Marilena entered the wine world through the side door. She didn't study winemaking or wine communication, but she started first speaking the languages of wine: French, English, Spanish and, of course, Italian!

Graduated in Interpreting and translation in one of the most convivial regions of Italy, Emilia Romagna, land of Sangiovese, she didn't imagine her primary specialization would be indeed wine.

Back home in Sicily (after working and touring different lands of wines, among them France and Catalunya) she started as hospitality assistant in Marsala, Sicily, at one of the biggest and oldest wineries of the island, and she fell absolutely in love with that old-fashioned, traditional and impressing fortified wine able to rival only with time in dusty and mysterious cellars, marsala wine. After nearly 10 years, the city bearing the same name of the most traditional Sicilian wine is her home and its wine her biggest passion.

She had studied, tasted and compared... a hard job that someone is supposed to do, and to be better at her main activity she is today one of the official taster and educator at ONAV, the Italian National Association for Wine Taster, in charge of assigning some of the complicated denominations you can read on most of the Italian wine labels and a proud owner of a WSET L3 Advanced certification in Wines and Spirits.

For the wine industry, she also takes care of digital communication strategies, she creates and manages web contents, attends and organizes technical wine tastings (for business, but above all for pleasure) and you could often find her around in vineyards or cellars with a camera or an iPhone in her hands.