The People’s Choice Drinks Awards is about to go into its fifth year of competition with a number of new initiatives and the chance to enter two separate events for wines and spirits.
How are the plans coming together for the 2022 competition – you are splitting out the wines and spirits awards this year?
The People’s Choice Spirits Awards will have 22 categories in 2022, up from just eight last year. These include the three consumer-voted retailer categories. It was always our intention to expand, but we wanted to keep the number of spirits categories to a manageable level last year and bearing in mind what happened, thank goodness we did.
The categories are in line with our ‘buying moment’ theme and include vodka, tequila, brandy, liqueurs and canned spirits-based cocktails, in addition to our existing gin, rum, whisky/whiskey and no/low categories. The PCSA will be a completely separate process, with its own timeline. The reasons for this are many, including dedicating sufficient time and prominence to this new competition and not wanting the awards ceremony to be too long and boring.
The timeline for the Spirits Awards is:
- Open online submissions: July 1, 2021
- Close online submissions: October 11 2021
- Delivery deadline: 29th October 2021
- Judging: November 2021
- Finalists announced: November 30 2021
- Ceremony: January 17 2022
Moving the People’s Choice Wine Awards timeline back (entries now opening in October), will be more convenient for entrants in terms of new vintages and availability, post ceremony. We’ve been seeking feedback from a number of our producers and suppliers and they see this as a positive step.
The timeline for the Wine Awards are:
- Open online submissions: October 29 2021
- Close online submissions: January 31 2022
- Delivery deadline: February 28 2022
- Judging: March 2022
- Finalists announced: April 2022
- Ceremony: 25th April 2022
What were the main themes and conclusions from the 2021 event in terms of wines and spirits entered in what was a lockdown year?
We had good growth in wine submissions and a fantastic response to our call for spirits entries too. Submissions from online retailers, alternative packaging formats and no/low alcohol were notable in the entries we received. This is following current trends within the drinks world anyway.
You will be looking forward to doing more in person tasting and hosting two live events for 2022?
The People’s Choice Drinks Awards is looking forward to getting back to in person judging including both consumers and trade judges which has made its name
We can’t wait. Also, from an idea born in lockdown, we will be hosting more regional judging sessions for both competitions in 2021 and 2022. For spirits, we have judging sessions planned for Edinburgh, Manchester and London in November this year. For PCWA, we are booking venues for Manchester and London in early 2022. The London tasting sessions, for both competitions, will be held in association with our education partner, WSET at their fantastic spaces in Bermondsey.
Are there going to be any changes to the wine and spirits categories for the 2022 awards?
Categories for the PCWA have changed very slightly, making the sparkling categories more in-line with our drinking moments ethos, rather than generic. We’ve also included sweet and fortified wines within our ‘Pass the Crackers’ categories for wines to go with cheese – as that made perfect sense. Wines for Aromatic & Asian Cuisine now has red and rosé categories, in addition to white, due to its popularity as a much loved cuisine in the UK and well supported via entries too.
Finally, we have expanded our New to Market categories to six, from three last year. We have been so thrilled that both of our 2020 winners found UK representation, following their win. We’ve also just discovered that a further two 2021 winning wines have recently been listed in the UK too. We actively promote these producers to specific importer contacts which we know will be interested in seeking out new and exciting wines in the market. NTM Red and White, are sponsored and supported by Wines of Portugal which has meant a huge surge in entries for these categories. Our 2021 judges were hugely impressed with the range of styles and quality of the wines.
All the winners from the 2020 event celebrating their awards
You are launching a new service as part of the People Choice Wine Awards – the Find My Wines initiative – what is that and how is it going to work?
Consumers and trade alike can use the new Find My Wines search facility on People’s Choice Drinks Awards website to find the right wines for particular drinking occasions
We’ve condensed our ‘buying moment’ categories into eight of arguably the most common occasions for buying wine, so anyone can search for wines by that particular occasion and colour. The search facility brings up a curated range of suggested wines. When you select a particular wine, it takes you through to a page, which has an image of the bottle, box or can, the category medal position, consumer and professional judges comments and a hyperlink to the current stockist.
It is super-easy to use and a permanent and prominent fixture on the website.
Where did the idea for Find My Wines come from?
For some time now, we’ve wanted to develop a tool which directly links the finalist, gold commended and winning wines, to consumers – that is our ethos after all. The initial idea for the framework and functionality came from Mark Sutcliffe, owner of Salar Media in Lancashire. Mark is full of great ideas and also loves a decent glass of wine.
We already work hard to promote the wines through social media, press releases and physically taking winning wines to consumer wine fairs, however, the Find My Wines tool gives producers and suppliers a fantastic year-round platform to promote their wines.
How have you been able to pull together the software and back office systems to make it happen?
Our current web designers, Made in Cheshire, have created this for us. It needed to be user-friendly and easy for us to edit as stockists can change. Rather than trying to be overly-complex and risking wines being mis-matched to occasions, we decided to keep it simple – hence the eight occasions.
Talk us through how it will work for a particular wine – can you give a couple of case studies of a search and how a consumer will find that wine?
Search and you shall find…here’s an example of what users will see when they look for wines by category -in this case Asian Cuisine Wines
So, the occasions range from a ‘Simple Night In’, to a ‘Landmark Celebration’. Say you choose the ‘Night In’ occasion, then select ‘white’ from the colour options, it brings up a curated range of wines from our ‘Big Night In’ and ‘Easy Weekday Whites’ categories. Click through from that page to a wine you like the look of and it will come up with a full image of the wine, the category in which it was entered and its position (Finalist, Gold Commendation or Winner). The page also shows a couple of judges comments, both Round 1 (consumer) and Round 2 (professional). The stockist link, provided by each producer/supplier, takes you through to where to buy the wine. As another example, you’ll find many of the boxed and canned wines within the search for the Outdoors occasion and so on.
What sort of input and response have you had from producers and importers entering the competition about how valuable it could be for them?
We’ve had a very positive response from producers and suppliers, they all think it is a great idea and an invaluable tool. We give winning wines an additional placement on the facility (so two listings, rather than one) as an additional boost for them. It is a totally unique facility, as far as we can see. It also means that we can promote all the wines, rather than just those selected by journalists for consumer press pieces.
How are you going to promote the new service to consumers to use?
Within each of our quarterly consumer press releases, the Find My Wines link will be included. In general, this tool will be extremely useful for journalists looking for wine stories, by occasion and by seasonality.
As well as press and social activity, we’ve already started to promote to our current consumer community, made up of past judges, those who have voted in the retailer categories and general newsletter sign-ups. Finally our Round 2 judges, many of whom are prominent wine communicators, are promoting this to their audiences too, which is great.
How do you see it developing in the coming years with added functionality?
Well firstly, we will be developing the same tool for the spirits medalists, after the awards in 2022. After that, it will be a case of monitoring how consumers and press are using this, asking for feedback and tweaking as necessary. We will be creating additional pages for special wine buying moments such as ‘Wines for Christmas’ as an example. Whilst curating this sort of listing can be time consuming, it is hugely beneficial for our entrants, an easy ‘take away’ for journalists and a fantastic resource for consumers looking for the cream of the PCWA crop.
What other initiatives have you put in place to help promote and spread the word about the awards?
We mentioned our work with Salar Media at the beginning, this has opened doors to other consumer titles, interested in promoting our medal winners. We also have a new Scottish consumer media partner, Cask & Still (part of Scottish Field).
Our regional judging sessions will boost the visibility of the Awards ‘on the ground’ and generate more excitement from those wishing to become Round 1 judges. Building friendly and inclusive consumer communities, means we have an engaged group of people who are keen to see the results. This will ultimately drive more sales traffic to the suppliers and producers of the medal winning wines.
We’ve been running very popular Instagram competitions for consumers to win bottles, boxes and cans and we are also expanding our use of video content on our channels.
Our Australian trade media partner, Australian Showcase Magazine, is actively promoting the results and benefits of entering the Awards. We hope to secure a central distribution method for submissions to the 2022 awards.
