Nominees announced for new WSET Outstanding Alumni Award

Five members of the international wine trade have been put forward for the new WSET Outstanding Alumni Award, which has been sponsored by JancisRobinson.com.

The Outstanding Alumni Award is an annual accolade that will celebrate a WSET Diploma graduate who is notably contributing to the industry and this year’s nominees have been chosen by WSET’s  International Alumni Advisory Board and Jancis Robinson MW.

Existing WSET Diploma graduates across the world are encouraged to vote for who they think should win and have until 14 November to cast their votes with the winner being revealed at the end of the month.

The nominees are: Maureen Downey from the USA, Joe Fattorini and Isabelle Legeron MW from the UK, Yang Lu from Hong Kong and Kenichi Ohashi MW from Japan.

• Maureen Downey – also known as ‘the Wine Detective’ – is an expert on fine and rare wine as well as being a global authority on counterfeit wine and wine fraud.  In 2005, she founded Chai Consulting to help wine collectors build and manage their collections and also advises the FBI and the US Department of Justice and works closely with authorities to prosecute fraud.  She completed her WSET Diploma in 2007. In 2015, Downey founded WineFraud.com, an online resource to combat wine fraud and also recently launched the Chai Wine Vault by Everledger, a solution for securing the authenticity and provenance of fine wine. Downey is also a columnist for Wine-Searcher.com and in December 2012, was named as one of our ‘Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Wine’.
• Joe Fattorini wrote the world’s first textbook on selling and marketing wine in restaurants and completed his WSET Diploma in 1995. He then spent 14 years as a wine correspondent for The Herald newspaper and also acted as wine consultant to the US PGA Tour. Since then, Fattorini has been selling wine for 20 years to restaurants, hotels, bars and weddings as one of the UK’s leading wine merchants. As host of ITV’s ‘The Wine Show’, Joe brings his expertise and passion for wine to TV screens in in over 100 countries worldwide, including the UK, USA and Australia. He also works with the brand and communications team for Conviviality PLC and prior to that was a director of sales at Bibendum.
• Isabelle Legeron MW is a passionate advocate of natural wine and is the founder of RAW wine, the UK’s largest artisan wine fair, which has expanded to include annual events in Berlin and New York. Legeron consulted for restaurants in London including the two-Michelin starred Hibiscus in Mayfair, Borough Market’s Elliot’s and The Richmond in Hackney. Legeron has hosted her own TV shows including ‘That Crazy French Women’ and ‘Journey into Wine’, and also founded the wine school at Divertimenti in Marylebone and Bacchanalia, a private members wine club for wine enthusiasts in London. She completed her WSET Diploma in 2003 and went on to become a Master of Wine. In December 2012, she was also named as one of our ‘Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Wine’.
• Yang Lu is highly regarded as a sommelier and wine educator across Greater China and has been credited as raising the status of Chinese sommeliers in the industry.  Having studied viticulture and winemaking in Canada and completing his WSET Diploma in 2011 with a Wines of Germany scholarship, Yang moved back to Shanghai in 2009 where he won Best Sommelier Greater China in 2014. Previously working at Peninsula Shanghai, Yang is now the group wine director for Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, overseeing the wine program and sommelier team for the entire group.  He is also a columnist for DecanterChina.com, contributes to several magazines and has worked on the Chinese translations of How to Taste by Jancis Robinson MW and World Atlas of Wine.
• Born in Tochihi Prefecture, Kenichi Ohashi is a champion of global sake promotion and third generation owner of Yamajin Co, Ltd a distributor specialising in wine, sake and local spirits. A pioneer for natural wine, he convinced his family to diversify into wine and wrote the book ‘Natural Wine’ in 2004, which is still considered the reference text for this sector in the Japanese market. After completing his WSET Diploma in 2006 he went on to become a Master of Wine as well as being one of only 200 people in the world to be awarded the highly prized Master of Sake qualification from Sake Service Institute. He contributed to The World Atlas of Wine 7th Edition, edited by Jancis Robinson MW and is the sake chairman of the International Wine Challenge and a Sake Expert Assessor, the highest qualification of National Research Institute of Brewing Japan. In 2016, he was awarded IWC Personality of the Year. Ohashi also has his own consultancy company, Red Bridge Co., Ltd. and assumes the post of director of Somersault Co., Ltd., a large business group of liquor retailers in Japan.

Ian Harris, WSET’s chief executive, paid tribute to the nominees saying: “Our WSET Diploma graduates go on to achieve amazing things across all areas of the industry. This new annual award will celebrate the outstanding contributions of one successful individual, chosen by our alumni network, and who better to partner with than the website founded by one of our most esteemed graduates, Jancis Robinson.”

Jancis Robinson DipWSET, MW, added: “Having been an enormous admirer of the WSET, especially in its successful recent bid for world domination of the wine education sector, I am thrilled to be instigating a permanent link between it and JancisRobinson.com.”

WSET alumni will shortly receive an email explaining how they can cast their vote.