The profiles below have been provided by Isabelle Anderbjörk, the head of marketing for the Gérard Basset Foundation.
Deniz Bayram
Born in Türkiye, Deniz Bayram got bitten by the wine bug while living in the US, attending culinary school at Johnson & Wales in Rhode Island. Graduating with a minor in sommelier management and a winery internship under his belt, he’s since focused on wine – especially wine from his home country, where he spent a year working in the industry in 2016. He’s currently living in London, teaching WSET Levels 1, 2 and 3 at the WSET School and hosting Turkish wine events. He also served as a judge for Team Türkiye in the 2024 World Blind Tasting Championship in Bordeaux, and has judged for the International Wine Challenge four times, and once for the Sommelier Wine Awards. His work in the industry earned him a place on Harpers’ ‘30 Under 30’ list earlier this year.
Bayram strives to become a Master of Wine to get the ‘technical range and credibility’ needed to build a community of education and mentorship in under-supported wine regions. He has begun working towards this already by laying the groundwork for a charitable foundation focused on wine literacy and hospitality training in Türkiye.
Matthew Francis Hayes
On 28 February 2008, a speeding car collided head-on with Matthew Francis Hayes, who was on his bike. The incident left him permanently ‘Legless in Burgundy’ – the name Hayes chose for his wine blog, which he has run for 15 years. Seventeen years on from the accident, Hayes is still living in Burgundy with his wife, having raised three children, and is the Burgundy correspondent for JancisRobinson.com.
Having started out, in his own words, as a ‘lowly cellar rat’ at Berry Bros & Rudd in London, Hayes has tried his hand at almost every sort of role in the wine industry, from public relations to wine service to international fine-wine trading. Hayes now holds both a WSET Diploma and an MBA in Wine and Spirits from the Burgundy School of Business, and he is currently enrolled as a Stage 2 Master of Wine candidate in London. He credits his success thus far on the programme to his mentor Richard Ballantyne MW, saying it can get lonely studying on one’s own day after day, especially with a severe physical handicap.
Sera Svitlana Karamshuk
Ukraine-born Sera Svitlana Karamshuk’s journey into wine began with a PhD in chemistry. Her interest in science eventually combined with her love of food, which sparked a curiosity about hospitality … which ultimately led to a fascination with wine. The discipline she learned in gaining her PhD has proven very helpful in her capacity as a wine professional – last year, she completed her WSET Diploma in half the time of the average candidate.
Karamshuk, who also teaches at the WSET School in London and serves as a Ukrainian Wine Ambassador in the UK, has a creative side which she applies to her Instagram feed, where she posts educational wine content as @sera_crow. She believes that the wine world needs to evolve its form of communication and be more inclusive – a belief that’s bolstered by her 13K followers. Karamshuk says that she aims to use the skills from the Master of Wine programme to ‘transform how wine is taught and communicated to new generations’.
Luma Monteiro
‘I had no role model in wine who looked like me – but I want to be that role model for others’, says Luma Monteiro, a Brazilian who has been running @wineriaoffical, her wine-focused Instagram account, since 2017. Her aim, she says, is to simplify the wine world for anyone interested, regardless of their level of knowledge – a project that’s gained her 18.3K followers. Based in London since 2016, Monteiro also works as senior marketing manager at Davy’s Wine Merchants in London and helps the Champagne Academy with communication and social media. Additionally, Monteiro has created and runs monthly champagne masterclasses, and was recently ranked number 42 in Drinks Retailing’s list of Top 100 Most Influential People in the Drinks Industry.
For Monteiro, the Master of Wine is the next step on her journey to becoming a voice that helps shape the future of wine.
