Bibenda's '5 Grappoli' five Grape Clusters, is Fondazione Italiana Sommelier's most prestigious award. Founded in Rome in 2013, the federatrion also known as FIS authors an important annual guide with a history spanning over 25 years . The Bibenda guide, published since 1999 by passionate sommeliers under the guidance of Franco Maria Ricci, is one of the most influential food and wine publications that each year awards with the highest recognition products considered excellent, having achieved a score of over 91/100 in the tasting phase. They are great, unmissable expressions of the Italian wine heritage that testify to the standards of excellence of the country .
Bibenda's '5 Grappoli' five Grape Clusters, is Fondazione Italiana Sommelier's most prestigious award. Founded in Rome in 2013, the federatrion also known as FIS authors an important annual guide with a history spanning over 25 years . The Bibenda guide, published since 1999 by passionate sommeliers under the guidance of Franco Maria Ricci, is one of the most influential food and wine publications that each year awards with the highest recognition products considered excellent, having achieved a score of over 91/100 in the tasting phase. They are great, unmissable expressions of the Italian wine heritage that testify to the standards of excellence of the country .
The guide is published by the 'Federazione Italiana Sommelier', the Italian federation of sommeliers, with the labels that have obtained this prestigious recognition, born in 2013 from the split between the Italian Sommelier Association and the Roman delegation led by Franco Maria Ricci, reconstituted in autonomy. From the 2015 edition, the guide has become the expression of the FIS and the team of sommeliers led by president Franco Maria Ricci, who founded and directed it since 1998.
The evaluation is the result of several tasting sessions carried out at the headquarters in Rome. The samples were sent freely by producers or, more rarely, obtained in wine shops or restaurants. The best bottles, those that have demonstrated an excellent quality from an organoleptic point of view, were admitted to a final tasting session, during which the sommeliers decided on the award of the Bibenda 5 Grappoli prize.
Currently, about 20,000 samples are being tasted, belonging to another 20,000 Italian wineries. Among these, the winemaking expressions awarded and reviewed in the guide are more than 600. These numbers alone are enough to give an idea of the enormous work behind the publication of the guide, which is closer and closer, year after year, to an ambition for encyclopaedic completeness. All the types produced nationally are taken into account: from Moscato, which is known to be one of the most popular wines, to reds and passiti, from whites to liquorosi, to Nero d'Avola!
The final tasting phase takes place every year in July, August and September, while the guide is published during the autumn. This publication summarises the centigrade scores obtained from the bottles reviewed:
In addition to wines, grappas and extra virgin olive oil are also evaluated with the same criteria. The publication of prizes is accompanied by a card with a full organoleptic description and matching proposals. The aim is to promote the great excellences of the Italian panorama, emphasizing the importance of this true cultural phenomenon. The goal is noble and ambitious, supported by all those quality producers who, with their work, tenacity and passion, have made Italy one of the most important and prestigious countries in wine production.
Thanks to the publication of the guide and the Cinque Grappoli award, sommeliers have been able to enhance and propose to an increasingly wide audience the Italian wine excellence. Over the years have been the best expressions of all the various types produced in our peninsula: not only the great champions known throughout the world as Brunello di Montalcino, red of Tuscany produced in the province of Siena, or the Barolo, but also rarer and niche typical wines.
Some labels, benefiting from the prestigious recognition, have established themselves as iconic expressions and reference points, dominating the market. This is the case of the Lambrusco Otello Nero from Cantina Ceci, the first Lambrusco to have obtained the highest score in the history of driving, awarded by the highest score for several successive editions. The evaluation is carried out taking into account all the characteristics found during the tasting phase, which can be classified in three macro-categories: visual, olfactory and taste-olfactory. The perfect consistency found between the various characteristics, combined with final considerations focused mainly on the assessment of the quality level and the territorial typicality, determine the allocation of the final score, by a team of competent and experienced sommeliers. The publication of the guide and awards is anticipated each year from the list of the 10 best samples. This is a long-awaited preview that marks, among the various labels that have achieved the highest recognition, 10 absolute category champions. In this regard, the editors stated: "We are talking about wines that, besides having obtained the Cinque Grappoli, have more influenced us, struck our sensitivity and transmitted great emotions". With these rankings and these awards the sommeliers have confirmed to the fans that the quality level in Italy is constantly improving, revealing how even in those wine regions, once considered of B series, great excellence is now produced.
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