Special Awards 2025

In our intentions, the special awards we give in the Essential Guide serve to shed light on the state of our viticulture. We want to highlight them to underscore their propulsive role vis-à-vis the entire wine movement.

With the Special Awards we bring under the lens wines, companies, people, and projects that particularly strike us year after year for quality, ability, creativity.

We open this review with our top wines by category.

Wine awards: red, white, rosé, sparkling, sweet

We go to Piedmont for the Red Wine of the Year and we crown the Barolo Ester Canale Vigna Rionda 2020 Giovanni Rosso, a wine that convinced us not only for its undoubted goodness, but for its relevance to the Serralunga terroir and its prospect for longevity. As White Wine of the Year, on the other hand, we awarded a great Friulian white, the Collio Friulano Rolat 2023 Raccaro, an authentic wine proposed by a winemaker who knows well the respect owed to nature and his vines.The Rosé Wine of the Year is the Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo Superiore Villa Gemma 2023 Masciarelli, a winery that needs no introduction but represents Abruzzo’s high quality in the round. Cerasuolo is just one of the great wines it produces, and this year it impressed us with its fruity intensity.

The wine we chose as the Sparkling Wine of the Year It is the In Correggio Rosso Millesimato DT 2005 Lini 910, a Lambrusco Salamino classic method that was disgorged only in 2022, so after 17 years on the lees (the acronym DT actually stands for Dégorgement Tardif, delayed disgorgement).

As Sweet Wine of the Year , we thought of Franz Haas’ Alto Adige Moscato Rosa 2022, a sweet and extremely aromatic red. It is a unique wine that manages to enthuse even the most skeptical because of its unexpected combination of color, aromas, freshness and sweetness of taste.

Wine awards: Winning debut, best Quality/Price, Diffuse quality

As for the award The Winning Debut, dedicated to the wine that comes out on the market for the first time ever and manages to achieve a great result, we chose the Etna Bianco Contrada Arcuria 2022 Restivo Wines. A debut both as a wine and as a company, since the adventure of the young Catanese entrepreneur Francesco Restivo in the world of wine has just begun.

We now come to an award that is very dear to the public, The Wine with the Best Quality/Price, which crowns a wine from the Marche region, from a denomination that is often little considered, and wrongly so: the Bianchello del Metauro Gazza 2023 Di Sante, a very modern, fresh, fragrant, low-alcohol white that is on sale for about 7 euros.

We return to Piedmont to find the winner of the Diffuse Quality Award, awarded to a wine that combines high quality with a considerable number of bottles produced, thus allowing easy availability on the market.
It is the Barbera d’Asti Superiore La Luna e i Falò 2022 Vite Colte, a wine that never betrays, the result of the Superbarbera Project for which the company’s team of agronomists selected 60 hectares from the most suitable of the 180 members.

Awards to Companies

Let’s continue with the other awards and move on to those dedicated to companies. The award Winery of the Year, for the winery that performed particularly well, this year goes to Tuscany and specifically to Querciabella, a winery that since the first edition of the The Essential Guide could have boasted of this title because of its absolute reliability and the quality of its wines. The Emerging Producer, that is, the unknown novelty or that little-known company that is making leaps and bounds, is Friulian. These are. La Sclusa, a small winery in the Eastern Hills, which presented a battery of impressive wines. We then have the Cooperation Award, dedicated to social wineries, which sees the emergence of Rotari – Mezzocorona, one of the most important production entities in Trentino in terms of size, history and quality of wines.

Awards to people

And let’s move on to awards to people. The Winemaker of the Year è Pierpaolo Chiasso, consulting oenologist, Riccardo Cotarella’s right-hand man and for years now head of his team.
For the Sustainable Viticulture, an award given to those who are committed to eco-sustainability in the most diverse ways, we felt it was important to focus on resistant vines, the PiWi, and so we chose the network of companies headed by winemaker Nicola Biasi, precisely the Resistenti Nicola Biasi.

The recognition A life for wine, which aims to highlight the role and commitment of a leading player in the Italian wine scene, this year makes three to say goodbye to three prominent figures in the wine world of the past decades who, for different reasons, are leaving it: Silvio Jermann, founder of the eponymous company that joined the Antinori group a few years ago; Paolo De Marchi, the heart and soul of Isole e Olena, also changed hands and specifically to the French EPI group; and Hans Terzer, longtime Kellermeister of the San Michele Appiano Winery-Producers, permanently retired.

As a counterbalance to this award, we have established the Next Generation, dedicated to young people making their way in this world with skill, preparation, passion and tenacity. The choice fell on the St. Magdalene boys’ group, young people precisely, friends, who move in concert because of the great love they have for their area.

The Quality Project and the Most beautiful label

In conclusion, the choice for the Quality Project Award fell on the Project NO.MO.S. by Vecchia Cantina di Montepulciano, for its success in being an expression of sustainability and social inclusion. The name is nothing more than an acronym for Nobile di Montepulciano Sostenibile, a wine produced in collaboration with the Betadue social cooperative of Arezzo to protect the most vulnerable people. A wine that for the first time, in addition to the environment and economic sustainability, also looks carefully at the world of the social, the most fragile and thus their inclusion in work processes.

We then decided to establish an additional award, dedicated to the Most Beautiful Label. A great deal of attention is paid to wine labels in Italy, and there are some very beautiful ones, both among the designer labels and those that are the brainchild of the individual producer. This year we were favorably impressed by the new label of the Offida Pecorino Villa Angela 2023 Velenosi, for its originality and simplicity at the same time, and so it is to this wine that we recognize the new award.