VINEXPO hosts AGM of International Sommellerie Association (ASI) Update : 15/01/2009 
The International Sommellerie Association (ASI) is organising its annual general meeting during the 15th Vinexpo, which is being held in Bordeaux from 21 to 25 June 2009.
More than 120 sommeliers from all over the world will represent the 41 member + 6 observer countries of ASI on Saturday 20 June at the Bordeaux Convention Centre.
In all the countries that are members of ASI, the profession of sommelier is being stimulated to new growth. Sommeliers are being employed more and more in restaurants worldwide. They are becoming influential players within the wine and spirits industry.
To reflect this international development, 2009 will be an important year in the history of the profession as ASI will be organising the first “Best Sommelier in Asia-Oceania Competition” and the first “Best Pan-American Sommelier Competition”.
During Vinexpo on Sunday 21 June in Bordeaux, ASI will give trade professionals and the media a detailed preview of the next world competition due to take place in 2010. Best sommeliers in the world, Serge Dubs (1989), Shinya Tasaki (1995) and Philippe Faure-Brac (1992), all of whom are members of the ASI board, and Chairman Kazuyoshi Kogai will be among the celebrities expected.
****************************************************************************** Comunication of Association de la Sommellerie InternationalAs of 2007, a splinter group of associations from 3 countries decided to resign their membership in ASI, the international association gathering representative Professional Sommelier Associations worldwide and associate member of OIV. They went on to set up a body called WSA and began to organize international sommelier competitions for their members, mainly Italian sommeliers working in foreign countries.
As we believe internal sommelier competitions to be a path towards excellence in the field of Sommellerie, we would like to make sure every stakeholder in the wine, service and hospitality industry is well aware that there is no link whatsoever between the 12 best sommelier of the world contests organized by ASI from its creation in 1969 in Belgium to 2007 in Greece and the event recently hosted in Rome by WSA.
On the 19th of May 2008, a Best Sommelier of Europe contest organized by ASI in Sofia, Bulgaria gathered 30 national candidates from the 36 members and associate member associations of ASI in Europe. Isa Bal, from Turkey, won the competition with Paolo Basso from Switzerland coming second and Eric Zwiebel from France being third.
As this compares with a “world competition” gathering 14 candidates, we would like to avoid confusion between WSA internal events and the legitimate Best Sommeliers of the World and Best sommeliers of Europe, working every day to promote excellence in service alongside the best Chefs and the most outstanding wine producers worldwide.
We owe it to generations of sommeliers that strove for excellence in their field and to the young sommeliers of our more than 45 members and observer members who have a dream, the dream to follow in the footsteps of Andreas Larsson, best sommelier of the world ( 2007), when ASI organizes its next word competition in 2010, in Chile. ASI Best sommeliers of the world | 1969 Armand Melkonian
| | 1971 Piero Sattanino
| | 1978 Giuseppe Vaccarini
| | 1983 Jean Luc Pouteau
| | 1986 Jean Claude Jambon
| | 1989 Serge Dubs
| | 1992 Philippe Faure Brac
| | 1995 Shinya Tasaki
| | 1998 Markus del Monego
| | 2000 Olivier Poussier
| | 2004 Enrico Bernardo
| | 2007 Andreas Larsson |
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