EHSA 2027

Terms for joining the judging list.

Last updated 2026-09-12

Joining the list is not the same as judging. These terms cover the list. If we offer you a seat on the panel, the terms of that seat arrive with the invitation, in writing, and you are free to say no.

1. What the list is

A record of people willing to be considered for an EHSA tasting panel. We build each edition’s panel out of it.

Your name on the list does not appoint you, does not oblige you to attend, and does not oblige us to invite you. A panel has a fixed number of seats and the list is longer than the panel. We may run an edition without contacting you at all.

2. Who can join

Anyone aged 18 or over. A panel is built out of four kinds of palate: press, trade, chefs, and the people who grow, ferment and make.

You can be on the list if you make hot sauce, or work for a company that does. What you cannot do is judge a category your own product has been entered in. We sort that out at the point of invitation, not now.

Nobody on the list is entitled to a seat. We decide each panel on the mix of palates, languages and categories an edition needs, and we can leave an entry unused for as long as it stands.

3. What you are telling us

Name and email are required. Your role decides which panel you fit. Outlet and notes are optional and only help us place you.

Give us your own details, not somebody else’s, and keep them accurate. If you name an employer, squaring a day of judging with that employer is your side of it rather than ours.

4. Your details

Controller in the sense of Art. 4 No. 7 DSGVO is the business named in the Impressum, which carries the postal address and the contact address. The privacy page sets out the processors, the third country transfers and your rights in full. These points belong to this list specifically.

What we hold. Name and email, because a list of people we cannot write to is not a list. Your role. Your outlet or business and your note, if you chose to give them. Nothing is taken from anywhere else and nothing is bought in.

Why we are allowed to hold it. Your consent, Art. 6(1)(a) DSGVO, given by completing the signup. Consent is the honest basis here because you came to us, and it means you can withdraw at any time under Art. 7(3) DSGVO without giving a reason. Withdrawal does not make what happened before it unlawful.

What we do with it. Build and contact the EHSA judging panel. That purpose binds us under Art. 5(1)(b) DSGVO: we cannot decide later that the list is also a press list or a sales list. It is not shared with makers, sponsors or other judges, and it is never published.

The two kinds of email. Being on the list gets you the mail the list is for: the dates, the venue, what a seat asks of you, the offer of a seat, and the answer to anything you ask us. That is the correspondence you signed up for and it arrives whether or not you tick anything else.

Anything wider than that is a second, separate decision. News from the awards, who won, what is happening at the next edition, an invitation to something that is not your own seat: that is advertising under German law, it needs its own tick, and the tick is empty until you fill it. Nothing is bundled. Refusing it costs you nothing on the list, and the box is never pre-ticked. If you do tick it, we send one email asking you to confirm the address, and nothing goes out until you click it. Every email after that carries a one-click unsubscribe, and using it leaves you on the judging list exactly where you were.

Being named. We like announcing who has joined, and some people join precisely to be seen doing it. So it is a second tick, separate from the first and refusable on its own, and it says exactly what goes out: your name, your role, your outlet or business, and a photograph if you send us one, on the EHSA site, in press and social material about the awards, and in the documents we put in front of sponsors and partners. Until you tick it you are on the list privately and nobody outside this office knows you are there.

Two limits we hold ourselves to. We announce that you have joined the judging list, never that you are judging, because until a seat is offered and accepted that would not be true. And we do not name your employer as taking part on the strength of your tick alone: one person cannot sign their organisation up to anything, so if your outlet or company is to appear as attending, we ask somebody there to confirm it in writing first.

You can withdraw this at any time and we take the name down. What has already gone out to a journalist or a subscriber cannot be pulled back, and that is the one part of all this we cannot undo for you, so treat the tick as publication.

Counting you. Whatever you tick, we describe the panel in numbers: how many people are on the list, how many countries, how many write and how many cook, how many trade buyers. Sponsors and funders get those numbers, because a jury of nineteen people across nine countries is the argument and no individual name is needed to make it. Nobody is identifiable in a count, so this happens whether or not you are named, and it stops being true of you the moment you leave the list.

How long. Until you withdraw, or two years after the last edition we contacted you about, whichever comes first. An entry that never gets past name and email is deleted after twelve months without contact.

Getting out. One email to contact@republicofheat.com, or the unsubscribe link if it is only the news you are done with. Leaving the list deletes the record rather than flagging it, we confirm inside a month as Art. 12(3) DSGVO requires, we do not ask why, and getting out is exactly as easy as getting in.

Health is not on this form. Allergies, intolerances, medication and anything else about your health are data under Art. 9 DSGVO and we do not want them here. Leave them out of the note field. We ask for them separately, on an explicit consent under Art. 9(2)(a) DSGVO, once a seat is actually on the table, and we delete them after the tasting day.

5. What a seat would ask of you

None of this binds you today. It is here so the invitation contains no surprises.

• Blind tasting. Bottles arrive numbered. You will not know the maker, the country or the price of anything in front of you.
• Results stay in the room until we announce them. That covers social posts and hints as much as it covers telling a maker they won.
• Conflicts. If you own, work for, advise, import, stock or are related to an entrant, tell us and we take you off that category. Nobody loses a seat for declaring one.
• Unpaid. Judging is voluntary. Travel and anything else is at your own cost unless we agree otherwise in writing before the day.
• Heat and allergens. Chilli sauce tasted in volume is uncomfortable by design. Entries can contain any of the 14 allergens listed in Annex II of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, they are tasted decanted and out of their labelled bottles, and we cannot guarantee that any one of them is free of anything. You tell us what you react to, in writing and in advance, on the separate consent described in section 4. You taste at your own risk. You can spit, skip a sample or stop entirely at any point without explaining yourself.
• Your name. We publish the panel: name, role, outlet, photograph and a line of biography, and we use it in press material about the awards. Say so and we leave you off.

Press seats come with one addition: you may write about judging. Results are embargoed until the announcement, and the entrants behind the numbers are only yours to name once we have released them.

6. Changes

We can change these terms where the law, the format of the awards or the way we run the list makes it necessary. Anything that affects what we have already asked of you reaches you by email at least four weeks before it takes effect, and staying on the list is your decision each time: say nothing and the change applies, reply and you are off the list with nothing owed either way. We do not change them retroactively, and the date at the top always matches the version you are reading.

7. Law

German law applies.

If you are a consumer, that does not cost you anything the law of the country you live in gives you, and it does not move where you can be sued. We can only bring a claim against a consumer in the courts of the country they live in. You can bring one either there or in Berlin, whichever suits you. A business agreeing to these terms accepts Berlin as the place of jurisdiction.