Merchant of the Year Awards 2013
With the competition over, the organisers sifted through the results with the rigour and forensic eye for detail of a team of palaeontologists analysing a dinosaur skeleton. Their goal was simple: to determine which of this year’s submitters put in the best performance, and reward them with a coveted Merchant Award.
SWA Merchant of the Year 2013 
33 Gold, 73 Silver, 57 Bronze
4 Critics’ Choice Awards, 3 Food Match Awards, 4 By The Glass Awards inc. 2 Perfect Pub Quartets,
1 Caspar Auchterlonie Fortified Award
Without wishing to go over the top, this was a staggering performance from the Mancunian powerhouse. Boutinot have taken ownership of the Merchant of the Year Award since we started handing it out five years ago, but even by their standards, this was something else.
Last year, they picked up 79 Golds and Silvers combined; this year it was 106. And they doubled their ‘extra awards’ tally, too, from six in 2012 to 12 this year. It’s proof, if any were needed, that the quality of wines coming in from this importer is exceptionally good.
The company’s heartland remains Europe, particularly France, and it pulled in 11 Golds from its powerhouse producers in Alsace, Burgundy, the Loire and the Rhone, backing this up with 14 more from Spain, Italy, Germany and the UK. Had we wanted to give out a European Merchant of the Year award as well, we could easily have done so.
If there is a weakness, it is in the New World – 5 Golds is slightly disappointing – but it’s easy to forgive any company the odd let-down when it imports ports and sherries as good as the Fernando de Castilla and Wiese & Krohn wines.
And if any final clincher were needed, take a look at the prices. This was not a successful performance built on hundreds of expensive trophy wines, but, mostly, on excellent examples of the kind of honest wines that every list needs.
Fully 14 of the Golds were under £10 – something other submitters could learn from for next year.
Italian Merchant of the Year
4 Gold, 12 Silver, 6 Bronze
1 By The Glass Award
Eurowines has delivered good numbers of medals in the Sommelier Wine Awards down the years, and this year a curiously unfocused performance by some far bigger importers saw it claim a much deserved Merchants Award.
Some key Italian areas (such as Soave and Chianti) underdelivered badly this year, so Eurowines was never going to be able to tick off Golds in every area. But its selection of Gold and Silver medal-winning wines together make for a highly impressive selection that covers almost every style a restaurant would need from the country.
Moreover, since Italy seems to be suffering more than most countries from price rises, the fact that two of Eurowines’ Gold medal winners were under £10 was quite an achievement.
New World Merchant of the Year
16 Gold, 44 Silver, 24 Bronze
1 Critics’ Choice
Bibendum put in a generally strong performance this year, and its move up the Top Ten Merchants rankings to second place was achieved largely on the back of a powerful performance with their New World portfolio of wines: 11 out of their 16 Golds came from outside Europe.
This was a particularly interesting development, since it was a 180 degree turnaround from last year, when the majority of their medals came from classic European regions.
Australia was particularly impressive for Bibendum this year, with a fine spread of Gold and Silver-medal winning wines from all corners of the country. And, if Chile and Argentina were rather weak (meaning that there weren’t perhaps as many sub-£10 Golds as we’d have liked), the selection from South Africa, New Zealand and the US made up for it.
From winsome Western Australian Rieslings, through well-priced South African Chenins, up to blockbusting Clare Valley Shiraz, this was an impressive snapshot of most of what is good in the New World at the moment.
Sparkling Wine Merchant of the Year
ENOTRIA
8 Gold, 18 Silver, 21 Bronze
The sparkling wine section of this year’s Sommelier Wine Awards was one of the most hotly contested, with some very strong performances from individual houses. But what set Enotria apart was not just its medal count in the fizz category – though two Golds, four Silvers and five Bronze sparklers was an impressive haul – but the variety which it represented.
If a Gold for the UK’s Ridgeview was not unexpected given the producer’s record in this competition, the parallel place on the list to Central Otago’s Quartz Reef was more of a surprise. And as well as these two Golds at opposite ends of the wine world, there were four Silvers for three different Champagne producers (non vintage, vintage and rosé) and a range of Bronzes that included a Saumur, a Blanquette de Limoux and a sparkling Italian red.
It was a genuinely wide-ranging and stimulating effort for one of the UK’s biggest importers.