WOULD A SHINY GOLD MEDAL sway you in the wine aisle? Wineries think so; that’s why the globe’s most successful wine competitions – Decanter World Wine Awards, International Wine Challenge, International Wine & Spirit Competition – attract many thousands of entries each year.
At these shows, teams of wine trade luminaries – MWs, wine journalists and the like – blind-taste and grade their way through 100-200 wines per day. (Actually hard work!) The bottles, grouped by style and price, are scored and ranked, and an array of dazzling medals, stars and points doled out accordingly.
Detractors charge that competitions are biased against subtlety (you never see a 100-point Muscadet) and that the results are meaningless – unreliable, and averaged out to the point of uselessness. But the more well-run competitions, like the trio above, bring real rigour, discipline and professionalism to the process, and in these cases the shiny badges are really worth something.
—————————-
***See for yourself: one of our Verdejos was recently awarded the title of ‘Best Verdejo in the World‘ – BUY IT HERE!
——————————
Comments are closed.