67 Pall Mall Names Six Wine Communicator Award Winners

The 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards announced this year’s six winners in London, but the results soon drew controversy after a wine writer questioned whether one winning entry had been written using artificial intelligence.

Six winners recognised

American geologist and terroir specialist Brenna Quigley won Best Global Wine Communicator in Audio.

Quigley is the founder and host of the podcast Roadside Terroir, which explores the relationships between vineyard geology, soils and terroir. Through field visits and conversations, she translates geological knowledge into accessible wine storytelling.

South African winemaker Pieter Walser won Best Global Wine Communicator in Short-Form Video. Walser makes wine under his Blank Bottle label and produces wine videos for his personal YouTube channel, bringing firsthand production experience and a winemaker’s perspective to his content.

Australian winemaker Brendan Carter, founder of BottleShock.tv and winemaker at South Australia’s Unico Zelo, won Best Global Wine Communicator in Long-Form Video. His work combines wine production experience with longer videos exploring wine, winemaking and the people and stories behind them.

British wine communicator Fikayo Ifaturoti, who creates content under the name “Haut Somm” and founded Cellar Atelier, won Best Global Wine Communicator in Short-Form Writing. His work extends beyond bottles and regions to explore wine’s relationship with culture, identity and the consumer experience.

British writer Katie Mather won Best Global Wine Communicator in Long-Form Writing. The managing editor of independent drinks publication Pellicle and a freelance writer, Mather covers wine, beer, cider and broader drinking culture, examining how drinks intersect with society, culture and the settings in which they are consumed.

American wine journalist Samantha Cole-Johnson won Best All-Round Wine Communicator, which recognises achievement across audio, video and writing. Cole-Johnson, senior editor for the United States at JancisRobinson.com, covers wine news, commentary and industry developments. The judges recognised her work across the three formats.

Chinese content creator joins judging panel

67 Pall Mall was founded in London in 2015 by wine collector Grant Ashton, whose desire to share his collection with like-minded enthusiasts inspired the club.

Its first club opened in London in December 2015 as a private members’ club for wine lovers and fine-dining customers. It now has clubs in London, Verbier and Singapore, and offers resident membership in Hong Kong. Four further clubs are set to open in Melbourne, Shanghai, Bordeaux and Beaune.

Now in its third year, the competition received a record 677 entries from 234 wine communicators across 27 countries and territories.

“Every year, the 67 Awards celebrates the world’s best wine communicators,” said awards founder Richard Hemming. While the ceremony honours six winners, he said, every entrant contributes to wine culture and understanding worldwide.

This year’s judging panel included Chinese wine content creator and online retailer Xiaopi, who has spent 17 years producing wine content in Chinese.

“I am deeply honoured to have had the opportunity to serve as one of the judges for the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards,” Xiaopi said. “As a wine professional who has been creating written and video content in Chinese for 17 years, this competition opened up a whole new world for me, allowing me to experience a great deal of knowledge, humour, and moving content from peers around the world.”

He added: “It has further convinced me that wine is far more than just wine itself; it is an incredibly soft yet profound expression of human nature. I suppose I am the one who benefited the most from this competition.”

Questions over AI use

Shortly after the winners were announced, the awards became embroiled in a debate over possible AI use.

On September 11, wine writer Henry Jeffreys published an article questioning whether Ifaturoti’s winning short-form entry, Collector Logs, No. 4 | The Stradivarius Violin × 1969 Bollinger VVF, had been generated or assisted by AI.

Jeffreys pointed to its extensive use of very short sentences, groups of three and constructions such as “not because of A, but because of B,” which he considered characteristic of AI-generated writing. He also submitted the article to AI-detection website Pangram, which classified it as “100% machine-generated.” Jeffreys acknowledged, however, that AI detectors are not infallible.

Miquel Hudin, Andy Neather, Felicity Carter and Alice Feiring subsequently expressed similar suspicions on social media.

In response, Hemming said that, although he could not speak for the judging panel, he was confident the winning piece was not entirely AI-generated. He also argued that its concise style was increasingly common among younger writers.

Elaine Chukan Brown, chair of the judging panel, pushed back against the allegations, in reply to Jeffreys. 

“AI detectors and AI writers are developed from the quirks and history of human writing. The hallmarks we tend to rely on to identify AI-generated work exist because real people use them,” Brown said.

“Relying too heavily on AI detectors and tropes of what AI writing looks like risks erasing the very human element in writing we seek to protect.”

Ifaturoti had not responded to Jeffreys’ questions at the time Jeffreys published his article.