Emerging Talent in Wine 2023 shortlist

The IWSC’s 2023 Emerging Talent in Wine award is sponsored by London Wine Fair

With our other Emerging Talent awards specifically focussed on communication and the on-trade, this Emerging Talent in Wine category spans across the wider wine industry and this year we had entrants from winemakers, educators, innovators, retailers, sale persons, marketeers, and many, many more! Because of the width of this category, our judges were really stretched when it came to agreeing a shortlist.

Helping to agree this year’s shortlist was the IWSC’s CEO, Christelle Guibert, Hannah Tovey from the award sponsor London Wine Fair, Founder of Swirl and The Old Vine Conference, Sarah Abbott MW, Winner of the IWSC’s 2022 Wine Communicator Trophy, Sarah Heller MW, journalist and broadcaster David Kermode and last year’s award winner, Irem Eren.

When deciding the final shortlist, out team of judges all agreed they were looking for individuals who were going above-and-beyond their day-to-day role, demonstrating professionalism alongside their dedication and passion for wine.

Our judges also commented how deeply impressed they were by both the calibre and number of entries for this award, so all the more kudos to our shortlisted entrants. Looking for people thinking outside the box and innovating our final five are a group of incredibly interesting individuals each doing impressive things.

The shortlist for the IWSC’s Emerging Talent in Wine award is:

Alex Brogan

Following his start in the wine industry, working for Majestic Wine, Alex recently returned to the trade, founding Not Yet Named Wine Co whilst he is studying Viticulture and Oenology at Plumpton and working for The Sampler. The judges really loved the concept of his democratic wine making business, a process which consumers are in control of, investing in the wine before going on to decide how the wine should be made, bottled and branded. A great innovation and impressive how the brand identity is so strong after less than a year of the concept being created.

Ellen Doggett

With her background in the on-trade, Ellen is Sales & Marketing Manager at The Sourcing Table. She clearly has an insatiable appetite for learning and was taught early in her career the importance of sharing your knowledge to inspire others. As well as hosting education online wine tastings through The Sourcing Table, beyond her role, Ellen is active in offering support and guidance to younger mentees, sommeliers looking to transition off the floor and hosting wine tastings. Ellen is also actively involved with Queena Wong’s Curious Vines - a woman-in-wine community with over 500 members and she recently moderated the all-female wine buyer panel discussion.

Hayley Try Carreira

Following a six-year career as operations director at the Jose Pizarro restaurant group, in October 2022 Hayley took the initiative to launch her own independently run wine shop and wine bar in Dulwich, South London. Our judges liked her route through the on-trade through several great establishments before launching her own business. The Drop Dulwich is franchised with the Drop wine app to enable delivery in the local area, supporting Hayley’s mission to bring quality, small production wines to people at price points accessible to everyone. In an impressively short amount of time, Hayley has implemented a very busy events program including guest chefs of top restaurants coming to cook in the wine bar.

Keira La Franc

Keira’s entry was described as showing so much energy – our judges were impressed by how quickly she’s advanced in her career. Following the completion of her winemaking studies she quickly became winemaker at Canada’s Stag’s Hollow winery in 2018 and since then the winery has been named one of Canada’s Top 10 small wineries. Our judges really enjoyed her intention to ‘pay it forward’ highlighting that if she were to win the award, she would ensure her assistant winemaker benefitted from the educational travel bursary alongside Keira.

Louisa Payne

Someone with very little experience in wine, Louisa’s background was high street fashion. Her journey into the wine industry was rather unusual – realising there was a serious lack of good wine at events and music festivals – her discovery snowballed into creating her first ‘wine tap van’ serving wine from tap at events.

Her previous experience in the fashion industry opened her eyes to the volume of waste and so sustainability has been key for her business innovation. She now as two vintage vans serving wine from tap, plus a bar. In addition, Louisa is the founder of Brixton Wine Club, which started as a wine tasting group with friends. Following her redundancy in lockdown, she launched Brixton Wine Club as a wine subscription business – only dealing in alternative formats, specifically cans. Her focus was creating a business that was accessible for a younger audience whilst supporting her sustainability priorities – our judges were very impressed by Louisa’s entry.

The winner for the IWSC Emerging Talent in Wine award will be announced on Monday 20 February.