Like many others in the McLaren Vale, Gordon-Smith has grown-up alongside families with an Italian background or migrated from the Belpaese.
“Tu vuoi far l’americano, americano, americano, ma sei nato in Italy!”, Napoli’s legendary singer, Renato Carosone, used to sing. For many lovers of Italy, however, this famous chorus should be reversed.
As is the case for Gill Gordon-Smith, for instance, who despite being born and bred in McLaren Vale, is torn between Italy and Australia.
Like many others in that area, Gordon-Smith has grown-up alongside families with an Italian background or migrated from the Belpaese. “I practically lived in the kitchen of my neighbour, Mrs Scarpantoni, because it was far more exciting than my parents’ kitchen!” she admits.
While studying wine marketing, Gordon-Smith secures a job at Settlement Wines, owned by Vincenzo Berlingieri, who introduces her to the rich Italian food and wine culture, further cementing her love for the Belpaese.
At age 27, she decides to pivot her career altogether, and becomes a hostess with Qantas. In many of the international stopovers, instead of spending her limited free time touring Europe’s famous cities, she prefers to explore the many local wineries, further expanding her knowledge in the field. “I spent a lot of time in Italy and, of course, I just got to try these amazing flavours. I just loved the fact that the wines were savoury, quite layered, and went so beautifully with food. I loved the culture around food and wine because it wasn’t a ‘let’s get drunk culture’. It was a culture of enjoyment and appreciation,” she recalls.
Because of her broad experience in wine education and marketing, in 2006 Qantas invites her to collaborate in creating the first wine program, “Sommelier in the Sky”, nowadays managed by famous restaurateur Neil Perry and his sommeliers, and winner of many international awards.
After about 20 years’ flying across the skies, Gordon-Smith decides it’s time to spend more time in South Australia, focusing only on wine. She starts making wine, predominantly from Italian grape varieties such Montepulciano and Nero D’Avola. This is followed by the opening of Fall from Grace, a wine bar in Aldinga.
In a few years, Fall from Grace has become a celebrated wine school. Many are the students that have successfully attended the Wine and Spirit Education Trust-WSET courses, facilitated by Gordon-Smith, including the challenging level 4 Diploma, previously only held in Melbourne, and considered a milestone by many wine professionals. Beyond that, there is only the Master of Wine-MW program.
Soon after, in 2016, the endless love for Italian food and wine culture leads Gordon-Smith to apply for the Vinitaly International Academy-VIA, globally renowned for being the best and most challenging wine course to become a respected Italian wine expert.
This course has been held every year since 2015; those who are interested go through a strict selection process and first have to pass an online module. The second module is conducted in person, in Verona, a couple of weeks before the internationally famous wine fair, Vinitaly. Over the course of five days, students take part in several wine tastings and seminars, culminating in a final exam. “I had to do a blind tasting of two Italian wines and then reply to a 100 multiple-choice questionnaire on genotypes and phenotypes of Italian grapes. Finally, I had to write an essay on two subjects that the examiners gave us,” Gordon-Smith recounts, remembering the gruelling process.
To successfully pass the exam and become an Italian wine ambassador, students must obtain a minimum of 70%. If they wish to become an expert, the bar is raised to a minimum of 90%.
After merely two years, Gordon-Smith successfully becomes one of only 21 VIA experts in the world. “I think that, currently, there are a total of 22 experts and about 385 ambassadors globally; in Australia, we have 10 ambassadors and one expert: me.”
Her deep love of Italian wines can almost be touched by hand, despite the thousands of kilometres that separate us during the phone interview. For a moment, it felt as though I was speaking with an Italian vigneron.
When asked about her absolute favourites, she replies: “The most exciting are the white wines and the way they can age; it’s not something that Italians have traditionally done, ageing whites, but they are some of the most amazing, like Etna Bianco and Fiano di Avellino.”
Her visceral love of Italian wines also expands to the formative side, as she proves to be a seasoned wine educator. In fact, Gordon-Smith has been recently called by Stevie Kim, director of the Vinitaly Verona Fiera and Italian Wine Academy, to join the team of educators.
Her students, predominantly Italians, come from different backgrounds: some are doctors, other lawyers, other sommeliers. Many of them don’t speak English fluently. “I teach the WSET level three, and we are the only school in Italy that actually has educators that are native English speakers,” she highlights, adding that “because my background is winemaking and education, I’ve firmly focused on coming up with good solutions and ways to support students. Considering that English is not their first language, they are doing an amazing job!”
And numbers don’t lie. Gordon-Smith is particularly proud to teach in a wine school that has the highest passing rates in the world. “We’ve gone from 38% up to 70.5 %,” she says proudly.
To be able to teach in such an effective way, Gordon-Smith has decided to go back to university, to attend a post-grad in innovative learning, focussing on the neuroscientific side of the learning process. “As an educator, it’s vital that I keep learning myself.”
She currently lives between Australia and Italy, where she can spend three months at a time, in her country house in the village of Poggioferro, in Tuscany’s deep south. Despite being a small and isolated town, Gordon-Smith loves to spend her time there working, walking among the centenary-old olive groves or the tall cypresses, and have dinner with her neighbour. “A lovely woman, and although she doesn’t speak English, she practically adopted me as a member of her family”. Gordon-Smith particularly appreciates the slow pace of Italian village life, even though, she confesses, she doesn’t really appreciate the lengthy process of Italy’s bureaucracy.
“Once you’ve learned to slow down like an Italian, it’s virtually impossible not to love living there.”
Gordon-Smith is currently working on multiple projects, with the aim of shortening the distances between the Italian and Australian wine industries. “We’ve just created the first wine course about the Barossa Valley for the Italian public. It will go live in Verona in a few months’ times. For this, I’ve worked closely with Barossa Grape & Wine, translating the entire course in Italian.”
With her heart torn between two countries so far apart, Gordon-Smith is constantly striving to build a bridge that could connect the world of Italian wines with that of Australia.
Dining and Cooking