Sommelier Day: 4 professionals who expand the boundaries of the craft

Time Out

03-06-2025

More and more people are talking about the role of the sommelier, but there are still those who think it's only about recommending wines in a restaurant. Spoiler: it goes way beyond that. Today, the sommelier is a strategist, an experience curator, and often also an artist, journalist, screenwriter, or content creator. They move fluidly between wineries, dining rooms, social media, and the press, and their work no longer just involves uncorking bottles: they also think, communicate, and connect. On Sommelier Day, we talk to four professionals who cross this craft with other passions. Because when wine meets writing, art, or mixology, new ways of telling stories, creating, and enjoying emerge.
Maya García is a visual artist, consultant, and sommelier
Maya García was born in Venezuela, where she studied Fine Arts. While attending university, she began working in restaurants to afford her art supplies. That's how she discovered her love for gastronomy and, in 2006, completed her sommelier training in her country.
After nearly a decade working front of house, she moved to Argentina and shifted to the commercial side. For ten years she was part of the team at Mil Suelos, the winery of winemaker Alejandro Sejanovich, where she led the domestic market. Her background in the arts also enabled her to lead brand development and label design for wines such as Flora, Floralia, Cielo Arriba, and Buscado Vivo o Muerto. Her world is the world of ideas.
In her creative space, Maya mixes and explores techniques such as collage, watercolor, sumi-e, embroidery on paper, and botanical art with pressed flowers. Her pieces navigate internal worlds from the organic, the dreamlike, and the symbolic, constructing a visual language charged with emotion, memory, and intimacy.
Today she works as a consultant in communication, branding, and commercial strategy for small wine producers, and together with a group of colleagues she is developing an agency dedicated to gastronomic and communication curation for bars and restaurants across Latin America. For Maya, the intersection of art, wine, and narrative is not only possible: it is inevitable.
Sorrel Moseley-Williams is a journalist and sommelier
Sorrel Moseley-Williams knew from the age of seven that she wanted to be a journalist. But when opportunities arose to explore the gastronomic world and the dimension of wine joined the picture, she realized she also had to train professionally. She began sommelier studies in 2013 and since then both professions have harmoniously coexisted.
She writes about wines and alcoholic beverages for international outlets such as Decanter and Drinks International, and is executive sommelier for the Niño Gordo group in Buenos Aires. Her work as a journalist takes her to unique corners of the world — South Korea, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, Italy — and this year she began advising Bogotá's restaurant El Chato on service and pairing.
She also produces wines under the label Sorol Wines with winemaker Mauricio Vegetti since 2021, as well as Dill & Tonic (a ready-to-drink gin) and Dill The Gin, a London Dry, since 2020. Since 2022, she serves as academy chair for 50 Best Bars in South America. In 2024 she founded Agencia 22, a platform gathering a talented group of sommeliers to boost gastronomic and beverage communication in Latin America.
'It's a luxury and a privilege to travel the world weaving a network of valuable links between sector professionals. And it's beautiful to amplify the message of good drinking and good eating,' says Sorrel, with her generous, critical, and deeply pleasure-connected outlook.
Lucas Rothschild is a bartender, sommelier, and beverage specialist
'What if we combine books with cocktails?' a journalist friend proposed to Lucas Rothschild. In that blend of aromas and stories, Lucas discovered a new way to view his craft. Trained as a bartender, he found in sommelier skills a tool to deepen his work: a way of thinking about flavor from balance, context, and origin.
He merges his experience in mixology, coffee, and wines with a particular passion for fermentation. That quest led him to work at prominent bars and restaurants such as Kona, Costa 7070, Anchoita, Chila, and CoChinChina (#22 on World's 50 Best Bars 2024). He also collaborated with Francis Mallmann and lived in Madrid, where he was sommelier at Fun Fun and bartender at Santería.
Today, he is part of the commercial team for Dill & Tonic and SOROL Wines, and also works as a gastronomic consultant. His way of observing what's in a glass — whether wine, coffee, or spirits — is shaped by a holistic and cultural perspective, considering origin, history, and the people behind each drink.
For Lucas, understanding what you drink is also a way of living. 'The more we know, the more we share, the wider the circle grows, and creative perception expands exponentially,' he explains.
Mariana Gianella is a playwright, screenwriter, and sommelier
Mariana Gianella began her professional journey in the performing arts. Playwriting and directing led her to writing, and that pursuit of crafts connected to sensitivity and nobility brought her closer to wine. In 2017, she trained as a sommelier at CAVE, and soon after began writing about gastronomy.