Now that all the entries in this year's wine writing competition are in, some clear trends have emerged.
Once again we have been knocked out by the creativity and industry of visitors to JancisRobinson.com and particularly this year by their willingness to shine a spotlight on precious old vines and vineyards.
We received 136 entries in all to this year’s writing competition, many of them on deadline day last Wednesday, so we have not yet had time to read them all. But Tam who has been collating them commented:
‘I’ve been really touched by the energy and engagement I’ve seen from people who’ve submitted their entries. It’s quite something when you think we’re getting entries from someone super-high-up in the legal field of the oil and gas industry, microbiologists, chemical engineers, MWs, winemakers, scientists, vignerons, sommeliers, chefs, journalists, accountants, psychiatrists. We’ve got entries from people with degrees in Japanese and food science, English literature and mathematics, oenology and philosophy. We have director-level brand communicators, hedge-fund traders and housewives. We’ve got specialist wine writers and bloggers and graphic designers and wine merchants. Hard-baked winemakers and starry-eyed winery-reception workers. Published authors. Grumpy old educators.’
Thank you all.
Our aim is to publish the best of these articles this month and next, and to announce a shortlist by the beginning of September. We will ask you to vote on your personal favourites as well as nominating winners ourselves.
You can read the details of the competition and the prizes in More on our 2021 writing competition.
In the meantime I thought you might be interested in a tally of where the old-vine subjects of all these articles are. Here is an initial ranking, provided before we have actually verified the relevance of each entry:
- France 18
- Spain 17
- California 16
- Italy 12
- Australia 7
- Germany 7
- Greece 7
- South Africa 7
- Hungary 6
- Oregon 5
- Portugal 5
- UK 4
- Canada 3
- Chile 3
- Argentina 2
- Armenia 2
- Georgia 2
- New York 2
- Turkey 2
- and one each about vineyards in Lebanon, Israel, Bolivia, Slovenia, Washington State, Michigan, Brazil, Bulgaria, Japan, Austria and Kazakhstan.
The numbers may not add up to 136 as some people wrote about more than one vineyard or country and some people submitted more than one entry.
As for the competitors – which may not be the right term since so many seem motivated more by the subject and/or the desire to write rather than by the prizes – most of them wrote about vineyards in their own country, but several Americans and Brits ranged further afield and we had Swedes writing about Spain, a South African writing about Chile, and three different Hungarians each writing about Italy, Spain and France respectively. There were entries on vineyards in Spain not just from Spanish residents but also from Belgian and Dutch writers.
We’re much looking forward to reading them all and even those we choose not to publish will be extremely useful when we compile an expanded version of our Old Vines Register in a new format.
Again, very many thanks for all that hard work.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash.