JamesSuckling.com recently welcomed two new members to its tasting team – Aldo Fiordelli and Jacobo Garcia-Andrade Llamas, who will both be senior editors.
Aldo, an Italian who previously worked for Decanter magazine, is an experienced professional journalist, wine critic and wine writer. He has a great palate and will be covering Italy and France with James. He also writes for Corriere della Sera. We sat down with Aldo to ask him about some details on his life and career.
Q: Please tell us a little about yourself and how you got into the business of wine.
I am from Florence, and after my studies I started working as a reporter in 2001. My encounter with wine was love at first sight. One day I found a bottle of Chianti Classico at home, brought by a family friend who is a producer, for a dinner with my parents. It was a great 1990, and when I put my nose to it, I thought, if wine can be like this, I want to understand it.
Q: What was your main aim in forging a career in wine and what would you say your top career highlights have been?
From that moment on, my goal has been to combine the passion and ethics of journalism with the taste for wine. After a year as a reporter, my then-editor decided to assign me a column on restaurants, and its success led me to L'Espresso Guide, at the time one of the most authoritative restaurant guides in Italy, where I worked for almost 20 years and was also a member of the editorial board. After 2010 and a crisis in the publishing industry, I decided to invest in myself by studying to become a Master of Wine. A few years later, Decanter asked me to cover some Italian wine tastings. During Covid, my work for them intensified a lot, and I began covering Barolo and Barbaresco, Bolgheri and Campania, as well as writing editorials. Then came the call from James Suckling.
Q: Are there any people who have had a great influence on your career?
I had an Alsatian wine courtier [broker] as a mentor. When I told him I was studying to get my sommelier diploma, he replied that I should obtain it and then forget everything. “A wine expert cannot truly call themselves one until at least 40 years old," he would say. It was his way of emphasizing how much curiosity, humility, and experience matter in understanding and narrating wine. In Italy, I have to thank Enzo Vizzari, my longtime editor and one of the few journalists who is highly respected in Burgundy and Bordeaux, who also has one of the best palates I know. However, the encounter with James Suckling represents a real turning point in my career.
Q: What is your favorite wine country or region and why?
I am from Florence, and so my favorite wine region is Chianti, with its gallo nero and super Tuscans. I don't say this out of bias, but because wine is, above all, culture, and I grew up immersed in this kind of culture. For an Italian journalist who loves classic wines like me, the most important wine regions are Barolo and Montalcino. Italy remains the country of choice, again not out of nationalism or belonging, but because it has a biodiversity whose story needs to be told.
Q: What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
I love reading, cycling, and sailing, but above all, spending as much time as possible with my son, Iacopo.
Jacobo, a Spaniard, previously worked for JamesSuckling.com covering Argentina and Chile, but he will now report from Spain and Portugal. He was born in Madrid but moved to Cuba at a young age with his family before ending up in Canada, where he studied philosophy and anthropology at university. He then worked in the film industry in Spain and the U.K. and helped James make a documentary on Cuban cigars before eventually taking his first job with JamesSuckling.com.
“I was able to travel with James to different regions and I think it was all the diversity that attracted me and got me genuinely interested in the wine business,” Jacobo said. “In the end, one of the most fascinating things about wine is learning about all the different elements it comprises.”
Jacobo has also worked in Spain for a renowned wine importer, Alma Vinos Unicos, and has participated in wine harvests in Spain as well as in Burgundy for Domaine Marquis d’Angerville.
Jacobo says he has a soft spot for the wines of Northern Rhone, Bordeaux and the northeastern Spain axis of Bierzo, Ribeiro, Ribeira Sacra and Rias Baixas.
“I like Burgundy too, when I can pay for it,” he added.
– Vince Morkri, Managing Editor
