Bangkok's Inddee Defends Its Star Wine List of the Year Crown

On 15 June, in a barbecue restaurant outside a Swedish village most wine drinkers couldn't place on a map, four Master Sommeliers named Bangkok's Inddee the world's Best Medium-Sized List for the second year running, the first repeat winner in that category at the Star Wine List of the Year Global Final. The Michelin two-star restaurant, which opened only in 2023, beat 24 other finalists including The Four Horsemen and Peasant in New York City and Trivet in London to defend a title it first won in Vienna the previous year.

That the ceremony took place in Arild, a village in southern Sweden's Skåne province, rather than a capital city, tells you something about how this competition works. Star Wine List doesn't chase headlines in Paris or London. It goes where the wine trade actually gathers, and this year that meant a countryside gala hosted by Terra Skåne, the provincial body that markets itself, only half-jokingly, as "the Swedish wine region."

Inside the Star Wine List of the Year Global Final 2026

More than 130 sommeliers, chefs and restaurateurs from 28 countries traveled to Skåne for the event, according to Decanter's coverage of the final. The Global Final is the last stop in a season-long competition that runs regional awards ceremonies across 14 territories on three continents, supplemented by an online contest that captures venues outside those regions. It's a structure built less like a single glamorous prize and more like a qualifying tour, closer to how golf majors work than how, say, a single tasting panel might crown a wine of the year.

From those regional rounds, 195 restaurants and wine bars won Gold Stars across various international categories, making them eligible to compete for a global Gold Star in Skåne. Of those 195, around 130 representatives from 66 venues actually made the trip, arriving from as far as New Zealand, Seychelles, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Mauritius and the Maldives. That's a meaningful chunk of the eligible field choosing to fly to rural Sweden in June rather than simply wait for an email announcing the results, a detail that says something about how seriously the wine trade takes this particular accolade.

The days before the ceremony had their own rhythm. Finalists visited Kullabergs Vingård for tastings of wines from Terra Skåne estates, then gathered at Arilds Vingård for a traditional Midsummer celebration, a distinctly Swedish prelude to an awards night that would ultimately crown restaurants from Bangkok to New York. The ceremony itself was held at Holy Smoke, a barbecue eatery just outside Arild, a pairing of smoke and Champagne that feels almost deliberately unglamorous for a competition deciding the fate of the world's most serious wine programs.

falling down the rabbit hole, but instead of just the Mad Hatter, you’re greeted by Jay and his incredible team, ready to guide you through the world of wine in all its facets and delights¹

Stefan Neumann, Master Sommelier, Judge

Inddee Defends Its Title as Best Medium-Sized List

Inddee 's win wasn't just a repeat, it was a repeat against a deeper field. The restaurant, which head sommelier Thanakorn "Jay" Bottorff runs in Bangkok, first claimed the Medium-Sized List Gold Star at the previous year's final in Vienna. Returning to defend that title in Skåne, Inddee saw off 24 other restaurants, a list that included two well-known New York names, The Four Horsemen and Peasant, plus Trivet in London.

Bottorff's acceptance speech leaned on something less quantifiable than bottle counts or appellation coverage. "I genuinely believe it's a wine list that actually has soul, and I'm, happy about it!" he said, accepting the award on stage. That phrase cuts against how wine lists are often judged, by depth, by rarity, by back-vintage availability. Bottorff's framing suggests something more editorial: a list with a point of view, not just an inventory.

That reading was echoed by the judges themselves. Ferran Centelles, the joint Regional Chair for Spain at the Decanter World Wine Awards, judged the Southeast Asia wine lists and described Bottorff's list as "as beautifully presented as it is well-stocked." Stefan Neumann, judging at the global level, went further, comparing the experience of encountering Inddee's list to "falling down the rabbit hole, but instead of just the Mad Hatter, you're greeted by Jay and his incredible team, ready to guide you through the world of wine in all its facets and delights."

For a restaurant that only opened its doors in 2023, two consecutive global Gold Stars is a fast trajectory. It also raises a practical question for anyone planning a trip through Bangkok: a Michelin two-star kitchen paired with a wine program that four Master Sommeliers and two Decanter regional chairs have now separately praised is not a reservation to leave until the last minute.

How 195 Restaurants Became 10 Global Category Winners

The judging panel in Skåne consisted of four Master Sommeliers, Doug Frost MS MW, Stefan Neumann MS, Piotr Pietras MS and Jonathan Gouveia MS, tasked with narrowing the 195 eligible wine lists down to Gold Star winners across 10 international categories. Frost's credentials alone carry weight: he's one of only five people in the world to hold both the Master Sommelier and Master of Wine qualifications, a dual distinction that puts him in genuinely rare company within the trade.

Even for judges at that level, the task wasn't direct. Jonathan Gouveia described the process bluntly: "Judging the world's best wine lists is similar to being a food critic at the world's best restaurant.

It's both extremely humbling and terrifying at the same time." That's not false modesty, a wine list, unlike a single bottle or even a tasting flight, has to be judged as a whole system: breadth, depth, pricing philosophy, how it reads on the page, how it performs when a sommelier actually walks a table through it.

Ten categories, spanning everything from by-the-glass programs to sparkling wine selections to sustainability-focused lists, means the judges were effectively running ten separate evaluations in parallel, each with its own criteria for what "best" means.

The scale of the funnel is itself part of the story. Fourteen territories across three continents ran their own regional finals throughout the year, each producing Gold Star winners in their own categories. Add an online contest that captured venues outside those 14 regions, and you get the 195 eligible restaurants and bars that arrived at the Global Final stage. Only a fraction of those, 66 venues, represented by around 130 people, actually attended in person. The rest waited on results delivered from a converted barbecue restaurant in rural Sweden.

Why a Restaurant's Wine List Ranking Matters to Diners

For collectors and serious diners, a wine list ranking like this functions differently than a wine score. A 95-point Parker rating tells you something about a single bottle at a single moment. A Gold Star for Best Medium-Sized List tells you something about an entire program, the sommelier's palate, the buying philosophy, the willingness to pour something unexpected by the glass rather than defaulting to the safest name on the shelf.

That distinction matters when you're choosing where to eat on a trip built around wine. A restaurant with a two-star Michelin rating tells you the kitchen is serious. A Star Wine List Gold Star tells you the cellar is serious too, and increasingly, in cities like Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo, the two are arriving together rather than one trailing the other by a decade. Inddee's back-to-back wins are a data point in that direction: a restaurant barely three years old, already recognized twice at the global level, competing directly against long-established New York and London rooms and winning both times.

The judging panel's composition reinforces why this particular recognition carries weight beyond a single ceremony. Having Doug Frost, Stefan Neumann, Piotr Pietras and Jonathan Gouveia, four Master Sommeliers, one of wine's most exclusive titles, deliberating together over 195 lists is a different exercise than a single critic's opinion. It's closer to a tribunal than a review, which is presumably why Gouveia described the job as terrifying even for someone qualified to do it.

The Regional Season Behind the Global Stage

It's easy to focus only on the Skåne finale, but the competition's real texture is in the regional season that precedes it. Fourteen territories across three continents each ran their own live awards ceremonies over the course of the year, crowning Gold Star winners in categories specific to their markets. An online contest filled in the gaps for regions without a dedicated live final, ensuring wine lists from places outside the 14 core territories still had a path to Skåne.

This is why the Global Final can pull finalists from New Zealand, Seychelles, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Mauritius and the Maldives in the same room as restaurants from New York and London, the qualifying system is genuinely global rather than concentrated in a handful of major wine capitals. For Bangkok's Inddee, that meant beating regional competition first, then facing an entirely different set of 24 finalists at the global stage, including two New York rooms and a London one, and doing it twice in as many years.

Where the 2027 final lands next is not yet known, but the pattern set by Vienna and now Skåne suggests Star Wine List will keep choosing venues that put the trade, rather than tourists, at the center of the room. For now, the record stands: Inddee, two years running, judged best in its class by a panel that included one of only five people alive holding both the Master Sommelier and Master of Wine titles.