Judges & Judging Process
Judging Criteria
Merchants are assessed on the following criteria:
- Variety and quality of wine list
- Customer service
- Store layout (where applicable)
- Point of sales and promotional material (where applicable)
- On-line promotion (where applicable)
- Innovation and future strategy
- Environmental initiatives
- How the company has changed over the last 12 months
The Competition Judges
Robert McIntosh is a wine blogger and online communicator on WineConversation.com, a prolific twitterer (@thirstforwine) and an occasional contributor to wine magazines as well as speaking at wine events. Co-organiser of the annual European Wine Bloggers Conference and Born Digital Wine Awards he promotes international online wine communication, and advises companies about how to engage through social media. Robert also works as Brand Ambassador for wineries from Rioja in the UK market.
David Gill has been in the wine trade for nearly 30 years and has spent half of that time with Bottle Green Ltd. He started with North West Vintners running a Liquorsave store in Aberystwyth, then moved to London to run a Buckingham Wines store which is where he really started to learn about wine. David ran one shop and then became Retail Controller/Buyer for the chain, simultaneously studying for and passing MW in 1988. When Buckinghams were bought by Nicolas, he worked as their UK MD before leaving in '89 to join Bulgarian Vintners as Sales & Marketing Manager (& then Director). David joined Waitrose as a Buyer in 1993 and had 3 very happy years there before joining Bottle Green.
In his time at BG David has been in involved in every aspect of wine, from working with winemakers through to the packaging, marketing and selling of the resultant wines. He is also the originator of the French Connection brand which wins more than its fair share of awards and tasting competition medals. His primary role now is the development of the On-trade and Independent off-trade business.
