The judges for the 2024 awards were
Clive Barlow – MW
Clive started his wine career when working at the vineyard in Hampshire’s New Forest in the late 1980s. The work in the vineyard and winery inspired him to seek a career in the wine trade and learn more about the subject of wine. He continued his progress in the wine retail sector for supermarkets and specialist chains and studied about wine with the Wine and Spirits Education Trust and the Institute of Masters of Wine. He became a Master of Wine in 1999. He has worked with a number of companies in the UK, include Sothebys, Whitbread, Adnams, Waitrose, Lidl, Institute of Masters of Wine and others. Today the business has a retail core but also runs wine courses and offers marketing and consultancy services. In addition, he has tasted for publications such as Decanter and Drinks Business as well as judging for Decanter World Wine Awards, SEVA and is currently a Panel Chair for IWC.
Ever since his introduction to English wines in Hampshire Clive has been a keen observer of the rise and development of local vineyards and wineries. In 2019 he was one of the partners of the Canterbury Wine Festival, the first festival to celebrate the growing wine industry of the county. He is keen to see a further development of the English wine industry and was on of the founders of Corkk, an English wine specialist, in 2019 , based in Canterbury and about to open their second branch in Tunbridge Wells.
Nick Oakley
Nick Oakley has been in the wine trade for over 35 years, starting at wine merchants Lay & Wheeler in Colchester. In the late 80s he had a ‘road to Damascus’ moment following a visit to Portugal, and as a result he established his own business as an import agent specialising in Portuguese wine. Wines from NW Spain were added about ten years ago. His company, Oakley Wine Agencies, is today one of the UK’s leading Portuguese specialists and counts most major supermarket group in its client portfolio.
In recent years, the company has also started supplying Portuguese & Spanish wines to overseas markets, including Japan, Ireland, Australia, USA and Japan. Oakley Wine Agencies celebrated 30 years trading in January this year. Nick also judges for Decanter and IWC.
Simon Huntington
Simon Huntington is co-founder of Marasby – a specialist platform that helps people to discover, explore and buy incredible English and Welsh wines from around 50 UK vineyards. As Simon puts it, England is the world’s most exciting cool-climate wine country, yet 99% of the wine we drink here is still imported. Marasby was created to help grow the 1%.
Simon has had several thought-provoking pieces on the English wine scene published in The Buyer. He also has hosted a series of sold-out consumer education tastings of English wine in London, as well as trade tastings that help to build the English wine conversation by focusing on emerging English wine trends.
Since June this year, Simon has taken on the role of Client Manager at Itasca Wines, a contract winemaking facility which makes award-winning wines for several leading Essex vineyards. Itasca is due to open a brand-new, state of the art winery in Essex in 2025, bringing world-class contract winemaking to England’s world-class wine region.
Talya Roberson
Talya is co-founder of Marasby – a specialist platform that helps people to discover, explore and buy incredible English and Welsh wines from around 50 UK vineyards. Talya also works for Wine GB.