Jancis writes The Golden Vines MW scholarships are now kindly sponsored by Barca-Velha, the leading Portuguese company Sogrape’s famous, pioneering Douro table wine. On offer are two Barca-Velha Golden Vines MW Scholarships designed to help someone along the way to the Master of Wine qualification who might not otherwise be able to afford it. The scholarships include all fees, help with sourcing tasting samples and a bespoke internship programme with the support of a panel of mentors that enables the two successful applicants to learn from some of the world’s greatest wine and spirit producers.
This year there was a dramatic increase in the number of applicants. There were 58 in all from 21 countries, slightly more women than men. I was one of seven judges in my capacity as a trustee of the Gérard Basset Foundation (along with Ian Harris MBE, who was CEO of the WSET, and Gérard’s widow and son, Nina and Romané Basset). The Foundation administers not just these scholarships but a wide range of educational grants and other scholarships – all with the aim of enriching the wine, spirits and hospitality industries, making them more diverse and inclusive. We have reached 1,585 direct beneficiaries and the Foundation is unusual in the extent and global reach of its funding. See more detail about the grantees and scholars.
Romané administered the applications – not easy since each of them was accompanied by multiple documents including references and certificates – and Nina Basset chaired the judging panel, which included two other Masters of Wine intimately concerned with education, Richard Bampfield and Neil Tully. Another judge, Master Sommelier Clément Robert, represented Liquid Icons, which was founded by Gérard Basset and Lewis Chester and now organises a glamorous fundraising event for the Foundation every year. And Joana Pais, head of Sogrape’s prestige brands, and head winemaker Luís Sottomayor represented the generous sponsors on the judging panel. (We judges recused ourselves from judging any applicants with whom we have a professional relationship.)
We judges had the time-consuming but often moving task of reading 58 life stories and from those chose to interview the shortlisted candidates online earlier this month. This was the fifth time some of us had undertaken this task and in the past it has sometimes been extremely difficult to choose the winners. But this year we were unanimous in our choice of two deserving winners of these scholarships, to be announced in October.
Here on JancisRobinson.com we are profiling the shortlisted applicants in three articles, of which this is the first. The profiles, provided by Isabelle Anderbjörk, the head of marketing for the Gérard Basset Foundation, are presented here in alphabetical order.
Ahyoung Jeong
It was a €3 bottle of Rosé d’Anjou that marked the beginning of Ahyoung Jeong’s journey in wine. She bought it while living in Normandy as an exchange student and it sparked her curiosity to discover more. Upon returning to South Korea, her determination to learn about wine grew and she enrolled in a WSET Level 3 course, subsequently leading to the WSET Diploma. What began as a hobby soon became a passion and she left a career in public policy to pursue wine professionally.
In 2019, she launched a YouTube channel focused on making wine education accessible to a large audience, hoping to bridge divides between cultures and languages. In 2022, Jeong went a step further and founded the Seoul School of Wine, an education centre that boasts a WSET Level 3 pass rate of 80%, 1.5 times the global average. In 2024, she launched the Young Wine Professional Scholarship, a programme which has sponsored three local students to pursue advanced wine education.
Jeong’s next big goal is to become a Master of Wine. ‘I have heard it takes a village of MWs to raise an MW’, she says, and she is already seeking advice and guidance from current MWs.
Leila Killoran
In 1987, aged three, Leila Killoran was forced to flee Iran with her family. Her mother’s British passport was the ticket out, and what followed was a childhood squeezed into a small council house in Manchester with her mother, grandmother and brother. Growing up mixed-race was isolating and ultimately resulted in her changing her surname from Ahmadzadeh-Tehrani to Killoran in order to escape the incessant bullying, especially in the wake of 9/11.
As an adult, Killoran’s path has not been straightforward either. She had just been accepted into the Master of Wine programme in 2019 when the pandemic hit and she was made redundant from her job. No longer able to afford the MW programme, she had to withdraw. She enrolled instead at Plumpton College and earned a postgraduate diploma in viticulture and oenology; later, she invested in a vineyard near Limoux with her mother, which she’s since had to sell due to significant drops in grape prices making it unsustainable. Now, with all of this experience in her back pocket, Killoran feels ready to return to the Master of Wine programme.
Come back next week to meet three more shortlisted Golden Vines MW Scholarship applicants.
