this week we sit down with christelle guibert, who shares her brilliant journey from decanter tasting panels to stepping away as chief executive of the iwsc to focus on direct hospitality mentorship.
we chat about running unvarnished experiments on expert judges, the scientific reality of palatal fatigue, and why she decided to personally buy out the uk sommelier of the year competition. stay curious, but perhaps don’t get up on stage to compete unless you’re really ready.
we opened this week’s session looking at how the landscape under our feet continues to shift. the big headline dominating the trade chat is c&c finally making the bibendum and matthew clark merger official. the big distribution machines are constantly cannibalising each other to survive. it is a tough climate out there, but as long as the restructuring keeps people in jobs and keeps the bottles being opened, we can’t complain too much. meanwhile, harpers and the london wine fair are making a play to get independent merchants properly integrated into english wine week.
there is an english winery for every independent merchant in the country if you put your mind to it. with the london wine fair kicking off, the presence of local producers is massive, showing a serious, technically accomplished maturity that doesn’t need to lean on novelties. finally, even the big champagne houses are leaning into sports culture, with taittinger dropping their 2026 world cup champagne, proving that sports sponsorships aren’t just for beer brands, or nyetimber anymore.
our main chat was with christelle guibert, whose 25-year stint in the uk trade is a masterclass in quiet, focused expertise. she landed in london from france, cutting her teeth at boodles under the mentorship of steven spurrier before moving through harrods and waitrose.
her 17 years at decanter defined how modern wine media handles recommendations. joining back in 2000 when readers were crying out for honest, buying advice and tasting notes, she built their tasting department from scratch and launched the global awards. she admitted to being utterly obsessed with the mechanics of blind tastings, even running secret experiments on her own judges. even dropping the same bottle into a flight twice just to see if their scores would hold up under pressure.
that analytical streak followed her to the iwsc, where she teamed up with william lowe mw for an ongoing, data-driven academic study of judge behaviour and sensory fatigue. one of her biggest structural moves was slashing the sheer volume of wines tasted by a single panel, recognising that an exhausted palate is a useless tool for a producer who has poured a year of work into a bottle.
she used the structural reset of the pandemic to reposition the entire brand, leading to their global judging sessions. rather than just flying bottles to london, they now take the uk’s top buyers directly into the regions like conegliano valdobbiadene blending strict morning sessions with afternoon workshops that give producers raw, unvarnished feedback on uk market trends.
but christelle’s deepest passion right now is front-of-house. she took over the uk sommelier of the year competition and trade hospitality giving mentorship and community to a sector plagued by brutal hours and burnout.
on top of that (!), she runs her own micro-project in muscadet, partnering with vincent caille to make an small batch muscadet simply because she fell in love with the region’s potential. when pushed for her ultimate pour, she bypassed the usual grand marques for agrapart’s ‘Minéral’, celebrating the absolute versatility of grower champagne as a serious gastronomic wine.
we wrapped up the guest slots with alexandre freguin, ambassador for aop picpoul de pinet. sitting right on the edge of the étang de thau, it is the only white-dedicated appellation in the languedoc, producing wines that have captured the uk trade through absolute simplicity. alexandre spoke honestly about the commercial balance between complex, cerebral wines and the joyful, saline, everyday pleasure of basic picpoul.
alexandre is heading up the upcoming ‘picpoul all day’ trade event, featuring a live, high-pressure chef and sommelier battle between teams from france and england. the perfect example of how a region can use its immediate connection to local oysters and maritime terroir to cut through generic wine events. dan and brad will be there on monday 8th june, and those of you in the trade can read about the event tasting here.
Picpoul de Pinet Trade Tasting
Mon 08 Jun | First floor at The Lighterman, London, N1C 4BH
Join us for an intimate trade tasting with 10 top Picpoul de Pinet producers and over 50 wines.
the show finished with the usual personal notes from the field. Brad recapped a tasting of the wines from lujan de cuyo in mendoza, looking at the scaling differences in argentina, and shared his notes from a recent canadian embassy tasting.
we took a quick look at the substack community board, where dan’s mum wendy checked in via the comments to suggest football teams for the summer.
we’re heading straight into the logistical chaos of the london wine fair with our heads down and glasses clean.
feel free to share with a friend
https://www.tradehospitality.uk/
https://www.carteblanchewines.com/christelleguibert
on blind wine tasting: “i used to put the same wine in a flight just to really see if they scored the same.”
making improvements in wine judging: “when i came to the iwsc, i said, okay, we need to reduce now the number of wine per panel because per judge, because it’s just too much.”
keeping busy, busy: “i run it on my own weekends because i love the hospitality. when i first moved to this country is the people from the hospitality who welcomed me.”
https://wineindustrydigest.com/
https://www.the-buyer.net/people/producer/taittinger-2026-fifa-world-cup
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