Gavin Quinney scoops Special Recognition accolade at French Wine Awards

By Emily Kearns, Richard Siddle

Published: 23 October, 2013

Gavin Quinney, the English winemaker who owns and produces wine at Château Bauduc in Bordeaux, has won the Special Recognition Award at the first Harpers French Wine Awards.

Quinney received the honour for the work he has done in giving the wine trade as a whole a fascinating insight into the day-to-day highs and lows of being a winemaker and running a Bordeaux winery.

Quinney has become a one-man publicity machine not only for his own business but for helping to promote French wine overall, Bordeaux wine in particular, and for airing some of the more lively and controversial issues facing French wine in such an engaging and entertaining way.

He has built up such a following online through social media that he has more Twitter followers than prestigious Bordeaux houses and many of the generic French wine bodies.

Quinney, though, has had a difficult 2013 with much of his vintage wiped out by a disastrous hail storm in the summer, but despite the impact on his own winery, Quinney took to Twitter and his own Château Bauduc newsletter to spread news of how the storms had affected wineries across the region, providing as valuable a source of information as the mainstream media and wine trade press.

Quinney is also a regulator contributor to Harpers Wine & Spirit and provides a yearly analysis of the vintage, comparing his own scores with the major wine critics.

His Special Recognition Award was sponsored by Pays d'Oc Wines. Quinney's Château Bauduc wines have been the house wine at Gordon Ramsay's three Michelin-starred restaurant since it opened.

Other winners in the Harpers French Wine Awards were: