Sometimes you get tied up in things, so this has been a long time coming. Last year we were very honoured and proud to receive the OIV Book Award for best book in the category “Discovery and presentation of wines” for our latest book “Languedoc-Roussillon, the Wines of Southern France”.
OIV is the International Organisation for Vine and Wine, an intergovernmental organisation for the wine sector with 47 member countries. Most of the world’s wine producing countries are members. It’s a sort of “United Nations for the wine world”, so it is an award that we value very highly. The OIV Book Awards exists since 1930 and is focussed on books with depth and substantial contents, sometimes but not always (as in our case, for instance) targeted at winemaking professionals. You can find all winners in 2019 on the link above.
The awards ceremony took place in October (I did say some things are a long time coming, like this post) and was held at the embassy of Chile to France.
Here’s the short presentation I did of the book at the ceremony:
We hope to inspire more people to discover this exiting wine region in the south of France.
A lot of wine writing tends to be focussed on the most famous wines and wine regions. Languedoc-Roussillon is not – yet – so famous but makes fabulous wines.
It is one of the few wine regions where it is still affordable to buy vineyard land, so it attracts many young and ambitious winemakers. And make wines that are affordable to the consumers
We hope our book will make more people discover these fantastic wines, the stunningly beautiful landscape and the local gastronomy. And come to visit and travel in the region.
Thank you!
We are very happy and proud to say that this is actually the third time that one of our books has been mentioned and honoured by the OIV. As far as we know, we are the only Swedish authors having received an OIV award.
Here are a few pictures from the ceremony, including one of (almost) all authors who were given an awards. We’re at the very back.
I could also add that later in the autumn our book “Languedoc-Roussillon, the Wines of Southern France” was named Book of the Year – Best In All Categories in Sweden for books on beverages.
