Fells wins agent of the year

Fells wins IWC Agent of the Year

To dispense immediately with the patting-of-ourselves-on-the-back: last week we attended the annual IWC Awards (and suitably well-wined dinner) and were delighted to be named Agent of the Year (Medium).

Cue much celebrating and cheersing and reporting to the dance floor where, whilst there were no awards given out for it, MD Euan Mackay’s dancing certainly merited a mention in dispatches.

We’re enormously grateful to the IWC and the judges – and would also be remiss if we didn’t congratulate everyone involved with putting on a marvellous event. We can only imagine the co-ordination that goes into it.

What does it actually mean?

Winning an award is obviously a great honour – especially amongst esteemed competition – and very nice for us. But it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what it actually means.

Submitting for the awards involved – as we’re sure many readers will imagine – filling in an almost exhaustive entry form.

As you’d hope, it touched in great detail on every aspect of the business. At some point or another in the filling of it we had to bother each of our Directors – and many colleagues besides.

Not to mention talk in depth about our numerous winery partners, and the customers we’re privileged to serve.

All of which is to say that, staid and corny as it sounds, we quite literally couldn’t have done it without them.

So what we feel the award really is, is a reassurance.

The travails of the wine industry – indeed the whole drinks industry – have now been so thoroughly enumerated that we needn’t go into them here. (Especially not on a Friday afternoon, for heaven’s sake).

Let’s be honest – it’s a challenge. For all of us. And however much belief one might have in one’s course of direction, there’s always going to be in such times that splinter of uncertainty.

So to have such a respected and authoritative body as the IWC say ‘yes, what you’re doing is good and worthy of recognition’ is, as Euan put it, an enormous shot in the arm as we move into the busiest time of year.

Above all, it feels a validation of focussing on family-owned wineries. On wineries with a genuine story, run by real people who we know, who we’ve looked in the eye, shaken hands and shared a glass with. Wineries who we genuinely believe to be the best in their class and region in the world.

They’re our raison d’être and bottom line. If we’ve won an award it’s because of the outstanding team we’re privileged to work with, and their belief in the wines we bring to the UK.

We already knew they were the best. But the trophy’s a lovely reminder. And besides, we wouldn’t have wanted to miss Euan’s dancing.