Since it began in 1996 the Geoffrey Roberts Award has brought farmers' markets to Australia; yielded a brand new Somerset cheese, Ogleshield; funded a medical research project into the effects of vineyard altitude on the longevity of wine drinkers; dramatically increased international knowledge of indigenous Eastern European vine varieties; and exposed a young Georgian wine producer to modern winemaking techniques in some of France's top properties. Here are the winners to date.

2007 Award winners

Florida geography teacher Richard Villadoniga used our $6,000 to finance a road trip across the United States with the aim of highlighting some of the country's endangered foodstuffs and promoting greater awareness of them via local media opportunities. He has now incorporated what he learnt into a teaching module to make American children more aware of their food heritage. See Richard's journey at www.eat-american.com

2007 joint winner, thanks to Nazli’s decision that her new job prevented her from taking up her 2006 Award, was Jock Brandis on behalf of www.fullbellyproject.org which designs and supplies very simple, highly relevant machinery such as mechanical peanut shellers to impoverished communities in Africa, thereby helping them to increase their income substantially.

2006 - Nazli Parvizi from New York wanted to go to VietNam in March 2007 to foster sustainable farming and better cultural links between VietNamese American chefs and restaurateurs in the ancient capital of Hue in an effort to promote responsible tourism and development.  Unfortunately however, her work as the youngest ever Executive Director of the New York Mayor's Volunteer Center was so good that they offered her a promotion she couldn't refuse and she was unable to make that trip to VietNam - which enabled us to make a second 2007 Award.

The runner-up was Nathalie Jordi, a Belgian-American cheese nut who is determined to help America's new generation of farmhouse cheesemakers sell their wares more effectively. Believing they are too busy making cheese to put much effort into marketing and bureaucracy, she has been travelling around the US to this end. She is now a recognised writer on American farmhouse cheese and hopes to continue to promote it worldwide.

2005 - Mary Taylor, New Zealand food communicator, revisited three fishing communities in southern Sri Lanka , learning more about their needs and culture, before returning to New Zealand on a fund-raising mission. Her Project Oru 100 raised funds to build 100 outriggers ( orus, pictured), the boats on which the local communities here depended for their chief protein source and income until the tsunami of 26 December 2004 destroyed 80 per cent of them. These funds are administered by the MJF Foundation (www.mjffoundation.org), the charitable foundation established in 2003 for the disadvantaged in Sri Lanka by Merrill J Fernando of Dilmah Tea which has already achieved a great deal but still needs much more help before the needs of the communities devastated by the tsunami are met. Read Mary's report.

2004 - Shalva Khetsuriani who traveled from his family's Georgian wine operation and his wine consultancy work in Moscow on a hectic trip around some of the finest wine estates in France during vintage 2004. He has returned home determined to put some of the practices he saw into effect and to spread his newfound expertise among other Georgian and Russian wine professionals. Read Shalva's report, verbatim as his interpreter supplied it. Unfortunately Georgian wine has suffered the massive setback of being prohibited from its most important export market Russia.

Runners-up were Alexandra Grigorieva, a Russian academic journalist who wanted to revive traditional recipes in France and Italy and UK-based Shirley Booth who wanted to go to Japan and research sake and food matches. Read her report.

2003 - Penny Boothman , Master of Wine student and wine writer who travelled extensively throughout Eastern Europe in the summer of 2003 and now shares the fruits of her studies of the little-known indigenous vine varieties of Eastern Europe at www.easternvines.info.

2002 - Professor Roger Corder , head of the Department of Experimental Therapeutics at the William Harvey Research Institute at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London , who went to Sardinia to research a cluster of centenarians and the wines they drink. He has discovered some fascinating correlations between vineyard altitude and the potential to reduce heart disease.

2001 - Dru Reschke of Coonawarra who visited California in his attempts to develop an ecologically-friendly winery effluent treatment, currently being trialled by Southcorp in Australia.

2000 - Ron Irvine of Washington state and Alan Foster of Oregon , artisanal cider makers who toured England and Normandy in September 2000 exchanging information on methods and techniques for improving cider and apple quality generally.

1999 - Kathryn Thal , South African-born restaurant manager-turned-wine buyer who toured Californian vineyards and is now setting up a program aimed at explaining and encouraging sustainable viticulture worldwide.

1998 - Caroline Smialek and Peter Kindel , America wannabe cheesemakers who visited European role models and then worked in New York restaurants, including cheese haven Artisanal. They subsequently moved to the oldest dairy farm in Vermont and have continued to make cheese, including inspiring Ogleshield during their time with Jamie Montgomery in Somerset.

1997 - Jane Adams , food and wine writer and publicist of Sydney , Australia , who toured the United States , finding out enough about farmers' markets to import the concept into food-conscious Australia . Thanks partly to this trip, farmers' markets are now a thriving established phenomenon throughout Australia .

1996 - Diana Campbell , a Canadian then working in the Scottish wine trade who wanted to study food and wine matching at the Culinary Institute of America in the Napa Valley with the aim of increasing the confidence of Scotland 's restaurateurs, chefs and wine waiters.

	Nazli
Nathalie