S3 E9: Inside Vinitaly and the Vinitaly International Academy, with Stevie Kim

In this episode of The Wine Thieves, Sara d'Amato and John Szabo MS turn their attention to one of the most important institutions in global wine: Vinitaly. Guest Stevie Kim — Managing Partner of Vinitaly and the founding force behind the Vinitaly International Academy (VIA) — joins from New York for a wide-ranging conversation about Italian wine on the world stage.

Sara and John open with the fair itself: born in September 1967 as a two-day tasting at Verona's Palazzo della Gran Guardia, now a four-day B2B colossus drawing 90,000 visitors from 135 countries. They unpack the 2022 restructuring that split the professional trade fair from the consumer-facing Vinitaly and the City, addressing the criticism — in Veronafiere president Federico Bricolo's words — that the fair had drifted into being "a championship of Italians visiting each other's stands." Two dates land on the calendar for anyone serious about Italian wine: the 59th edition in Verona, April 11–14, 2027, and Vinitaly.USA, returning October 26–27, 2026, at Pier 36 in New York. For Canadian trade especially, NYC is the version of Verona that fits in a long weekend.

The conversation also covers VIA — the certification programme launched in 2015 that has quietly become one of the more rigorous credentials in wine. Over 1,500 candidates taught, 525 Italian Wine Ambassadors certified across 57 countries, 22 Italian Wine Experts, and a pass rate hovering around 29%. This is not a participation trophy. Stevie talks about bringing on Professor Attilio Scienza — the University of Milan vine geneticist who, by John's reckoning, has done more DNA work on Italian native varieties than anyone alive — and what changes when you build a wine curriculum from genetics and geology upward rather than tacking regions onto a tasting course.

Plus: how a Korean-born, US-raised finance graduate ended up running the promotional engine of the world's most fragmented wine country, and the question that drives the whole VIA project — has the native-variety, region-by-region narrative actually moved buyers and drinkers beyond Barolo, Brunello, Chianti, Amarone, and Prosecco, or is it still mostly an industry conversation?