Hey, Italy: Australians Officially Make the World's Best Gelato

It isn't often that Italians are beaten at their own game. From sports cars to sex scandals and Sophia Loren, the rest of the world seems to have accepted that there are certain things Italy just does better. The same goes for food. If you want pizza or pasta, you head for the nearest chequered tablecloth or grab the jar of sauce fronted by a guy sporting a politically incorrect moustache and a speech impediment.

But all this was turned on its head last month when a four-year-old Australian gelateria took on 23 artisan gelato makers from around the world to win the Gelato World Tour competition in Rimini, Italy.

That last sentence is sweet sacrilege.

Sydney's Cow and the Moon gelato bar beat master gelato maker Francesco Mastroianni and Lombardian dessert restaurant Gelateria Fiore to claim the title of world's best gelato with their version of the classic affogato flavour.

"It's great being acknowledged for doing well at what you do," says Wendy Crowl, who runs the gelateria alongside her husband, John, and son, Sam. "There's a lot of work behind the scenes that people don't see. In Italy, the milk is different and we had to find somewhere to caramelise almonds."

Organised by Carpigiani Gelato University (yup, your careers advisor was wrong: it is possible to major in ice cream), the Gelato World Tour held heats in eight cities around the world, including Berlin, Austin, and Valencia. The top three gelato makers from each heat travelled to the finals in Rimini, where their creations were put to the test by a public vote, technical jury, and media panel. Around 70,000 cups and cones of gelato were served over the three-day competition.

"It is like Formula 1 or the Olympic Games for gelato," explains Valentina Righi from the university. "It is an opportunity for people who run gelato shops around the world to show their products."

Cow and the Moon's winning Mandorla Affogato flavour featured a Madagascan vanilla gelato cut through with caramelised almonds and a single-origin coffee sauce. The Crowls held a special coffee-tasting night at their gelateria for their regulars to determine exactly which blend should be used.

"The game plan was to do something a bit different," explains Crowl. "Sam and John worked on making sure that there was enough coffee in it to counteract the sweetness of the gelato, and the nuts gave it the crunch factor."

Affogato, or Italian for "drowned," traditionally features a scoop of vanilla gelato topped with hot espresso. It was Cow and the Moon's incorporation of the coffee flavour into the gelato itself that impressed the judges.

"We really didn't think we would do it," admits Crowl. "Even though a lot of the contestants might have come from Canada or Dubai, they were Italian-born so they had an Italian background."

Despite having a heritage that's more billabong than la bella vita, Cow and the Moon still trumped Gelato Messina's more traditional approach to gelato. The Italian-Australian gelataria crafts the gelato across all seven of its stores in Sydney and Melbourne under the guiding principle, "How would they have made it 100 years ago?" This year, they entered a classic Cremino flavour into the competition.

"It's one of our most popular flavours on rotation," explains head chef Donato Toce, who recently wrote an 800-word blog post on the crisis of counterfeit pistachio use in modern gelato production. "It's a salted caramel gelato with gianduia fudge, amaretti biscotti, and Italian meringue."

And yet Toce and his team aren't afraid to deviate from afraid to deviate from Italian tradition when it comes to other areas of gelato production. I'm not sure the gelateria your nonna visited as a bambina would have had a carefully executed social media strategy or a chocolate fudge flavour named "Robert Brownie Jnr."

Diana Kontoprias, owner of Sydney's Frangipani Gelateria, is another Australian tearing up the gelato rule book. She received an honourable mention for her unashamedly Aussie Pavlova gelato.

"The pavlova is such a classic Australian flavour, especially around Christmas," says Kontoprias. "I explained to the judges that I was trying to combine this with traditional Italian gelato making."

Alongside the three Australian teams, the Gelato World Tour also saw finalists from Canada, America, and Germany, which has one of the world's highest rates of gelato consumption behind Italy.

"Cow and the Moon's win proves that a non-Italian can be a great gelato artisan if they study hard and work with passion," says Righi. "Anyone who learns production processes of gelato and uses high-quality materials can be successful."

With the craftsmanship that goes into making even the simplest gelato, Crowl agrees that hard work, not heritage is the key to great gelato. "John has trained in Italy and we do have traditional gelato flavours, like lemon sorbet and pistachio," she says. "We've built on that because we're passionate about it."

Judging by the queues that stretch onto the street outside Cow and the Moon almost every night, if you've got a line in chilled, caffeine-infused butterfat with sugar-coated almonds, who cares what nationality you are.