Gerard Basset MS MW is a Co-Chair at the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA)
Gerard Basset MS MW
Gerard Basset is a Co-Chair at the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA). For the 2017 DWWA, Co-Chairs will oversee all the Regional Chairs and judges and settle any discrepancies over scores and medals. The Co-Chairs will also taste flights of wines with each panel to check that all the panels are judging at the same level.
Gerard Basset MS MW qualified as a chef and sommelier in his native France before moving to England in the mid-1980s, where he embarked on a career as a sommelier. Currently running Hotel TerraVina in the New Forest with his wife Nina, Basset has an obvious flair for business and previously co-founded the Hotel du Vin, which was sold in 2004 after having successfully opened six additional hotels.
Basset was named Decanter’s Man of the Year 2013, holds the prestigious title of Best Sommelier of the World 2010, and is the only person in the world to simultaneously be a Master Sommelier, Master of Wine and hold a Wine MBA. In addition, he has been awarded Best Sommelier of the UK several times, as well as Best International Sommelier for French Wines in 1992, and Best Sommelier of Europe in 1996.
Basset has been named Personality of the Year by both IWC and Harper’s, Industry Legend by Imbibe magazine, and in 2011 he received an OBE by The Princess Royal at Windsor Castle. Basset was first a DWWA judge in 2009.
