“The human factor is very important” says Roberto Duran MS – double Gold Star winner in Southeast Asia
One of the “most talked-about” lists among the judges of Star Wine List of the Year Southeast Asia 2026 belongs to Singapore’s temper. Wine Room & Lounge, which earned two Gold Stars despite only opening in September 2025. We spoke to Wine Director Roberto Duran MS at ProWine Singapore this week, who explained how his “digital wine list” might cause headaches for him and his team, but helps make the wine experience at temper something very different for guests.
Roberto Duran hasn’t just created a wine list at temper. Wine Room & Lounge, he’s crafted a list, a training programme and an app, just for starters. The project earned two Gold Stars at Star Wine List of the Year Southeast Asia this week – due recognition for Spain’s first Master Sommelier and, crucially, the four-strong team he leads at one of Singapore’s newest (and already most respected) wine spots.
“When you cross the door, you see the cellars on the left side and, on the right side, everything is wine,” Roberto explains of temper, which opened in autumn 2025 at the Mondrian Singapore Duxton hotel, in the snazzy Tanjong Pagar neighbourhood. “Everything is wine that you can see. It’s the place you would like to go.”
There are three pillars to temper: “we have flavour, also we have music, and we have wines.” That flavour comes courtesy of Executive Chef Nicolas Tam, with whom Roberto worked at Singapore’s three-Michelin-starred Joël Robuchon. Nicolas’ own restaurant, Willow, holds a Michelin star which, Roberto explains, allows the pair to strive for “something different” at temper. Indeed, by putting wine at the beginning of a guest’s experience, he views their approach, gleefully, as “backwards” – it is designed to spark something. Food is “high quality” and pays respect to provenance while seeking interesting flavour profiles (the turbot, for example, is dry-aged for days before cooking), with Head Chef Ronald Sim leading the kitchen.
When it comes to the wine, a primary concern for Roberto is the smoothness of a guest’s experience – he doesn’t want guests to be faced with scratched-out lists full of unavailable wines, hence developing his new app: “I hate it when I go to a place and the wine list is crossed out. No! Now, I can just change it like that. I finish one bottle of, let’s see, Champagne Blanc de Blancs? I automatically add a new wine by the glass, and the customer doesn’t see that something is missing.”
This “digital wine list” does, he admits, create rather a lot of work for his sommelier team, which has to input all necessary data in advance of even receiving the wines; once arrived, they must be cellared fastidiously and listed which, for a list containing over 1,000 references, can be a lengthy process. Roberto was keen to point out that temper’s Gold Stars are not just for him, but for the whole team.
“It’s not only for me – it’s all of them behind me. The wine list is not only about the bottle – there’s a lot of SOP [standard operating procedure; instructions] behind before it actually gets to the table. And not only I suffer, they suffer also.”
A winning formula
The Best Long List category at Star Wine List of the Year recognises lists of over 600 references. Judge Stephen Wong MW explained that, in our 2026 Southeast Asia competition, this category “took the most deliberation” of all due to the high standard across the region.
Yet temper’s list “wielded the tools of this category to full effect: depth and thoroughness, clear points of view without yielding to dogma, and most of all, offering an almost crippling diversity of choice across the world of wine – every bottle earning its place despite the lack of size limitations. A wine-lover's nirvana.”
To have won the Gold Star for the Best Long List is impressive for any establishment since it is always one of Star Wine List’s most competitive prizes. But to have won it within one’s first year is exemplary. Understandably, the judges also awarded temper the Gold Star for the Best Newcomer List, with Ferran Centelles calling it “a true temple of wine…
“To keep it short: Singapore has a new destination for wine lovers – a place of pilgrimage. The list is extensive, featuring many ‘unicorn’ wines, older vintages, and a high level of sommelier expertise. It brings together wines from all over the world in a remarkable way. What’s more, its electronic wine list is also a pleasure to navigate, enhancing the overall experience.”
Stephen and Ferran were joined on the jury panel by Master of Wine Richard Hemming.
Spain’s first Master Sommelier
Originally from Madrid, Roberto won the Best Sommelier of Spain competition in 2015 and became his country’s first Master Sommelier when he “finally” passed his theory exam in 2025. His “long journey” to achieving the MS title was prolonged further thanks to COVID, as he contracted the virus the day before he was due to catch a flight to take his tasting exam; when he finally took it, six months later, his palate had “completely changed” and so he failed (“of course”). It took six years to make it from his first attempt at one of the exams, in 2019, to finally passing all sections, in 2025.
In between all this, the sommelier was moving between Europe and Asia, first living in Singapore in 2017, before heading to London two years later and then returning, post-COVID, in 2021.
“I think Singapore is its own market,” says Roberto, “but it’s still very mature in terms of wine culture. Definitely, there is potential. It’s completely different than Hong Kong. I’ve [spent time] in Hong Kong for months and I can see two different palates, two different profiles, and two different ways to understand the wine industry.”
And Singapore is, currently, an exciting place for wine.
“I think the new crowd of wine lovers is looking for something for you to explain, to bring to the table. They are not interested in drinking names – they want history behind the wines, they want the value, they want the personal touch. The human factor is very important.”
A team on the rise
That human factor is something that Roberto nourishes daily: mentorship is hugely important in his work and he is proud that, among his team, one worked with him before; three of them are on the Court of Master Sommelier route, with one a Master of Wine candidate.
To have won at Star Wine List of the Year is a boon for the team (Roberto, Allen, Angela, Elvira and Yue), and it all stems from Roberto’s encounter with Founder and Publisher Krister Bengtsson several years ago, when Roberto was representing Spain in the ASI Best Sommelier of the World competition in Belgium, in 2019.
Roberto found that he and Krister shared a mutual friend – Star Wine List’s Mallorca Ambassador, sommelier Gabriel Lucas Dimmock – from whom Roberto sought advice on entering the Star Wine List of the Year competition with his new venture, temper.
“I asked Lucas, ‘Should I apply?’ And he said, ‘Yes, go!’” And yet Roberto was concerned that he was still “in the process of building the wine up, and I didn’t like the paper…” and many such quibbles. Gabriel Lucas told Roberto not to worry and, after taking a step back, he found the competition useful: “I like to understand what everyone does, so that you can do something in a different way. Because at the end of the day, it’s the customer who has the right to say that you are doing well, or that it’s not something that [they were] looking for.”
We shall be excited to see how temper performs at the Star Wine List of the Year Global Final, this June, against their fellow winners from across the world in the Best Long List and Best Newcomer List categories.
In the meantime, take a look at all the winners of Star Wine List of the Year Southeast Asia 2026.
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