If you needed more incentive to get your wine writing competition entries in, perhaps the promise of prizes will help you finish polishing and hit send.
As always, we will have our stellar crew of writers and editors reviewing each and every entry, as well as wine writing legend and this year’s guest judge Hugh Johnson OBE adjudicating the finalists. We will also give you, dear readers, the chance to vote on your favourites.
This means there will be two winners: Judges’ choice and Readers’ choice, both of whom will be awarded six of the Jancis Robinson Collection Original hand-made wine glasses from glassware designer extraordinaire Richard Brendon, plus a selection of 20 books from the Académie du Vin Library, publisher of many of the world’s best wine books as well as being our generous competition sponsor.
The runner-up in each category will receive a set of two of Jancis’s wine glasses, plus two brand-new titles from the Académie du Vin Library: Taste the Limestone, Smell the Slate by Alex Maltman and The Cynic’s Guide to Wine by Sunny Hodge, while the highly commended essayists in each category will receive On Tuscany, which Tam recently proclaimed ‘my favourite AdVL compendium so far’.
All winners, runners-up and highly commended entrants will also receive a year’s free membership of JancisRobinson.com for themselves or for them to give as a gift.
And, of course, all the winning entries, plus dozens more that our judges determine are in the running for a prize, will be published on our site during July and August for everyone’s reading pleasure.
So please, send those entries in. We are eager to read your ode to a grape variety!
20 May 2025 We’re thrilled to announce that Hugh Johnson OBE will be the guest judge for this year’s competition. A wine writing legend, Johnson created the first World Atlas of Wine in 1971, and his Pocket Wine Book, published annually since 1977, graces practically every wine lover’s bookshelf. We couldn’t be happier that the world’s best-selling and most talented wine writer will judge our competition finalists this summer.
24 April 2025 Calling all wine lovers: enter this year's wine writing competition (WWC25)!
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.
