Charles Metcalfe
Chairman of the judges

Charles’ past careers as a tour guide, security guard, freelance cook, investment analyst and opera singer were the perfect preparation for co-founding Britain’s second consumer wine magazine (Wine International) and the International Wine Challenge. He served a 12-year term as drinks expert on Richard & Judy’s ‘This Morning’ and has presented wine and, occasionally, food on many TV shows. He is also a wine consultant to the Corporation of London. His book, ‘The Wine & Food Lover’s Guide to Portugal’, won the Louis Roederer International Wine Writer’s Book Award in 2008.

He is proud to serve as Honorary President of the Association of Wine Educators. Charles often tastes (and spit out, of course) 100 or more wines per day, all over the world. He is based near Gatwick, with a wife, children, two cats and a varying number of chickens, and still sings in the shower, the local village hall and, occasionally, at wine tastings.

Nina Caplan

Nina Caplan is the Drinks Critic of the New Statesman, Drinks Editor of The Times’s Luxx magazine and the author of wine travel book The Wandering Vine: Wine, The Romans and Me, which won several awards including a Roederer. She has been Features Editor of Time Out, Directories Editor of The Guardian, a producer for German television and the Editor of the bilingual magazine on Eurostar, and still writes about the arts and travel as well as wine, since she finds that all these things share common ground – sometimes literally. She lives between London and Burgundy, tweets @ninacaplan and instagrams @ninahcaplan.

Francis Percival

Francis Percival writes on food and wine for The World of Fine Wine. His work won Louis Roederer Best International Wine Columnist in 2013 and Pio Cesare Food & Wine Writer of the Year in 2015. Francis is also a judge in The World of Fine Wine World’s Best Wine List Awards. Apart from The World of Fine Wine, his work has appeared in Decanter and the Financial Times in the UK and Saveur, Serious Eats, and Gourmet in the US.

Together with Bronwen Percival, he is the author of Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbes, and the Fight for Real Cheese (Bloomsbury; 2017). Reinventing the Wheel won a 2018 Gourmand Award and was Wine & Spirits magazine’s Book of the Year 2017.

image credit Jon Wyand

Margaret Rand

Margaret Rand has been writing about wine for 35 years, and has won several Roederer and other awards in that time. She writes features for The World of Fine Wine, Imbibe, Drinks Business, Gourmet Traveller Wine and winesearcher.com, and is general editor of Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book, which sells worldwide in several editions each year. She wrote Grapes and Wines (2000, with Oz Clarke), a book widely used by Diploma and MW students. Her latest book, 101 Wines to Try Before you Die, will be published by Octopus in May. She has edited several magazines in the past, notably Wine, and was launch editor of Whisky Magazine; she also edits many books on wine. She judges at the DWWA every year.

Emma Symington MW

Emma won the Emerging Wine Writer category in the 2014 Louis Roederer Awards for her articles published on the Wine Monkeys blog. After winning the Vintners’ Cup and Vintners’ Scholarship for the top WSET Diploma graduate in 2011 she embarked on the Master of Wine course, becoming an MW in 2015. A  WSET-certified educator, her day job is running Wine Australia’s events and education programme in the UK and she also judges at several international wine competitions. She is excited to judge the 2019 Roederer Awards and is looking forward to reading this year’s entries.

Guy Woodward

Guy Woodward made his name in the wine industry as editor of Decanter magazine, where he ruffled industry feathers for a decade. He’s since flown the nest, and is today Content Director of Club Oenologique and the IWSC.

Victoria Hall
Artistry

Victoria has over twenty years picture editing experience in books & magazines including being Picture Editor of Decanter Magazine for ten years.

Following her MA in Fine art at Chelsea College of Art & Design she has also continued a career as a photographic artist. She has exhibited extensively with work held in numerous collections.

She is now based in Suffolk, where she continues as a freelance picture researcher & running her design business ‘Cluck Cluck’.  Victoria has been in charge of the Artistry category for the LRIWWA since 2011.