As the ASI Contest Best Sommelier of the World returns to Lisbon for the first time since his 1978 victory, Giuseppe Vaccarini reflects on the profession he helped shape, and the values that must guide its future.
For Giuseppe Vaccarini, returning to Lisbon in 2026 will mean more than revisiting the setting of his greatest competitive achievement. It will offer an opportunity to reflect on almost five decades of sommellerie: its growing international reach, its expanding professional possibilities and its enduring responsibility to the guest.
In 1978, Vaccarini became ASI Best Sommelier of the World at the contest held in Portugal. This year marks the competition’s first return to Lisbon since that edition. For the former champion, the occasion brings his personal history into conversation with the future of a profession to which he has devoted his working life.
“For me, returning to Portugal means much more than remembering a personal victory,” he says. “It will allow me to observe, almost 50 years later, what has become of the profession to which I have devoted my entire working life.”
Vaccarini sees his generation as belonging to a pioneering period. ASI was still young, professional associations existed in relatively few countries, and the structures supporting sommelier education and career development were taking shape. Building a career also meant helping to establish the foundations on which others would build theirs.
His victory came during that formative era. The international community he will encounter in Lisbon this year reflects how far sommellerie has travelled since then, bringing together candidates from cultures and regions scarcely represented on the world stage in 1978.
That growth is a source of pride, but also an invitation to consider what comes next.
“Sommellerie has achieved international recognition, but it must continue adapting to new forms of hospitality, new consumer expectations and the rapidly changing wine and beverage world,” he says. “Lisbon 2026 will represent both a return to my personal beginnings and an opportunity to look towards the future of the profession.”
His own career has unfolded alongside that transformation. In the late 1970s, even many good restaurants understood the sommelier’s role principally through responsibility for the cellar and wine service. Those duties remain fundamental, but the profession now demands knowledge of a much broader beverage world, alongside skills in communication, purchasing, economics, marketing, sales and management.
Today, sommeliers can pursue careers as educators, entrepreneurs, writers, buyers, brand ambassadors, judges and consultants. Vaccarini welcomes those possibilities. Yet he also recognises the risk that visibility, whether through competitions or social media, can encourage young professionals to place recognition ahead of the daily work of hospitality.
“The real battlefield of the profession is the restaurant floor,” he says. “It is there that a sommelier learns to transform knowledge into service. It is where you learn timing, discretion, psychology, humility, communication and the ability to understand the guest within a few seconds.”
The restaurant floor is also where knowledge meets individual preference. A wine that seems ideal in theory may be wrong for the guest’s taste, budget or mood. Understanding that distinction requires attentive listening and the judgement developed through repeated, everyday encounters.
These are lessons that a textbook, tasting room or competition cannot fully reproduce. They depend on learning how to make expertise useful to another person.
“The traditional values I would most like to preserve are hospitality, humility, discipline, elegance of service and respect for the guest,” Vaccarini says. “Technical knowledge can make you a wine expert. Those qualities are what make you a sommelier.”
He remains proud of his world title. But when considering how he hopes to be remembered, his perspective extends well beyond the moment of victory.
“A competition, even the most important one, takes place on one day. A professional life is built over decades,” he says.
His preferred legacy is rooted in those decades: helping give sommellerie greater structure and dignity, opening professional paths, and preparing subsequent generations to travel farther than his own generation could have imagined.
That ambition gives his return to Lisbon its deeper meaning. The title opened doors for Giuseppe Vaccarini. His life’s work has been devoted to holding them open for others. In 2026, he returns as a former champion whose greatest contribution may be measured in the opportunities available to the sommeliers following him.
