Guiuseppe Lannotti and Gil Fernandes, Italian and Portuguese, are the chefs with the best wine sense in our rich culinary scene. They were the winners of the blind tasting organised on the opening day of Madrid Fusión 2026. The Italian-Portuguese pair beat five other Iberian teams made up of leading Spanish chefs.

There were no labels or bottles to give clues about the wine being tasted. Blindfolded, relying only on their noses, palates, olfactory memory, and taste buds, they had to taste to guess right or wrong.

A dozen chefs took part in the test, forming six pairs: Andoni Aduriz and Josean Alija; Joan Roca and Isaac Loya; Nieves Barragán and Nacho Manzano; Nandu Jubany and Iván Cerdeño; and Diego René and Tomasz. Guiuseppe Lannotti and Gil Fernandes—the winners—run the restaurants Krèsios, in Telese Terme, in the Italian region of Campania, with two Michelin stars, and Fortaleza do Guincho, with one star, in Cascais.

These great chefs were put to the test and became “wine detectives”. They were like Sherlock Holmes of wine, who tried, without much success, to identify wines from different appellations without the usual descriptive clues.

In “Top Tasting” format, it was a very serious game: a battery of three wines - of proven quality - served without any indication, which forced the chefs to refine their intuition and their discourse around the wines they were tasting.

Pairing wine and food is a necessity, but guessing the liquid element of the pairing without any clues is another matter entirely. It is really difficult to identify which wine you are drinking when you have been deprived of essential information.

In a competition that was logically off-limits to sommeliers, the Italian-Portuguese chef duo won with the most points in the five tests. The three red wines they had to taste were made from Garnacha, Tempranillo, and Mencía grapes. In the first test, they had to determine whether the wine served in a black glass was white or red. They had one minute, and only three pairs guessed that it was a white wine: a Godello.

In the second round, they also had to determine in one minute which glass corresponded to each type of grape. The solution, in tasting order, was Tempranillo, Mencía, and Garnacha. Only half of the pairs got it right.

They then had to order the glasses from youngest to oldest, again, in one minute. Once again, few got it right. Then they had to choose the wine that best paired with smoked salmon and explain their reasons. The answer was Mencía, and only two of the pairs chose this option.

“Trust me” was the next test. One member of each pair wore a blindfold and headphones, and their partner explained the characteristics of the wine to be tasted, describing its aroma and qualities without mentioning its colour. This time, all six pairs got it right. It was a rosé. Only one member of the audience guessed correctly that it was a Chivite 125th anniversary wine.

The session was led by Alberto Fernández Bombín from Asturias, who maintained an open dialogue between cuisine and wine. Benjamín Lana, president of Vocento's Gastronomy division, gave the legendary sommelier Custodio López Zamarra the honour of announcing the winning pair. ‘All these chefs are brave souls who have put themselves on the line in this first edition, the “celebrity” edition. There has been so much demand that next time we will do the tasting with a hundred pairings’, said Benjamin Lana. ‘Wine should be taken seriously, but with a smile and without solemnity’, he concluded.