The Jimmy Watson Trophy: History, Winners and Why It Matters

Wine Industry

The Jimmy Watson Trophy is Australia’s best-known wine prize, awarded each year to the best young red at the Melbourne Royal Wine Awards. It is named after James “Jimmy” Calexte Watson, a Carlton publican who spent his working life teaching a beer-drinking city to enjoy table wine.

Who was Jimmy Watson?

James Calexte Watson was born on 18 October 1903, in Carlton, Melbourne, into a family with one foot in Europe. His father, James Watson, was a Tasmanian-born coalminer, while his mother, Giselda, née Panelli, was Italian-born.^[1] From his mother’s side he grew up seeing wine as part of a meal rather than something to get drunk on. In the Australia of his time that was an unusual view.^[2] His family was part of Melbourne’s hospitality trade, connected through a network of wine-bar and café owners that included the Denat, Virgona, and Massoni families. His middle name, Calexte, was a tribute to his uncle, Calexte Denat, a celebrated French-Swiss restaurateur whose Café Denat was a premier dining destination.^{[1], [2]} He grew up around people who took food and wine seriously, at a time when most of the country did not.

In 1935, Jimmy Watson purchased a wine saloon on Lygon Street, Carlton.^{[1], [3]} The Australia of the 1930s was overwhelmingly a nation of beer drinkers. Wine, when consumed at all by the general public, was often relegated to fortified styles like port and sweet sherry, frequently dismissed with the derogatory term “plonk”.^{[3], [4]} Table wines were a niche interest, and wine bars were not seen as places of sophisticated enjoyment. Watson set out to change this perception. His licence permitted him to sell only Australian wine, a restriction he turned into a virtue.^[1] He championed local wine and set out to teach his customers about Australian table wine.^[2]

His methods were hands-on. He would travel to Victorian wine regions, personally selecting hogsheads (large barrels of approximately 300 litres) of his preferred styles, dry whites and young reds, to bring back to his bar.^[3] There, dressed in his signature leather apron, he would bottle the wines himself, often in front of customers, which took the mystery out of it.^{[1], [5]} The hogsheads were marked with a roaring lion over a barrel, a symbol of quality that still adorns the house wine labels today.^[3] He also built a culture around it. Watson organised excursions to wineries, kept a cellar of aged vintages for regulars, and transformed his bar into a welcoming hub for international visitors, students, and locals alike.^[1]

The bar reflected the man. Watson was described as gregarious, humane, and democratically minded, yet he was also robust, quick-witted, and firmly in charge, with no tolerance for pretentiousness or drunkenness.^[1] He was also generous. He famously provided impoverished students with free meals, correctly reasoning that they would return as loyal, paying customers once they were established.^[1] Through his efforts, Jimmy Watson’s Wine Bar became a Melbourne institution, a place synonymous with “good food, good drink and good company”.^{[4], [6]} He successfully transformed the image of the Australian wine bar and, in doing so, educated a generation of drinkers, weaning them off “plonk” and introducing them to the pleasures of table wine.^[4]

Jimmy Watson suffered from diabetes for several years and died of a coronary occlusion on 22 February 1962.^[1] Several hundred people attended his funeral, and fellow Lygon Street traders lined the street in a final tribute.^[1] In the wake of his death, his friends, family, and loyal customers sought a fitting way to memorialise the man who had done so much to advance the Australian wine industry. The result was the country’s best-known wine award.^[4]

How the Jimmy Watson Trophy began

The trophy grew out of the grief of Watson’s friends and customers rather than a committee decision. That origin is part of why it still carries weight.

The trophy was first awarded in 1962, the same year of Watson’s passing.^[4] The idea for its creation arose organically from conversations among his friends and patrons who wished to create a permanent tribute.^{[1], [4]} Given Jimmy’s close relationship with the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV), which ran the annual Royal Melbourne Wine Show, the choice of venue was natural. Watson was a regular at the show, where he would purchase exhibited wines to cellar and sell at his Lygon Street bar, creating a direct link between the producers and his educated consumer base.^[4] A prize at this prestigious show was therefore seen as the most appropriate way to honour his dedication to Australian winemaking.^[4]

The criteria reflect the wines Watson championed. The trophy is awarded to the “best one or two year old dry red wine” entered in the Melbourne Royal Wine Awards.^{[4], [7], [8]} This was precisely the style of robust, youthful red that formed the core of his business: wines he would bottle himself and encourage his customers to purchase and cellar, patiently waiting for them to mature.^{[1], [5]} To ensure the award’s commercial relevance and prevent entries of purely experimental or non-existent wines, modern rules stipulate that a winery must hold a minimum of 100 dozen finished, bottled stock of the winning wine at the time of entry.^[8]

While the trophy was established with heartfelt intentions, its rise to become “Australia’s most prestigious and sought after wine award” was not immediate.^[9] For its first decade, it remained a significant but relatively low-profile prize within the industry.^[5] What made it famous was Wolf Blass. According to the late wine authority Len Evans, the trophy “was nothing until Blass made it famous”.^[10] Blass achieved an unprecedented hat-trick, winning the award in 1974, 1975, and 1976 for his Black Label Cabernet Shiraz blends.^{[9], [11]} He put the wins on his labels and in his marketing, catapulting the “Jimmy” into the public consciousness.^[5] From then on, the Jimmy was the prize every red winemaker wanted.

Today, the award’s prestige is upheld by a rigorous and independent judging process. Each year, Melbourne Royal brings together a judging panel of winemakers, Masters of Wine, sommeliers, educators and distributors, who assess thousands of entries through a series of blind tastings.^{[12], [13]} To win the Jimmy Watson Trophy, a wine must first be the best in its class, then beat all other top young red contenders.

Every Jimmy Watson Trophy winner, 1962 to 2025

The winners list is the best record we have of how Australian red wine has changed since 1962. The table below lists every winner. There was no award in 2020, when the Melbourne Royal Wine Awards were cancelled because of COVID-19.^[7]

What winning the Jimmy does for a winery

Winning the Jimmy can change a winery’s fortunes, lift the profile of its region, and mean a great deal to the people who made the wine. The industry calls it the “Jimmy Effect”. For decades, an old industry saying claimed that winning the ‘Jimmy’ was worth a million dollars to a business.^{[10], [15]} In the contemporary era of digital communication, where news of the win is disseminated globally in seconds, that figure likely underestimates its true value.^[15]

The first effect is on sales. Demand can overwhelm a small producer. When Home Hill, a tiny Tasmanian winery, won in 2015 for its Kelly’s Reserve Pinot Noir, the wine sold out “in record time.” The winery awoke the morning after the awards dinner to an inbox “overflowing with orders”.^[15] Similarly, Glenn Goodall, Senior Winemaker at Xanadu Wines, described their 2018 win as “huge,” leading to a “massive profile boost for the winery” and an “immediate impact on sales and growth of our brand”.^[16] Andrew Quin of Hentley Farm, the 2022 winner, echoed this, noting that while the trophy results in “immediate sales, the biggest impact is on overall brand awareness and perception of quality”.^{[17][16], [17]}

A win also shines a light on the region. It can change how a whole area is seen, and bring visitors and investment. When Nick Glaetzer became the first Tasmanian winemaker to win in 2011, it was a landmark moment that helped “put the Apple Isle on the map as a super premium producer of sophisticated cool climate reds”.^[18] The win by Fallen Giants in 2021 had a similar effect on its home region. Viticulturist Rebecca Drummond noted that the “increase in brand awareness and visitation has been huge,” fulfilling the winery’s aspiration to “contribute to the reputation of the region”.^[19] The award encouraged wine enthusiasts to explore the Grampians, which helped Fallen Giants and its neighbours. The 2024 win by Four Winds Vineyard was the first for a Canberra District wine.^{[20], [21]}

For the people who make the wine, it is personal. For a small, family-run operation like Four Winds Vineyard, winning five trophies including the Jimmy Watson was an “incredible honour,” particularly after enduring significant challenges in previous vintages, such as the loss of their 2020 crop to bushfire smoke taint.^[22] For Rebecca Drummond of Fallen Giants, the win was “incredibly humbling” and served as a powerful reinforcement that their decision to shift towards organic farming was “the right path”.^[19] Andrew Quin of Hentley Farm described it as a dream that “took months to sink in” and a highlight of his career.^[17]

How the winning wines have changed

Over sixty years the winning wines have changed in three ways. They come from more places, they are made from more grapes, and they are lighter and fresher than they were.

South Australia’s long run, and the other states

For most of its history the Jimmy was a South Australian prize. In the first 60 years of the award, from 1962 to 2022, South Australian wineries claimed the trophy on 40 separate occasions.^[14] The powerful Cabernet Sauvignons and Shiraz of Coonawarra, the rich and opulent reds of the Barossa Valley, the structured wines of McLaren Vale, and the distinctive blends from Langhorne Creek consistently set the benchmark for Australian red wine excellence.^[14] That reflected where Australia’s fine wine industry was concentrated.

Over the last few decades, other states have caught up. The first major challenger was Western Australia’s Margaret River. It arrived when Cape Mentelle Vineyards won back-to-back trophies in 1983 and 1984 for its powerful Cabernet Sauvignons.^{[9], [23]} It showed that top red wine could come from outside South Australia. Margaret River has since won the trophy five times in total, always with a wine focused on that signature variety.^{[24], [25]} Victoria has won with Shiraz from the Grampians (Best’s Great Western in 2012, Fallen Giants in 2021) and elegant Pinot Noir from the Mornington Peninsula (Yabby Lake in 2013).^{[7], [9]} More recently, the trophy has broken new ground entirely. Tasmania has won with Shiraz in 2011 and Pinot Noir in 2015 and 2023.^{[7], [18], [26]} In 2024, Four Winds Vineyard secured the first-ever win for the Canberra District in New South Wales.^[20]

From claret to Pinot Noir

Just as the geographical focus has broadened, so too has the varietal spectrum of winning wines. The early years of the trophy were dominated by powerful red blends, often labelled with traditional European terms like “Claret Type” (typically a Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz blend) or “Burgundy Type” (often 100% Shiraz).^{[9], [11]} For the decades that followed, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz, either as single varietals or as the dominant partners in a blend, formed a virtual duopoly over the award. Both suit South Australia’s warmer regions.

This century, other grapes have broken through. Grenache came first. Long relegated to a workhorse grape for fortified wines and simple blends, it proved itself as a serious table wine with two wins: Turkey Flat Vineyards in 2017 and Hentley Farm in 2022, both from the Barossa Valley.^{[9], [13]}

The bigger shift was Pinot Noir. For 50 years, this elegant, notoriously fickle grape was considered too light-bodied and delicate to compete with the powerful Shiraz and Cabernet that traditionally won the judges’ favour. That changed in 2013 when Yabby Lake’s Block 1 Pinot Noir from the Mornington Peninsula claimed the trophy, the first time in the award’s history.^[27] This was followed by wins for Tasmanian Pinot Noir from Home Hill in 2015 and Lowestoft Estate in 2023.^[26] Meadowbank Wines in Tasmania’s Derwent Valley added a fourth Pinot Noir win in 2025, with its 2024 Pinot Noir. Wines built on elegance rather than power can now win the country’s top red prize.

From big and oaky to lighter and fresher

Style has changed too. For many years, the Jimmy Watson Trophy was criticized by some for rewarding a particular style of wine: “hulking ripe super fruit wines” ^[28] that were “big, bold and immature”.^[5] These were often characterized by high alcohol, intense fruit concentration, and a generous, sometimes overwhelming, application of new, often American, oak.^[10] This was the “bigger is better” philosophy that dominated Australian wine for a period.

Recent winners show how far that has swung. A “shifting tide towards lighter-style reds” is now apparent.^[27] The 2014 winner, SC Pannell’s Adelaide Hills Syrah, was widely hailed as a turning point. It was described as a “poster child for cool climate syrah” that was “light on its feet,” showing bright fruit and moving away from the heavy-handed styles of the past.^[28] The subsequent wins for Grenache and Pinot Noir have solidified this trend. These wines are celebrated not for their power, but for their freshness, balance, aromatic complexity, and clear expression of their vineyard site, or terroir. Today’s winner is a very different wine from the winners of the 1970s and 1980s.

The barrel sample controversy

The biggest argument in the trophy’s history was over unfinished wine. For decades the Jimmy was judged on barrel samples. A rule change in 2011 settled it, and changed the kind of wine that wins.

For nearly 50 years, the trophy was awarded to a one-year-old red wine that was, in most cases, an unfinished barrel sample. The wines entered were often “raw young reds not due for blending, let alone bottling, for many months”.^[5] This practice became the source of “sustained and intense criticism” from many corners of the wine industry.^[5] Prominent critics, most notably Len Evans, argued that the format was “unreasonable” and deeply flawed.^[10] The core of the argument was twofold. Firstly, there was no guarantee that the small sample drawn from a barrel for judging would be truly representative of the final, blended, and bottled wine that would eventually be sold to the public. This gap between the show sample and the commercial product magnified the potential for accidental misrepresentation or, more cynically, deliberate fraud.^[5] Secondly, critics contended that this system encouraged the creation of “show wines”, made to impress judges in their youth with flashy aromatics and bold flavours, often from heavy oaking, but which lacked the fundamental structure, balance, and depth of fruit to age gracefully.^[10]

The argument came to a head in the early 2000s. The credibility of the award was under serious threat, as several other major Australian wine shows had already moved to award trophies only to finished, bottled wines.^[10] The Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV) came under heavy pressure to change. In 2011, after years of lobbying from within the industry, the RASV announced a landmark rule change: effective immediately, all entries for the Jimmy Watson Trophy classes would have to be finished, bottled wines.^[5] This single decision fundamentally altered the competition and directly addressed the long-standing criticisms. It closed the credibility gap, ensuring that the wine consumers could purchase was the exact same wine the judges had deemed the best in the country.^[5]

The effects were large. By requiring a finished product, the award began to favour wines that were more approachable and harmonious in their youth, rather than the raw, tannic, and often disjointed barrel samples of the past. This shift from rewarding “the big, bold and immature to the bright, fruity and approachable” had a significant impact on the types of wines that could succeed.^[5] It arguably paved the way for the stylistic evolution noted previously, making it possible for lighter-bodied, more elegant varietals like Pinot Noir, which often show best once settled in bottle, to finally win. The era where a massive, inky, one-year-old Penfolds Grange or Wolf Blass Black Label could triumph as a barrel sample was effectively over.^[5] While other minor controversies have occurred, such as a procedural mix-up in 2002 that led to the wrong winery initially being announced as the winner ^[29], none have had the lasting impact of the “unfinished wine” debate. The 2011 reform fixed the credibility problem and, along the way, changed what kind of wine wins.

Why the Jimmy still matters

The Jimmy started as a tribute to a Carlton publican. It is now the most influential prize in Australian red wine, able to launch a brand and put a region on the map.

Its winners list tracks the industry’s history: from South Australia out to Tasmania and Canberra, from claret blends to Grenache and Pinot Noir, and from big, oaky wines to lighter ones.

It kept its standing by changing when it had to. Since 2011 only finished, bottled wine can enter, so the winner is always a wine you can buy and drink.

Related reading: Australian wine history in three volumes: The Australian Ark.