People’s Choice Wine Awards – Grape Minds think alike #Out and About

Victoria Hayes
6th February 2020

There is probably no better way to toast the end of Dry January – or as we wine fans call it, the Grape Depression – than by getting together a sparkling array of the best and brightest in the wine industry and celebrating the People’s Choice Wine awards.

So Why is the People’s Choice wine awards different from any other award in this industry?

Well to begin with the Categories are a little bonkers. With titles like “Pass the crackers”, “One man and his BBQ”, “Boxing clever” and “War of the Rosés” it’s easy to think that they aren’t really being taken seriously.

But these people are phenomenally passionate about what they do, the aim to is approach the wine industry in a fun and accessible way. As an industry that has previously had a “fuddy duddy” image and a general unwillingness to bend the rules, its a lovely shift to see wine makers, suppliers, retailers and agents really enjoying connecting their product to their audience in a way other competitions simply haven’t.

The fact that a wine wins one of these unusual categories hopefully brings it to the attention of consumers who would usually be put off by names they don’t know, grape varieties they haven’t heard of and even award medals that don’t really mean anything to them. The aim is actually to bring the wine industry to the customer rather than dragging the customer kicking and screaming into a level of wine education they have no interest in.

Involving the consumer is at the heart of everything surrounding the PC Wine awards.  Consumers vote online, apply to be judges and are now able to sample the winners too.

The winning wines will be available to taste at two events organised by The Wine Gang, the official events partner of the People’s Choice Wine Awards, in Leeds and London.

The other central theme is fun. Award Winners are handed special cartoon imagery (created by Private Eye cartoonist Tony Husband) framed and personal to each award rather than the usual trophy or plaque.

Portrait of Nick Bolton and wife Sarah who set up the Christmas Decorators.
Pic copyright Phil Tragen 2019

The awards were ably compered by comedian Steve Royle who heckled the audience and juggled guitars with equal aplomb.

Our award hosts were Wine Show presenter Amelia Singer and BBC Food and Drink’s Kate Goodman who displayed not only a gorgeous sense of humour and patience when it came to the inevitable endless photo opportunities, but also an impressive linguistic capability in handling the multiple languages featured on wine labels and wine makers from across the globe.

Founder of the awards Janet Harrison, thanked all the suppliers, sponsors and partners involved, but the biggest gratitude was reserved for the consumer judges, travelling from literally all around the world to be at the round one judging session, back in October.  “We were staggered to receive over 300 applications to be amateur judges this time and it was such a hard job to narrow the list down to the 100 people who finally took part.  We had one judge travel in from Vietnam, another from Romania and another from France, as well as others from the length and breadth of the UK – it is fantastic to see so much love and enthusiasm for the competition” Harrison says.

A full list of the finalists is available here :- https://peopleschoicewineawards.com/finalists/

and if you are a wine fan, I can thoroughly recommend spending a little time on sampling a few from this list that you haven’t tried before. I hope that you have as much fun as we did in doing so, because that is, as I mentioned, really the point.

So many interesting conversation starters… with the topic of sustainability hot on everyone’s lips, discussions about the future of the wine industry included a lot of debate about canned wine “The Great Outdoors” Category and Bag in Box wines and their potential, “Boxing Clever”.

On the subject of hot topics, it was interesting to see the inclusion of Organic wine and Vegan wines as well as “Mindful drinking” Alcohol free wines.

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back to nature

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vegan friendly

A huge hurrah rang out for ‘locals’ Booths Supermarkets who won Supermarket of the year.  They were voted for by consumers online, rather than nominated by the organisers – so the result really packs a punch.  The Co-op also had reasons to be cheerful, scooping three awards – what a night for the North!

Here are a few of my favourites, some actual winners… some winners in my humble eyes…

Vandra Sauvignon Blanc 2018: Submitted by Boutinot 

Jacques Chaput Brut Tradition 2014+2015: Submitted by Champagne Jacques Chaput 

Nero d’Avola Sicilia DO 2018, Cantina Sant’Antonio: Submitted by When in Rome Wine 

Graham Norton’s Own Shiraz 2017: Submitted by Invivo & Co

Grüner Veltliner Alte Reben 2017, Gut Kellerstöckl – Familie Schuckert: Submitted by Antrey w.i.g.

My absolute favourite of the night and the name on everyone’s lips at the People’s Choice Wine Awards was

Paso-Primero Pasotismo 2018: Submitted by Paso-Primero  

The owner of Paso Primero, Tom was presented with the award for WINE PASSION: THE STORY BEHIND THE LABEL which was awarded to him by another absolute favourite of mine, Joe Fattorini from The Wine Show.

Tom Holt from Paso-Primero actually lives in Shrewsbury but makes wine in Somontano in Spain.  His was a wonderfully quirky video which was shot on his iphone in his parents living room.  However, it had real passion, which stole the hearts of the audience during the ‘live vote’ on the night.

You can watch the award winning video he made on the wine show youtube channel here : – https://bit.ly/2GVirlx and I am proud to say I voted for him.

Our thanks to the team at the PC Wine Awards for putting on such a wonderful event and of course for inviting us along to be part of it.

It was a joy to see our friends Bents Garden & Home sponsoring an award and thanks must of course go to Richard from The Wine School of Cheshire for being a brilliant sampling buddy, net-worker and actually making sure I made the train home!

If you are a wine enthusiast I thoroughly recommend getting involved in next years event. You can submit wines for judging or submit yourself to be a judge, or like me, just pop along for the ride. The People’s Choice Wine awards is very much about inclusion, so get yourself included for 2021.