Curly Haslam-Coates has made the shortlist for the 2019 International Wine & Spirit Competition Wine Communicator of the Year title.

The list includes just four others - two of whom Ms Haslam Coates knows.

"I'm very excited because I get my students to use materials by [Madeline Puckette from Wine Folly] a lot," she said.

"I also know Fiona [Beckett] from The Guardian. She's great, she does an amazing podcast as well. She's a great wine and food advocate."

A further two shortlisted communicators is an excuse to network, Ms Haslam-Coates said.

"I have new people to learn from and see what they're doing. It's a really exciting time."

The application process gave Ms Haslam-Coates a chance to review her career and highlight her strengths.

"It's really about being quite active - almost an activist - in making sure that everybody has an accessibility to wine, particularly to learning, because I didn't grow up in a wine region. I didn't grow up with parents that drank wine," she said.

Throughout her two-decade career in the wine industry Ms Haslam-Coates has worked with a number of winemakers, cellar doors managers and communicators, like herself, who have helped her along the way.

"I've been really fortunate in the people I've worked with in how open they've been in getting people to learn, and the difference it can make. It allowed me to develop my own confidence and my own ideas about wine," she said.

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And now she passes that knowledge and experience on to her own students, hoping they will continue to mentor others.

"It's really important to have somebody who helps foster your career, and now that I'm at this point in my career I really want to be able to do that for my students."

"We don't lose anything by sharing our knowledge, There's no end, it's an endless pursuit," she said.

The top international Wine Communicator of the Year will be announced at the International Wine & Spirits Exhibition in Verona, Italy, on April 6.

Ms Haslam-Coates cannot make the event due to short notice, but will be eagerly awaiting the news.

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