Who we are - Le Baccanti Corporate

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Who we are

The Protagonists

Le Baccanti Corporate came to be in 1999 in London, the brainchild of Filippo Bartolotta, “grapetrotter” with contagious enthusiasm and boundless love for excellent food and wine. After many years in the United States and England, he and Vanessa Held decided to return to Tuscany, to their native city of Florence, to found the Le Baccanti Tours, specialized in incentive trips, team-building and entertainment events based on wine, food, and art. Their goal: to bring part of the world to Italy to discover the best it has to offer in wine and food and help tailor trips and projects in Italy and beyond. The undertaking combines Vanessa’s excellent organizational and business skills with Filippo’s creative inspiration and expertise with the incredible, wide-ranging skills of an international team. Le Baccanti Tours organizes leisure travel throughout Italy, crafting dream trips and tailor-made experiences for major partner agencies around the world and for clients the caliber of Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman.

Le Baccanti Corporate brings leading businesses in Italy and the world to the best of Italian hospitality, places are brimming with history, dedication to hard work and traditions passed from generation to generation. Our team includes professional chefs, globe-trotting bartenders, passionate sommeliers, and guides who are expert in wine, food, and art. Drawing on all this knowledge and all these skills, Le Baccanti organizes top-notch events that bring together business goals and curiosity about a world waiting to be discovered.

VANESSA HELD

CEO

SHOW BIOGRAPHY

Vanessa Held, an American woman of expansive vision, was born in Tuscany but is a world citizen at heart. After graduating from the Faculty of Agronomy at the University of Florence, she specialized in olive cultivation at the University of Pisa. In 2001, she became a certified extra-virgin olive oil taster by the Chamber of Commerce of Florence. She long served as an agronomy consultant for many farms in Tuscany and throughout Italy. Drawing on her natural empathic sense, she has spent years crafting dream Italian vacations for the most sophisticated clients in the world. Vanessa holds the secret to creating the best incentive and corporate events in the finest places in Italy has to offer, from the Dolomites to Sicily. Nowhere is beyond knowledge.

FILIPPO BARTOLOTTA

CEO

SHOW BIOGRAPHY

Filippo Bartolotta is American at heart but born in an Italian body in Florence in 1972. After studying economics at the University of Florence, international marketing at the Institute of Higher European Studies in Den Haag, the Netherlands, and wine at the renowned Wine and Spirit Education Trust in London, he started his professional career in London at Vinopolis, the world’s largest interactive wine museum. As a journalist, he wrote for the Guida dei Vini d’Italia of “L’Espresso”, the “Gazzetta Gastronomica,” and he continues to write for the prestigious Decanter Wine Magasin UK. Filippo has taught courses at the Bocconi University in Milan, Siena University, NYU, Politecnico di Milano, IED, and the Alma Graduate School. For the Road Show Italy at Your Table project, he brought the best of Italy to the kitchens of the White House and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. For the Province of Siena, he developed the blazingly-successful regional marketing event called “Masterpiece for the Senses,” which was at the National Gallery of London for three months and at the Assemblée Nationale in France. Filippo has been the core of Corporate Events for over 15 years, serving as a Master of Ceremony
and motivational speaker, sharing his knowledge and boundless curiosity with others. Filippo’s solid, long-standing relationships with producers, restaurateurs, and hospitality professionals throughout Italy are at the essence of Le Baccanti events.

ELENA PONTIL

Event Manager

SHOW BIOGRAPHY

Though Elena Pontil was born in the Dolomites mountains, she loves the sea. After having worked side by side with some of Italy’s top chefs and sommeliers, when she was 20 years old, she left for London and spent 12 years abroad in England, Spain, Turkey, and Sweden. In Stockholm, she graduated in political science and taught Italian in Swedish public schools for six years, organizing numerous cultural events in Italy and Sweden. In 2011, while teaching Italian in the kitchen of a language school, her dormant passion for food and wine was rekindled. She came back to Italy and chose Tuscany as a base from which to keep on traveling. After a period in Maremma, on the Tuscan coast, where she turned her love of wine into a job in one Italy’s leading wineries, she came to the Le Baccanti, the center around which she builds her interests in wine, languages, and events. She has been organizing incentive trips to Italy’s best destinations and creating team-building and entertainment events for having fun and discovering Italy. She also manages MaMa Florence, Le Baccanti’s cooking school and event space that opened in Florence in 2014.

COLETTE BEAUMONT

Colette Beaumont

Event Manager

SHOW BIOGRAPHY

Originally from South Africa, Colette lived in London for years before moving to Florence to follow her dream to study the Italian language and culture. She worked for a small tour operator organizing bike tours in Chianti, and for many years, she worked for a major company, planning and organizing meetings and conferences throughout Italy. She is currently responsible for planning incentive trips and is a VIP Travel Advisor for Le Baccanti Tours, tailoring dream trips for discerning guests.

IL RESTO DEL TEAM

MICHELE

CHEF

CARRIE

Vip Travel Advisor

NINA

TRAVEL ADVISOR

FEDERICA

AMMINISTRATION

MAMA FLORENCE

In 2014, Vanessa and Filippo launched a new project: the MaMa Cooking School and event space in the Oltrarno, Florence’s artisan neighborhood. MaMa is ideal for team-building cooking events, business meetings in a special setting, and entertaining with aperitifs, dinners, and wine-related events in a wine cellar designed especially for the purpose. On March 8, for MaMa’s inauguration, some of the top chefs in Italy lent their support, including: Valeria Piccini, Beatrice Segoni, Natascia Santandrea, Maria Probst, and Rosanna Passione, our foremothers who have guided us on our journey to excellent taste with the best ingredients, shaped by the boundless talent of resident Chef Michele Berlendis, who transforms these ingredients into smash-hit dishes.