Introducing our 2025 wine writing competition

Do you have a favourite grape variety? One that you head for at the store or go to instinctively every time you look at a wine list? Is there a variety that’s played an important part in your life, that piqued your interest in wine, or channelled it in a particular direction?

Entire books have been written about Pinot Noir, Zinfandel and Riesling; the late Stavroula Kourakou-Dragona wrote extensive treatises on each of Greece’s greatest grape varieties that wound through mythology, history, geography and culture. Wine Grapes describes 1,368 varieties and their flavours. With somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 known varieties of Vitis vinifera, and countless more wild vine varieties, hybrids and crosses, we know there are many more stories to be told. Which is why the theme for our ninth annual wine writing competition is

                                           An ode to a grape variety

But what about the trope that wine is about place, not grape variety? It sounds so romantic, but think about it for a moment: a place without grapevines doesn’t make grape wine. And if it does, it’s worth remarking on only if the wine is good. And the wine is good only if the grape variety (or varieties) it’s made from thrive in that place. There is a reason Chianti is known for Sangiovese and not Saperavi, and Burgundy staked its fortunes on Pinot Noir instead of Merlot.

No matter what angle you come at it from, grape variety is central to a wine’s identity. (If this weren’t true, there wouldn’t be nearly so many people torturing themselves over trying to make decent Pinot Noir.)

And, of course, variety is also what makes wine so endlessly fascinating.

So let us know which variety excites you. Anyone can enter; we ask only that the essay or story (or poem, if you want to run with the poetic definition of ‘ode’) is no more than 1,000 words, and that you disclose any commercial ties you might have to the subject. Full rules are listed below.

All of the entries will be read by our team and the final judging will involve guest experts we will announce shortly, including the publishing team at Académie du Vin Library, who have kindly agreed to partner with us on this competition for the third year running.

We will publish the best entries on our site, free for all to enjoy. Then, at the end of August, we will publish our judges’ shortlist from which you, dear readers, will vote on your favourite entries. In early September, we’ll announce the winners of the judges’ prize and the readers’ prize as well as runners up, all of whom will receive prizes, including a year’s free membership of JancisRobinson.com for themselves or for them to give as a gift.

Deadline for you to submit your entry is midnight GMT on Monday 23 June 2025 to give us time to review all the entries and choose which ones to publish in July and August.

Rules of the competition

• Your entry can be up to 1,000 words, written in English, and should not have been published previously, nor submitted for publication anywhere other than JancisRobinson.com.
• It must be your own work, written without the aid of AI.
• We ask that you include one copyright-free, landscape-format image to illustrate your article. Suitable formats are JPG, JPEG, GIF or PNG with an aspect ratio of 7:4 and a minimum width of 1,275 pixels. Please include a caption, and credit if necessary.
• If you prefer not to submit an image, we will illustrate your article with an image of our choosing.
• Please send your entry in a Word document (no other formats will be accepted) attached to an email, along with your image. The image should be attached to the email as a separate file not embedded in the Word document.
• Include a brief bio/description of yourself, in no more than 100 words, at the top of your entry, in the Word document itself.
• Send your entry to WWC@jancisrobinson.com with ‘WWC25’ followed by your name and the title of your piece in the subject line.
• Entries must be received by midnight GMT on Monday 23 June 2025.
• By submitting your entry you grant publication rights to both JancisRobinson.com and Académie du Vin Library.
• Académie du Vin Library would like to send their newsletter to you. Please indicate at the top of your entry if you would rather this didn’t happen.
• The entry can be about something in which you have a commercial interest, but you must declare this.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at WWC@jancisrobinson.com.

We very much look forward to reading your stories!

Check out last year’s wine writing competition, on the theme of A wine moment I’ll never forget, and explore past topics.

Image by diane555 via iStock.

Share this Story

wine writing 2025 wine writing competition

Team JR