The World’s 10 Best Gelato Chefs: Gelato Festival World Ranking 2022

The Gelato Festival World Ranking, the most comprehensive ranking of individual gelato artisans, was updated in summer 2022. It is promoted by Gelato Festival, Carpigiani and Sigep – Italian Exhibition Group, and it crowned Marco Venturino of the I Giardini di Marzo gelato shop in Varazze, Savona, Italy, as the best gelato artisan of 2022.

The top of the table

The ranking draws on 11 years of competitions, with more than 5,000 gelato artisans scored by hundreds of experts. A total of 1,098 gelato shops reached the minimum score to be listed in 2022. The full list is on the Gelato Festival website.

• 1st: Marco Venturino, I Giardini di Marzo, Varazze (Savona), Italy: 246 points and three crowns.
• 2nd: Ádám Fazekas, Fazekas Cukrászda, Budapest, Hungary: 225 points. He won Gelato Festival World Masters in December 2021 with Pistachio Fruit, the world’s best gelato flavour, after four years of qualifiers against competitors from Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa.
• 3rd: Giovanna Bonazzi, La Parona of Gelato di Parona (Verona): 215 points. She is a regular competitor who turned a past as a two-time professional mountain bike world champion into a podium finish in gelato.
• 4th: Savannah G. Lee, Savannah’s Gelato, San Francisco, USA: 210 points.
• 5th: Massimiliano Scotti, Vero Latte, Vigevano (PV), Italy: 195 points.
• 6th: Maurizio Melani, Véneta Gelato Italiano, Valencia, Spain: 188 points.
• 7th: Fabio Forghieri, Gelateria dei Principi, Correggio (RE), Italy: 178 points.
• 8th: Carlo Guerriero, La Cremeria Italian gelato, Cadiz, Spain: 177 points. A chemical engineer who found a new use for his studies in gelato.
• 9th (tied): Leonardo La Porta, Gelateria Miretti, Turin, Italy: 171 points.
• 9th (tied): Paolo Pomposi, Gelateria Pasticceria Badiani, Florence, Italy: 171 points.

Eugenio Morrone of Il Cannolo Siciliano in Rome, ranked first in 2020 and gold medallist at the Gelato World Cup that year as part of the Italy team, entered the ranking’s Hall of Fame. He no longer competes, but he becomes one of its qualified judges.

What the organisers said

Adriana Tancredi, Project Manager of Gelato Festival Europe, said the ranking announcement kicks off the new 2022-2025 competition, and that the renewed partnership with Carpigiani and Sigep builds on the digital formats invented to get through 2020 and 2021. A first calendar was planned with 8 events in 2022: 2 in Italy, 5 elsewhere in Europe and 1 in the United States. The format would change slightly to allow off-season competition, with closed-door judging by experienced, qualified judges.

Kaori Ito, Carpigiani Gelato University and Communications Director, said the four-year Gelato Festival is part of the 20-year celebration of Carpigiani Gelato University, which has trained gelato artisans on its 21 campuses worldwide for two decades. She pointed to career changers such as Giovanna Bonazzi and Carlo Guerriero as proof that gelato can give a new direction in life.

Valentina Sorgente, Exhibition Manager of Sigep, said artisan gelato remains one of Italy’s top products worldwide. She announced the first Gelato Europe Cup at Sigep, held from 21 to 25 January 2023 at the Fiera di Rimini, which would select the European teams for the Gelato World Cup at Sigep 2024.

How the ranking works

• As of July 2022, it covered more than 5,000 gelato professionals from Africa, Asia, America and Europe.
• Points come from competitions promoted by Gelato Festival, Sigep – IEG Expo and Carpigiani since 2011, including Carpigiani Challenge, Gelato Festival Challenge, Carpigiani Day, public Gelato Festival events and the digital events of 2020-2021.
• The goal is to map the more than 100,000 artisanal gelato shops around the world.
• High scorers earn “crowns”, from one up to five. In 2022, 56 artisans held crowns: 30 with one (14 more than in 2020), 19 with two (11 in 2020) and seven with three.

Gelato market figures

These figures come from the Sigep Observatory in March 2022.

• Italian gelato consumption rose 19.5% in 2021 compared with 2020, though it was still 17.8% below 2019. In value terms it went from 2.8 billion in 2019 to 1.85 billion in 2020 and back to 2.3 billion in 2021.
• Summer domestic tourism and visitors from Germany and Spain, the two most active European markets, drove the recovery.
• Gelato shops operate in 76 countries. Europe remains the main market, with about 65,000 shops. Italy, Germany, Spain and Poland lead, with Austria, France, Belgium and Holland also strong.
• Italy leads the world in gelato ingredients and semi-finished products: 65 companies with a turnover of 1.8 billion euros, of which 800 million is semi-finished gelato products, 60% exported.

Gelato Festival itself began in Florence in 2010, inspired by Bernardo Buontalenti’s first gelato recipe of 1559. It has since held 80 festivals, and its 2021 world championship saw a record 3,500 gelato artisans judged.

What this means for gelato makers in Australia

The names at the top of this ranking built their reputations on consistent quality, season after season. That starts with the right equipment and ingredients. Explore Carpigiani gelato machines, Rubicone ingredients and Carpigiani Gelato University through Majors Group to build your own signature range.

Source: Carpigiani news. Rewritten for Australia by Majors Group.