A Winery Worker Cleaning an Underground Tank Wins a Top Wine Photography Award

A photograph of a winery worker cleaning wine residue from an underground tank has won the Louis Jadot Wine Photographer of the Year award, one of the honors presented in the 2026 World Food Photography Awards.

The winning image, “In the Depths of Deposit,” was taken by the Spanish photographer Juan Miguel Ortuño Martinez. According to WineNews, the photo shows a worker named Pedro descending into an underground tank and washing the walls and floor with pressurized water to remove remains from the previous wine. The image centers on a task that is rarely seen outside the cellar but is essential to wine production.

The award is part of the World Food Photography Awards, an international competition that recognizes food and drink photography from around the world. The contest is open to both professional and amateur photographers and includes work across landscapes, portraits, travel, weddings, photojournalism and other styles. Organizers present it as a way to document how food shapes daily life, from cultivation and harvest to cooking, consumption, celebration and survival.

In the Louis Jadot category, which focuses on wine photography, second place in the “Places” subcategory went to Australian photographer Chris Elfes for an image of a “hidden vineyard.” The photograph was taken as harvest crews picked Semillon grapes at Mount Pleasant Wines in Hunter Valley, New South Wales, one of Australia’s historic wine regions.

British photographer Luke Carver won in the “Produce” subcategory with a monochrome point-of-view image shot from inside a traditional qvevri during the 2025 harvest in Georgia. Qvevri are large clay vessels used in Georgian winemaking, often buried underground for fermentation and aging.

The 2026 edition of the World Food Photography Awards includes 31 categories in total. Wine remains one of the visible themes in the competition. Alongside Louis Jadot’s sponsorship of the wine photography prize, Champagne Taittinger also backs awards for images in the “Food for Celebration” and “Wedding Food Photographer” categories.

The recognition matters beyond photography because images like these help shape how consumers and trade professionals see wine production. In a beverage industry where storytelling plays a growing role in tourism, branding and premium positioning, photographs that show vineyard labor, cellar work and regional traditions can influence how wineries present themselves to buyers and visitors. The winning image also draws attention to the physical work behind winemaking at a time when producers increasingly seek to connect bottles with people, place and process.