In 2021, we mark the 22nd anniversary of Wine Enthusiast’s Annual Wine Star Awards, honoring the individuals and companies that have significantly contributed to the success of the wine and alcohol beverage world. In a challenging and evolving landscape, we salute the dedicated professionals and progressive thinkers who have shown drive and resilience.
From winemakers to wineries, sommeliers to CEOs, innovators and social visionaries, each winner has balanced business acumen with vision and made steps to evolve the future of wine and alcohol beverage.
Nominated by members of our global sales, events, marketing and editorial divisions with final selections made by our executive publishing team, winners will be honored at our black-tie gala in February 2022. For details on the event and further insight on our selection process, visit winemag.com/WSAwinners2021.
On the pages ahead, meet the bright stars of 2021.
MARC D. TAUB
PERSON OF THE YEAR
The president and CEO of sister organizations Palm Bay International and Taub Family Selections successfully led his companies with ingenuity and resilience.
“Credit must go to my amazing family of employees and our long-term supplier partners,” said Marc D. Taub upon learning he had been named Wine Star Person of the Year. “Together, we worked through the adversities and inspired each other to reach greater heights, to firmly establish our path forward, and to cement a stronger, more positive shared future.”
Taub is president and CEO of sister organizations Palm Bay International and Taub Family Selections and represents the third generation of his family to work in the import and wholesale business. He was referencing the past year, calling it, “the most difficult period I can recall.”
Despite the many challenges of 2021, Taub led his team with resilience and succeeded. Since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Taub’s businesses have showed strong performances, especially for the company’s biggest brands, in particular Cavit and Roscato. A new, modernized focus on sweet wines, particularly within the Confetti and Roscato labels, showed great retail interest and return.
As on-premise sales withered during shutdowns, his fine wine team pivoted to retail placement for many of its top producers, including Bertani, Jean-Luc Colombo, Los Vascos, Planeta, Rocca delle Macìe, Saget La Perrière, Salentein and Trimbach.
“Together, we worked through the adversities and inspired each other to reach greater heights, to firmly establish our path forward, and to cement a stronger, more positive shared future.”
Taub also invested heavily in growing the team at his New York based distribution company, Independence Wine & Spirits (IWS). This funding enabled IWS’s swift development and success.
The recent introduction of Jacob’s Pardon, a high-end American whiskey, marks a return to the Taub family tradition as innovators in the spirits business. Taub has also gone all-in on imported spirits such as Dos Maderas Rum and Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin, which experienced double-digit growth even through the difficulties of the past year.
The development and growth of Taub Family Vineyards’ proprietary Napa wines has seen impressive evolution. The latest releases have received outstanding scores from Wine Enthusiast, ranging from 93 to 95 points.
There has also been a lot of action at Taub’s first brick-and-mortar winery and estate, Saracina, in Mendocino, California. There, he and his team are working on an extensive replanting of the vineyards in order to maximize the growing conditions of each plot.
Although many in wine industry have great respect for and sing the praises of Taub, the most important accolade may be from his son Jake, director of business development at IWS.
“He doesn’t stop and wait for something to become a success,” says Jake “He knows when he’s on to something, and then moves with relentless conviction to bring it to life.”
For his unparalleled leadership, vision and growth through unprecedented times and unexpected challenges, Wine Enthusiast is honored to name Marc D. Taub as the 2021 Wine Star Award winner of Person of the Year. —Mike DeSimone
DR. NICOLÁS CATENA ZAPATA
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
Widely considered the godfather of modern Argentinean wine, Catena led the charge to bring the nation’s wine onto the world stage.
Forty years ago and long before Malbec became a household name among wine lovers, an Argentine economist and winery owner working as a guest professor at the University of California, Berkeley, made a bet with himself and his homeland: that his native Mendoza, if it followed a path similar to the one Napa Valley started on during the 1960s, could produce world-class wines with consumer demand and prices to match.
It was a bold gamble for Dr. Nicolás Catena Zapata, whose Italian-born immigrant grandfather founded the family’s original Argentine wine company in 1902. Argentinean wine in the early 1980s was largely a domestic product. Furthermore, Argentina’s wines were not the gems they are today, nor was there a crop of young Argentines champing at the bit to make winemaking a career.
Most ominous for the prospects of Catena’s gambit, the idea of elevating varietal Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec into wines that could be compared to the best bottlings from the Old and New Worlds was as foreign as baseball in Buenos Aires.
None of that deterred Catena. Upon returning to Argentina from California in
