The Wine Merchant Top 100 is a competition devoted to wines in the independent trade.

Its other point of difference is that it’s judged entirely by specialist independent wine retailers.

It was created by Graham Holter and David Williams in 2013, originally as The Wine Merchant Top 50. In 2015 the decision was taken to broaden the number of winners, in response to rising entry levels and the overall quality of the wines that are put forward.

The competition is only open to wines that are available from UK stock, and which are not targeted at supermarkets, specialist chains like Majestic or Oddbins, or major online retailers.

The competition is allied to The Wine Merchant magazine, the only trade publication devoted to specialist independent wine retailers.