Words: Fiona Sims
Photography: Filip Zuan and Richard Jarmy
Cristina Iuculano cannot stop grinning. She is the new Head Sommelier at Badrutt’s Palace, and she loves her job. “We have more than 1,200 different labels here in our cellars – and what wines they are,” she exclaims, excitedly. Iuculano started building up her own wine cellar at the age of just 22 years old, so she knows a thing or two about wine.
Iuculano waxes lyrical about her favourite wines on the lists across the various restaurants at the Palace, which she looks after, helped by her assistant Lucio Pacchiano and the rest of her team. “My all-time favourite wine here? It has to be DRC,” she reveals. That’s the hallowed (and expensive) Burgundy estate, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, which is run by the charismatic Aubert de Villaine in the Côte de Nuits region of France and is so well-known that it is often abbreviated.
Iuculano grew up among vineyards and wine barrels. Her grandfather came from a family of vineyard farmers from the Rhône Valley in France. When he fell in love with her Sicilian grandmother, they settled on the island, where he began cultivating and making wine, mainly for family and friends, as well as selling grapes to large wineries.
Her grandfather introduced her to DRC, letting her try a glass plucked from his private cellar. “That was the moment I got curious about wine – I really wanted to discover more,” says Iuculano, who then travelled the world working at fine-dining restaurants, including a two Michelin-starred establishment near Stuttgart, where she rose from assistant sommelier to head sommelier in nine months. Any spare time she had, she spent travelling through wine regions, always tasting and buying for her own cellar.
“I’ve amassed a valuable collection of wines,” she adds, which Iuculano explains she keeps in a purpose-built cellar that is temperature- and humidity-controlled, tasting them frequently, often with a group of like-minded people, who also collect wine.
So, if Burgundy is her first love, then where else excites her in the wine world? “Spain,” she replies, quickly. “There’s such great winemaking going on there right now. You just have to look at top estates, such as Vega-Sicilia, to see what the country can achieve now. Tasting its top wine Unico for the first time was a real eye-opener,” confesses Iuculano, who is also partial to Chenin Blanc from South Africa.
I wonder what she thought when she first went down to the wine cellar at Badrutt’s Palace. “It felt like a dream,” she laughs. “Imagine seeing more than 30,000 bottles of Champagne and wine, including many treasures and rare vintages, from across the world in one place. The quality and diversity of the wines took my breath away, but so did the special atmosphere of the wine cellar, which is steeped in 127 years of history and tradition.”
She acknowledges she is one of the growing number of women making their mark on the industry, naming winemakers such as Marisa Cuomo in Campania, Giulia Negri in Piedmont and Arianna Occhipinti in Sicily as her heroes. “The hotel is an ambassador for Krug, which I love, and its chef de cave is Julie Cavil,” she adds.
The best part of Iuculano’s day is interacting with her guests. “The chance to show guests something new, or lead guests to the right wine for the dish they are eating, is the highlight of my day. It’s so satisfying,” she explains. “A glass of wine can enhance or destroy a plate of food. There are still these widespread myths, such as fish should only be accompanied by white wine and beef with red wine – I want to change that.” Then she smiles again. “This is not work, it’s my life,” she adds, before returning to the restaurant to prepare for service.
Cristina Iuculano’s top wine picks
If you could pick one wine with one dish?
Clos Parantoux, from Henri Jayer, one of the most iconic winemakers in Burgundy and known as ‘the father of new Burgundy’ with a traditional Sicilian dish called maccheroni, a homemade pasta with eggs that’s not for the faint-hearted.
What wines on the list at the Palace do you most covet, and why?
We have an incredible vertical of DRC [Domaine de la Romanée-Cont], which I am really curious to try.
What’s your ultimate food and wine pairing at the hotel?
One of my favourite dishes here at Badrutt’s is on the menu at Le Relais. It is roasted fillet of line-caught sea bass with oscietra caviar, buckwheat crepe and a shellfish emulsion. I love it with red wine, specifically a five-year-old Chambolle-Musigny from a premier cru such as Les Charmes. It’s refined, elegant and silky, but with a good boost of acidity that works well with the dish.
If you had to pick one wine to drink from the Palace list…?
My choice would be a Côte de Nuits from Burgundy – Domaine des Lambrays Clos des Lambrays. It was the first Grand Cru that I bought in France, when it was still affordable.
