OUR NICK MWs

OUR NICK MWs

This page is dedicated to our two Nicks, who shared a deep mutual respect and formed a remarkable partnership that led to the creation of Vinexus and ensured its lasting legacy. Both sadly passed away within a short time of each other in 2022.

Nick Belfrage MW

Nicolas Belfrage was born a U.S. citizen but also spent part of his upbringing in the UK. He moved to Siena in his mid-20s to study Italian and pursue his dream of becoming a writer. Upon returning to London, he started working at a grocery shop, where he first discovered the world of wine. When Belfrage eventually returned to Italy, he found that, contrary to what he had heard back home, Italy did indeed have fine wine-producing regions.

This realisation led Belfrage to explore and understand the intricate and, at the time, disorganised nature of Italy’s wine sector, sharing his insights with the world. He dedicated half of his life to the Italian wine trade, authoring four books and numerous articles on various aspects of the subject. His influence is further highlighted by his coining of the term ‘Super-Tuscan’ and being the first to publicly associate ‘Italy’ with ‘fine wine.’

Although his passion was primarily focused on wine education, Belfrage was also commercially involved in wine since the late 1960s as a buyer for various specialist wine merchants, including the Grapevine, the Market, and Winecellars – which he founded. A Master of Wine since 1980, Belfrage is credited with transforming the image of Italian wine in foreign markets, including the predominantly Francophile UK. In the mid-1990s, he founded Vinexus LTD from his home in Tuscany.

Nicolas Belfrage can truly be considered the ‘patron saint’ of Italian wine.

Nick Bielak MW

After several forays to Italy, Nicholas Bielak emigrated in 1996 and inevitably became involved in wine, working for a Puglian winery until 2003. After exploring the length and breadth of Italy’s vineyards from Alto Adige to Sicily, he returned to London with a view to disseminating the message of the exciting world of Italian wine to international markets. After a short experience at Bibendum as an Italian specialist, Bielak's deep understanding of Italian culture and language, akin to that of a native, caught the attention of Nicolas Belfrage in 2006. From then on, the two Nicks forged a partnership that marked the beginning of the modern era of Vinexus.

Bielak devoted his time to exploring Italy's numerous DOCs and DOCGs, consulting with producers and enologists while promoting and educating the wine trade on the diverse and captivating Italian wine landscape. He played a key role in the prosecco boom, a subject he later focused on for his MW thesis and contributed to the exponential growth of Italian fine wines in export markets. His creation, the Vinexus "Anteprima"— the prerelease tasting of Italian fine wines — has now become a recurring annual event.

Under Bielak’s close guidance, Vinexus grew from strength to strength, building up a formidable team that today remains the bedrock of the company. In 2020, he became Vinexus’ second Master of Wine, and though he was British-born, he also held Italian citizenship, making him technically one of Italy’s Masters of Wine. Tragically, Nick’s life and career were cut short at the age of 52. He was working on various projects, including two books on Italian wine, one of which a collaboration with Belfrage himself.