16 October Richard Bampfield MW adds I’ve just received this message from new Golden Vines MW Scholar Sera:
‘I’m afraid I have some upsetting news. On Monday, the lorry carrying Ukrainian wines was parked at one of the authorised unloading areas for the LCB [London City Bond] warehouse when it was robbed. Five out of eleven pallets were stolen, including all two pallets of sparkling wine. The fact that the sparkling wines from different producers and loaded in separate parts of the lorry were specifically targeted makes it clear they knew exactly what they were doing.
‘It’s a huge loss for us and devastating for the producers involved. I’d really like to raise awareness and make this public to show what small, vulnerable producers are up against especially in the current climate.’
I have spoken to Sera since. The police apparently have not shown any interest thus far but there will be CCTV footage and perhaps they will when that is available. As she says above, it looks as if the robbers knew exactly what they wanted – they targeted the sparkling wines from two producers and still wines from one producer, Kolonist.
15 October Tara writes Their selection must have been excruciatingly hard to make, as anyone who read the profiles of the shortlisted candidates can imagine. (See here for the shortlisted candidates, as well as those from previous years.) But in the end, two women were chosen: Sera Karamshuk and Leila Killoran. What follows is an interview with both of them by Isabelle Anderbjörk, the head of marketing for the Gérard Basset Foundation, republished with permission.
Isabelle writes Sera Karamshuk and Leila Killoran, the winners of this year’s Barca-Velha Golden Vines MW Scholarships, have already been introduced over email but today is the first time they meet face to face.
Leila joins our video call from Limoux in the French countryside where she has been based since 2022 after purchasing her own vineyard. Sera, an educator at the WSET School in London and a social media wine communicator, joins us from her home in London. Out of 58 applicants, Sera and Leila were selected by a panel of judges to receive £20,000 each in funding to cover their Master of Wine course fees as well as an additional £15,000 which may be put towards internships and educational wine travels. The scholarship also includes a unique Sogrape Portugal experience, during which they will get to visit Sogrape’s wineries and vineyards in Porto, the Douro Valley and elsewhere. To top it off, they get to choose a mentor from the panel of judges to guide them on their MW journey.
‘Obviously I swore’, Leila admits with a laugh, thinking back to the day Romané Basset, co-founding trustee and head of operations at the Gérard Basset Foundation, called her and offered his congratulations. ‘I was like, “No way! Are you kidding me?’’’ Sera had a similar reaction. Coming out of the classroom and seeing a missed call from Romané, her first thought was that she’d been unsuccessful in her application and that the Foundation was phoning to let her down gently. Upon hearing the good news, she thought to herself, ‘Is this really happening?’
For both Leila and Sera, however, the joy of winning came accompanied by a wave of self-doubt. Out of all the 58 applicants, there were many worthy candidates, and they both have friends or colleagues who applied. ‘I kept thinking “Why me?”’, Leila confesses and Sera nods in agreement. She has named the period between receiving the scholarship and starting her MW next year her ‘MW honeymoon’ and she intends to begin her independent studies right away so as not to feel overwhelmed when the programme kicks off.
Becoming an MW would open doors in the wine industry which Sera dreams of stepping through. As she runs a wine blog on Instagram, she visits as many wineries as she can in order to learn more and tell their stories to her readers, but, she says, she is often met with reluctance and disinterest when she asks more technical questions. ‘I can’t wait to be able to dive deeper into these wineries’, she says, explaining that people don’t take her seriously and just treat her like a tourist. There is nothing wrong with the marketing stories and the press tours, but they simply don’t satisfy her curiosity. With a doctorate in chemistry, ‘too technical’ is not a term in Sera’s vocabulary.
So why does Leila want to undertake the MW programme? She takes us back to when she was a teenager in Manchester. Half-Iranian, working class and on the poverty line. She didn’t enjoy school, her attendance was 20%, but she studied at home instead, which frustrated her teachers. On her last day, the head teacher of her school told her that he couldn’t understand why she bothered taking the exams as she wasn’t going to pass anyway and that she would never achieve anything in life. She has carried those words with her ever since. ‘I use it as fuel to carry me forward and show that I do belong in this industry’, she explains. ‘[The MW] is the final cherry on the cake to say, “I have achieved something”. I don’t think he will ever know, but I basically have a huge chip on my shoulder. Failure is not even an option.’
The conversation moves on to the topic of inclusion and accessibility. ‘We need to dismantle the old gatekeeping structures’, Leila says. She is a strong believer that the new wave, be they old or young, need to be allowed entry and given the space to create something new. ‘The gatekeepers have done a fantastic job of building this industry that we love, but it needs to evolve.’ Sera is quick to agree, pointing to the speed at which humanity itself changes and evolves with new stories and insights: ‘The wine industry needs to reflect the real world.’
Wine is meant to be shared with others, so why exclude people from it? ‘I can enjoy a good meal on my own’, Sera says, ‘but a good wine on my own? That feels like a shame.’ The desire to share her wine experiences with others is what pushed her to start her Instagram blog. She cites Jancis Robinson as one of her sources of inspiration for wine writing, as well as Gérard Basset, whom she admired for his humility and never-ending desire to learn more – traits which are evident in both Sera and Leila.
The Gérard Basset Foundation is delighted to welcome Sera and Leila into the alumni family.
To fund these scholarships and others administered by the Gérard Basset Foundation, Liquid Icons holds an annual auction; you can view the items on offer here. The auction opens on Monday 20 October 2025 and will close at 23.59 pm EST Sunday 9 November 2025.
