Find out about our Decanter World Wine Awards 2014 Canada judging panel with biographies of the Regional Chair Tony Aspler plus Barbara Philip MW, Janet Dorozynski and Rhys Pender MW.
Regional chair: Tony Aspler
Aspler has been writing about wine since 1975, and has been wine columnist for The Toronto Star for 22 years. He is the author of 16 wine books, including The Wine Atlas of Canada, and three wine murder mystery novels: Blood Is Thicker than Beaujolais, The Beast of Barbaresco and Death on the Douro. In 2001, Aspler co-founded the charity Grapes for Humanity to raise money through the wine community for victims of landmines and children with disabilities. In 2007, he was awarded the Order of Canada (CM), and in 2012, he was elected to the New York Media Wine Writers Hall of Fame.
Judges
Barbara Philip MW
Barbara Philip MW is a portfolio manager at the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch (BCLDB) in Canada and is responsible for selecting European wines for the BC Liquor Store chain. Her career has included working as a sommelier and wine educator for many years, and she passed the MW in 2007. In addition to her role at the BCLDB, Philip also works as a freelance lecturer, radio columnist and wine judge through Barbariain Wine Consulting, a company she runs with her husband Iain.
Janet Dorozynski
Janet Dorozynski began tasting and studying wine while completing her Ph.D. in demography and public policy studies. She has worked in various capacities in and with the Canadian and international wine industry for more than fifteen years, during which time she has also written about wine, taught and lectured on the business of wine and judged extensively at competitions within Canada and internationally. Currently working at Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, she oversees a program to educate and assist Canadian Embassies in serving and promoting Canadian wine and alcoholic beverages, in addition to working with the industry on international market development and trade issues. Dorozynski is also a principal critic and writer at WineAlign.com, one of Canada’s largest wine websites, a WSET Certified Educator, and a professional affiliate of the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI) at Brock University.
Rhys Pender MW
A passionate educator, wine lover, judge, writer, and grape grower/farmer, Rhys has worked in the wine industry since he was a teenager. Rhys pursued his food and wine passion by completing a Professional Culinary Diploma to ensure he eats well and all levels of the WSET programmes to make sure there was always good wine at the table. In 2004 Rhys began taking on the gruelling Master of Wine program, which culminated in Rhys becoming Canada’s youngest Master of Wine in 2010. Rhys runs a WSET wine school and consultancy through his business Wine Plus+ and, between travelling around the world, can be found with his boots in the dirt at his small four acre vineyard and winery in the Similkameen Valley – Little Farm Winery. He is a regular contributor to Canadian publications such as WineAlign.com, Macleans, Montecristo, Taste and Wine Trend. Rhys judges wine competitions internationally such as the Decanter World Wine Awards and the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition as well as for WineAlign and the Vancouver Magazine Wine Awards in Canada.
Written by John Abbott
