The Team
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Nina is a seasoned hotelier, having been instrumental in the co-founding of Hotel du Vin, Hotel TerraVina, and Spot in the Woods – all with her late husband, the very special Gérard Basset, by her side. The accolade of being the youngest ever AA Hotel and Restaurant Inspector – at only 21 – and the far too young winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award for Women in Business before she hit 40, have ensured Nina’s merit as a hospitality professional.
Her love of fine wine stems from all of her holidays being spent with Gérard in various vineyards across the world. Living with such a wine legend ensured that his passion and enthusiasm for all things vinous rubbed off on both Nina and their son, Romané.
From January 2019 onwards, Nina and Romané are ensuring Gérard’s legacy lives on, both by association with Liquid Icons – the company he co-founded with Lewis Chester DipWSET – as well as through the varied awards and scholarships in Gérard’s name that will ensure Gérard continues to be honoured for his enormous influence on sommeliers around the world and global fine wine industry. In October 2020, Nina accepted an invitation to become a Vice President of Academy of Food and Wine Service (AFWS), and then in November 2022 became General Secretary of the ASI, a position she held until the Summer of 2023.
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Romané is a graduate of King’s College London with a First-Class Honours in BA French with English degree. He is Co-Founding Trustee and part of the Foundation’s day-to-day leadership team, with tasks ranging from liaising with potential and current Scholars and Grantees all the way to managing the Foundation’s online presence over social media and its website.
Romané completed a five-month ‘stage’ working with Moët & Chandon in Épernay, France, where he worked for four of the five months in Hautvillers, specifically looking after VIP clients visiting to taste Dom Pérignon. He is looking forward to continuing onto his WSET Diploma studies in future. He has completed WSET Levels 1, 2 & 3 and agrees that like Father like Son, wine is in his blood.
Romané has been brought up in the hospitality world and has spent all of his holidays travelling the world and visiting vineyards. He is the keeper of his father’s legacy and integral in judging and bestowing the varied awards created in his late father’s honour and a most worthy trustee in the newly created Gérard Basset Foundation.
In June 2022, Romané Basset and his colleague and friend Sasha Lushnikov were selected and included in the Harpers Wine & Spirit 30 Under 30 – the inaugural list of drinks trade’s future leaders.
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As the founder of Westbrook Marketing Partners, Christian Holthausen is an experienced Sales, Marketing & Communications Director with a successful track record of more than twenty years in the international wine and spirits industry developing and implementing comprehensive brand value strategies, and with a strong focus on the Champagne category. Holthausen currently works with several of the most prestigious producers in Champagne and also with a number of international clients.
A dual citizen of France and the United States, Christian Holthausen graduated from New York’s Vassar College in 1996 with a double concentration in English Literature and Feminist Theory before completing his post-graduate studies at La Sorbonne in Paris in 1999.
Prior to founding Westbrook Marketing Partners, Holthausen served as the Export Sales & International Communications Director for Champagne AR Lenoble for six years after spending seven years as the International House Communications Director for Champagnes Piper-Heidsieck & Charles Heidsieck. He previously spent five years managing the wine and champagne portfolio of Rémy Cointreau USA in New York after starting his career at Champagne Veuve Clicquot in 1999. In between, he also lived in London for 18 months where he was head of marketing for Nyetimber and a branding consultant for Gusbourne.
Holthausen has contributed articles on wine and spirits to a variety of publications including Meininger’s Wine Business International in Germany as well as Decanter, The Guardian, www.jancisrobinson.com and The World of Fine Wine in the United Kingdom. In 2017, he was shortlisted for Emerging Wine Writer of the Year at the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Awards.
Contact: westbrookmarketingpartners@gmail.com
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Isabelle holds an undergraduate degree in Spanish & Italian from Christ Church, University of Oxford. She has previously worked for a Spanish production service company where she was tasked with the upkeep of the company CRM, collaborated closely with the Head of Marketing on their social media strategy, and compiled research on the market and competitors.
During her time at university, Isabelle also served as President of the Oxford University Ice Skating Society, having been a competitive figure skater since early childhood. In this capacity, she coached the advanced group and was responsible for the society’s growth strategy and marketing, which resulted in an average doubling of attendees per session during her tenure and a return to profit for the society after near bankruptcy post COVID-19.
Isabelle was also chosen as one of three students from Oxford to spend the summer of 2019 at Castle Blatná in the Czech Republic, where she undertook an internship in marketing and was put in charge of their social media, developing a marketing plan to showcase the castle as an exciting tourist attraction.
Isabelle’s role at the Foundation is to help us spread word of our incredible beneficiaries. We want to tell their stories and demonstrate the impact of our funding upon them, as well as showcase how they in turn are carrying this forward within the wine, spirits and hospitality industries.
Contact: isabelle@gerardbassetfoundation.org
The Trustees
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Nina is a seasoned hotelier, having been instrumental in the co-founding of Hotel du Vin, Hotel TerraVina, and Spot in the Woods – all with her late husband, the very special Gérard Basset, by her side. The accolade of being the youngest ever AA Hotel and Restaurant Inspector – at only 21 – and the far too young winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award for Women in Business before she hit 40, have ensured Nina’s merit as a hospitality professional.
Her love of fine wine stems from all of her holidays being spent with Gérard in various vineyards across the world. Living with such a wine legend ensured that his passion and enthusiasm for all things vinous rubbed off on both Nina and their son, Romané.
From January 2019 onwards, Nina and Romané are ensuring Gérard’s legacy lives on, both by association with Liquid Icons – the company he co-founded with Lewis Chester DipWSET – as well as through the varied awards and scholarships in Gérard’s name that will ensure Gérard continues to be honoured for his enormous influence on sommeliers around the world and global fine wine industry. In October 2020, Nina accepted an invitation to become a Vice President of Academy of Food and Wine Service (AFWS), and then in November 2022 became General Secretary of the ASI, a position she held until the Summer of 2023.
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Romané is a graduate of King’s College London with a First-Class Honours in BA French with English degree. He is Co-Founding Trustee and part of the Foundation’s day-to-day leadership team, with tasks ranging from liaising with potential and current Scholars and Grantees all the way to managing the Foundation’s online presence over social media and its website.
Romané completed a five-month ‘stage’ working with Moët & Chandon in Épernay, France, where he worked for four of the five months in Hautvillers, specifically looking after VIP clients visiting to taste Dom Pérignon. He is looking forward to continuing onto his WSET Diploma studies in future. He has completed WSET Levels 1, 2 & 3 and agrees that like Father like Son, wine is in his blood.
Romané has been brought up in the hospitality world and has spent all of his holidays travelling the world and visiting vineyards. He is the keeper of his father’s legacy and integral in judging and bestowing the varied awards created in his late father’s honour and a most worthy trustee in the newly created Gérard Basset Foundation.
In June 2022, Romané Basset and his colleague and friend Sasha Lushnikov were selected and included in the Harpers Wine & Spirit 30 Under 30 – the inaugural list of drinks trade’s future leaders.
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Voted the world's most influential wine critic in polls in the US, France and internationally in 2018, Jancis views herself as a wine writer rather than a wine critic. She writes daily for JancisRobinson.com and weekly for the Financial Times. She is founder-editor of The Oxford Companion to Wine, co-author with Hugh Johnson of The World Atlas of Wine (4.7 million copies sold just before the 8th edition was published in October 2019) and co-author of Wine Grapes, each of these books recognised as a standard reference worldwide. The 24-Hour Wine Expert (2017) is a slim paperback guide to the practical essentials of wine.
She travels all over the world to conduct wine events – often for the global literacy initiative Room to Read - and in 2018 launched her own hand-made, dishwasher-friendly, ideal wine glass. In 1984 she was the first person outside the wine trade to pass the rigorous Master of Wine exams and in 2003 she was awarded an OBE by Her Majesty the Queen, on whose cellar she now advises. In one week in April 2016 she was presented with France's Officier du Mérite Agricole, the German VDP's highest honour and, in the US, her fourth James Beard Award. She now has six, including being the only wine writer elevated the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame.
She loves and lives for wine in all its glorious diversity, generally favouring balance and subtlety over sheer mass.
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Ian Harris is the Former Chief Executive of the Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET).
Having gone to university with the intention of becoming a teacher, a life-changing year in Bordeaux soon opened Ian’s eyes to the world of wine, ultimately kick-starting what would become a lifelong career in the wine and spirit industry.
On graduating from London University with a degree in French, Ian joined Christopher & Co (reputed to be London’s oldest wine merchant), and then its parent company, Waverley Vintners, where he was their first Wine Development Manager, designing and running sales courses. Ten years later, in 1987, he joined Seagram – initially in the UK, then in 1993-1995 he spent two years as Global Marketing Manager for Martell, based in Cognac, France.
Ian returned to the UK in 1995 as Marketing Director and then Commercial Director for Seagram UK, also assuming General Management responsibility for the Nordic markets.
Prompted by the takeover of Seagram in 2002, Ian’s original passion for teaching brought him full circle when he joined the Wine & Spirit Education Trust as Chief Executive. Here Ian has overseen the transformation of WSET into the largest global organisation of its kind, with annual student numbers growing from 10,000 in 2002 to over 108,000 in 2021. WSET now offers nine qualifications in wine, spirits and sake across four levels of progressive study, in 19 languages through over 800 Approved Programme Providers in more than 70 countries.
In 2014 Ian was named Drinks Business ‘Man of the Year’, in 2015 WSET received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade - the highest accolade for business in the UK - and in 2016 he was awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Drinks Retailing Awards. In 2018 Ian was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the New Year’s Honours List, for services to the wine and spirits industries.
Ian is married (to Lindsey) with 2 children (Sophie and Molly) and holds the WSET Level 4 Diploma. He also occasionally returns to his first love, teaching, particularly on the WSET’s Business and Commercial Knowledge (BACK) course held annually in the UK.
He is a keen sportsman, but now retired from playing the team sports of rugby, cricket and hockey, although he is now a qualified hockey umpire. Golf has filled the sporting void, and he is also a keen cyclist, completing many charity bike rides in recent years.