10 Jul 2023

WWC23 – a guide to our writing competition

2023 writing competition

31 August 2023 This year’s entries have been whittled down to a shortlist of 20 articles and 11 images – vote for your favourites here before 8 am UK time on 11 September.

10 July 2023 A guide to this year's wine writing competition (WWC23), plus a survey of all our writing competitions past.*

Now that we are into the second week of publishing the best entries to our 2023 wine writing competition, we offer this guide to them. Links to those published most recently are at the top of the list and we will continue adding to the list as more are published.

In the process of doing so, we have become a bit nostalgic, looking back on our past writing competitions. Our very first was in 2012 when we invited people to submit restaurant reviews while Nick was in hospital and off duty. The winner, Henry Jeffreys, went on to become a professional drinks writer.

But WWC23 is our seventh wine writing competition. When we initiated our first competition in 2016, we never expected it would become a major annual event for wine lovers around the world to which both seasoned professional wine writers and amateur wine enthusiasts would contribute. Our original wine writing competition was inspired by the departure of our revered columnist Alex Hunt MW. Rather than having a precise theme, this competition was aimed at uncovering new wine writing talent and entrants were invited to submit pieces on a wide range of topics. We were absolutely astonished that 180 people took the time to enter, and of those we chose to publish our 53 favourites (which can be found here).

Given peoples' obvious enthusiasm for this sort of competition, we decided to make it an annual event. For our 2018 wine writing competition, we asked people to write about the seminal wine or wine experience that sparked their enthusiasm for the subject (and beverage). We received nearly 200 entries, and the 108 entries that we published were so impressive that we decided to compile them in an e-book, My First Crush. In 2019, we asked entrants to write a guide to a particular place, a bit like our frequently revised guide to London for wine lovers. We received more than 80 entries on locales ranging from Addis Ababa (by Arnica Rowan, who has gone on to make many more contributions to JancisRobinson.com) to Miami (the winning entry).

The onset of COVID-19 in 2020 resulted in a radical shift in perspective for everyone and made us all think about how we could build a better future. Sustainability was and remains a particular concern, both for the wine industry and broader society, so we asked people to write about sustainability heroes, producers who were making a particular effort to emphasise sustainable practices. Despite all the ongoing upheaval, 85 entrants were kind enough to take the time to enter the competition. Of those, 75 were published on our website (our WWC20 guide can be found here), and we were so impressed with the entries that we chose not one but two winners, Pascal Brooks' submission on Brooks Wines in Oregon and a co-authored essay on Napa Valley's Spottswoode by MWs Ashley Hausman and Martin Reyes.

Our 2021 wine writing competition took a different approach to the future of wine by looking to the past, specifically at old vines. We received 136 amazing submissions on old vineyards and old vines around the world (the published entries can be found here, and those interested in the subject may also wish to check out this guide to our old-vines coverage). Last year's competition, on regeneration, approached the themes of sustainability and the future of wine from a perspective informed by our collective post-pandemic recovery. This was a difficult subject requiring considerable research but we still received 64 entries on regenerative viticulture and regeneration in a broader sense. Those we published can be read here.

For this year's competition, we wanted to choose a less challenging, more accessible theme. The world of wine is full of amazing, talented, admirable people, many of whom never receive the recognition they deserve, so this inspired us to invite entrants to write about their favourite wine people. Reading the entries has been a remarkable experience. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we have.