Communicator of the Year shortlist announced

UK Wine Show’s Chris Scott has been shortlisted for the International Wine & Spirit Competition’s Communicator of the Year award. Chris launched his weekly podcast in 2006, which features news and interviews with members of the wine trade.

Five other candidates are up for the award, which recognises the individual who has contributed the most to wine or spirit communication in the past 12 months. These are Tim Atkin, who writes a weekly column for The Observer; Matt Skinner, who is sommelier of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurants, author of The Juice wine guide and a regular on Saturday Morning Kitchen; Sarah Jane Evans, a newly awarded Master of Wine, who contributes to magazines such as BBC Good Food and Olive; and wineanorak-blogger and Sunday Express columnist Jamie Goode. Jamie’s first book, Wine Science, won the Glenfiddich Award for Drinks Book of the Year. Completing the list is sommelier Natalie MacLean, whose first book, Red, White and Drunk All Over, was featured in the Top 100 books of 2006 by Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail.

The winner will be announced at the end of March. Previous holders of the accolade include Oz Clarke in 2006, along with Matthew Jukes, Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson.