Sommeliers, chefs and restaurateurs converged on the southern Swedish province of Skåne last week for the Star Wine List of the Year awards, hosted by Terra Skåne.
Launched in Sweden in 2017, Star Wine List is an international guide to wine bars and restaurants with great wine. Selections are made by the Star Wine List team and their ambassadors, all hospitality professionals with deep wine knowledge; no one pays to be included in this guide.
The Wine List of the Year awards go a step further than the guides, aiming to showcase the very best locally and globally. After a year of regional and online competitions to ferret out the best wine lists around the world, the finalists’ lists are assessed by panels of Star Wine List judges, top sommeliers and wine professionals such as Pascaline Lepeltier MS (Meilleur Sommelier de France, 2018) and Marc Almert (2019 ASI World’s Best Sommelier) together with local judges picked for their regional insight, such as Toru Takamatsu (the first Japanese Master Sommelier) and a certain Richard Hemming MW. Each judge works independently and then the teams get together to thrash out the winners.
And what are they looking for? Elements such as overall philosophy, wine selection, price structure, context and presentation plus anything that makes a list unique or especially noteworthy. What isn’t on the menu is consideration of how many first growths or pricey vintages a restaurant can boast. It’s simply wine pros diving deep into the work of their peers and calling out excellence wherever they find it. Lesser-known places and niche lists have just as good a chance at recognition as more established lists and big-name venues, something as valuable to consumers as it is important for the restaurants themselves.
Prior to the final awards ceremony, a further panel of judges had been tasked with selecting the best of the best from these regional winners across 10 categories. Three Master Sommeliers – Piotr Pietras (independent wine consultant and formerly director of wine at London’s Hide), Jonathan Gouveia (beverage consultant in Copenhagen) and Stefan Neumann (London-based wine consultant, formerly of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal) were joined this year by one of the few people in the world to hold both Master Sommelier and Master of Wine titles, Doug Frost. Having pored over all the regional winners’ wine lists once more – a formidable job described by Gouveia as ‘extremely humbling and terrifying at the same time’ – they finally reached consensus.
So, huge congratulations to all the 2025/26 Gold Star winners:
- Best Long List (more than 600 references): Le Coureur des Bois, Beloeil, Canada
- Best Medium-sized List (200–600 references): Inddee, Bangkok, Thailand
- Best Short List (fewer than 200 listings): Vintage, Kontich, Belgium
- Best By-the-Glass List: Sticks & Stones Wine Bar, Munich, Germany
- Best Sparkling Wine List: Minne Champagne & Wine, Helsinki, Finland
- Best Newcomer List: Café Vivant, Menlo Park, USA
- Sustainability Prize (for sustainable commitment of both the wine list and broader venue): Restaurant Ark, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Best Austrian Wine List: Hotel Jagdhof, Röhrnbach, Germany
- Best Italian Wine List: Acquerello, San Francisco, USA
- Special Jury Prize (a wine lovers’ place that does something out of the ordinary): Oma, London, UK
It was exciting to see that several winners and finalists have also been championed in these very pages – Oma, for instance, a Nick Lander favourite in London. Another London favourite, Doppo, was pipped to gold in the Long Wine List category by Quebec’s Le Coureur des Bois. But rubbing shoulders with the likes of Paris’s Le Taillevent and Geranium in Copenhagen is no mean feat for a place barely four years old.
Rekondo in San Sebastián is another JR favourite – a source of one of Nick’s meals of the year in 2023 with our Spanish specialist Ferran Centelles; Nick has also praised Trivet in London and Racines of Brussels.
Personally, having enjoyed a perfectly chilled glass of Cristom, Eola-Amity Hills Chardonnay at Gaspar’s in Vilnius last year, I was pleased to see them in the running for best by-the-glass list, though top prize in the category went to Sticks & Stones Wine Bar in Munich.
That’s just one of many among the list of winners and runners up that I’ve now added to my ever-expanding list of restaurants and wine bars to check out, along with places such as Rosa Madre and Liath in Dublin (to add to Nick’s recent recommendation of Montys); Restaurant Bagatelle for the next time I visit Germany’s Mosel; and Bianca Omakase if I’m lucky enough to tour Hokkaido. All in all, the Star Wine List winners and runners up are a terrific resource for any wine lovers planning travel.
Ben is filling in for our regular restaurant reviewer, Nick Lander, this week; you can find more of both of their restaurant reviews here.
