For the last week I’ve been receiving daily reports from a friend, 李燕萍 (Li Yanping), who also uses the English name Aileen Lee and who is a judge in the "World's Best Vineyard" Competition taking place in Rioja, Spain. The competition was founded in 2019 by William Reed Business Media, a century-old family-owned media company, which is also a member of World's 50 Best Restaurants. 50 Best Restaurants, the World's 50 Best Bars and the International Wine Challenge (IWC).
The "World's Best Vineyards" competition is designed to encourage and promote the development of the wine industry and wine tourism by selecting the world's top wine tourism destinations (in this case, wine estates that provide tourism facilities and wine tasting experiences and are open to the public).
Each year the competition are divided into multiple divisions, by a nomination system (wineries can not directly register for the competition). Each division will select one or two experts or media persons with high influence in the local wine and tourism industry to serve as the chair(s) of the jury of the division, and the chair of the jury is responsible for the 36 selected Influential wine experts, media, lecturers, bartenders, tourism and gourmet professionals who have visited many of the world's wine-producing areas to serve as judges in the list of "the best vineyards in the world" with the best travel experience. They adhere to the principle of objectivity and fairness, according to the landscape of the winery, restaurants, hotels, services, prices, transportation, humanities and other aspects of the evaluation, comprehensive performance outstanding, can be selected as "the best vineyard in the world" (World's Best Vineyards) Top 100 list. If judges vote for the wine estates in their own division, they can't have more than three to show fairness。
On the evening of July 12, local time, the "World's Best Vineyards" competition (World's Best Vineyards) awards ceremony was held in Rioja, one of Spain's most famous UVE-producing regions. During the award ceremony, the organizers announced the list of the "World's Best Vineyards" this year.
Aileen, the founder of the International Voice of Wine, was invited to attend the award ceremony as the vice chairman of the China jury and noted that this year is the first time in the five years since the "World's Best Vineyards" competition that a Chinese winery has made the top 100 list. Two Chinese wineries on the list - Canaan Winery in Huailai, Hebei Province, and Grace Vineyard in Shanxi Province - were ranked 80th and 100th respectively.
Here are the winners of the "World's Best Vineyards" competition in 2023.
Catena Zapata, Argentina - World's Best Vineyard 2023
L-R Andrew Reed, Managing Director of Media, William Reed Business and Competition Founder; Aileen Lee, founder of The International Voice of Wine, Vice Chair of the China Jury; Robert Geddes MW, Chair of China Jury.
Images courtesy of The International Voice of Wine. Parts of this post are from the competition's press release.
