.
Who will be the future leaders of the market. And and they know how to make themselves clearly understood by students, restaurant managers, wine lovers and wine buyers.
Umberto, who was present at the meeting, smiled, thinking that if he had achieved these results in 15 years.
Diego and the team he had put together would be able to bring about the innovation and evolution needed.
The role of the sommelier that he had always worked towards.
They are professionals because they know, understand and delve deeper.
They know how to talk about wine because they live and breathe it.
The profession of sommelier has nothing to do with formality, or rather, his students all know which form of address is appropriate in specific contexts.
But he has also clearly shown them that it is not the uniform that makes the sommelier, but good manners, knowledge and expertise.
He is happy and proud to have trained the sommeliers of the ´30s the glorious thirties, but… those of the 2030s.
The fun-loving ones, those with the knowledge and the ability to communicate effectively.
Some said that some of our sommeliers even have piercings… which has been shown not to affect their sensory abilities.
And yes, all of them are different.
Very different, because they are dynamically, smart, ready for the future, not stiff, rigid penguins.
(for)
Umberto Galli Zugaro
Sommelier und Dozent
Präsident Europäische Sommelier Schule
ex interim Berlin Filialleiter 2011-2026
