Wines are increasingly facing a very competitive playing field, and most producers are looking for a way to single out their wines to the consumer. Each year, dozens of local, regional, national and international wine competitions are organised worldwide aiming at offering wineries the chance to win fame and fortune for their brands.
A medal can help tremendously with marketing efforts. Get a gold medal in an influential competition and your wine could soon be flying off store shelves. Competitions are believed to be held also for the sake of the consumer, as they help choose the best quality wine among offers in the given class and price segment. For a consumer, a small sticker of golden, silver or bronze colour is a sort of assurance that this is a product with improved characteristics. Overall, results of wine competitions can offer a great resource to consumers for information from a diverse panel of experts, rather than just a single critic. It is also an additional psychological factor to confirm that the right decision was made. But consumers may not realise that competitions are also money-spinners for the organisers. This short article will focus on a handful of competitions to provide an understanding of how they operate.
Broadly speaking, a wine competition is an organized event in which trained judges or consumers competitively rate different vintages or brands of wine. Wine competitions have remained popular for at least a century and a half, starting from the famous international exhibition (Exposition Universelle) in Paris in 1855. Nowadays, almost every national fair sponsors a competition. Furthermore, there are dozens of competitions sponsored or organized by magazines (Vineyard and Winery Management, Decanter, The Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast, etc), wine societies, wine summits, chambers of commerce, newspapers, grape growers associations, wine industry professionals and a number of independent wine experts whose competition experience spans for several decades.
Formats vary from national or regional to international. Regional competitions can be useful in helping wineries target their sales efforts. They really give a good snapshot of who’s doing the best job with certain types of local grape varieties. Wines judged in the context of their geographical origin aim at developing greater sensitivity toward the complexities and “terroir” of regional wine characteristics, and also to measure the influence of regional growing conditions on the taste and quality of individual wines.
Such competitions tend to be organized by wineries, their trade associations, or entrepreneurs. They are popular with producers because there are many winners and the medals are useful in marketing their products. The regional competitions are a complement to the international ones. Competitions, especially on the international scale, are needed by producers who have reached a certain critical mass and have enough volume and quality to make their brand noticeable on the market. In the marketing jargon, competitions are a valuable tool for brand building, development or support.
Entering wine competitions isn’t really a matter of choosing the biggest or most famous contests, but about finding the ones that will help your winery achieve its goals – whether that means getting your wines in front of influential writers and sommeliers, gauging your winery’s performance against local competitors, or breaking into new accounts. One of the critical factors of recognition and thus success is an effective communication channel with various target groups. A competition’s influence increases when more people can read or learn about it. This is why publishing houses or exhibition groups stand behind the most recognized events. Names of organizers and standards of judging play a vital role in the image of a competition. One of the most important criteria in evaluating wine competitions is the quality of the judges. Before agreeing to enter, one has to be sure to check the competition’s website for a list of participating judges. They should be skilled tasters – professionals, not wine collectors, and must come from many countries, truly reflecting a world palate. As for judges and judging procedures, organizers of any serious event understand that only high standards ensure validity of a competition and trust for results. All prestigious international events are run with the involvement of experienced professionals who are particularly reputed in their area of work.
Transparency of the process is also a key issue. The process is described in detail, starting from receiving samples and ending in giving awards. Most competitions would have only organoleptic evaluation, but some also do chemical analysis.
Some wineries believe that by entering many wines in numerous competitions they will fare better than others, simply due to the odds. Wineries with large productions may enter a large number of wines because the odds are so good. They will send in dozens of wines, and if they win a medal they advertise it aggressively. For many wineries, however, it’s just not feasible – or even desirable – to enter more than a couple of competitions each year. With all the different contests out there, what’s the best selection strategy?
The most common form of wine competition is one in which awards are given to groups of wines in various winning categories on the basis of blind tasting. That is, the judges do not know the identity of the wines they are evaluating. The awards are frequently bronze, silver, gold, and double gold medals. However, ribbons of various colours are also sometimes used. It is not uncommon for one-third or more of the wines competing to be awarded medals. These competitions often include a “Best of Class” award, producing a clear category winner among those vintages awarded a gold medal. Some winemakers go home disappointed, some go home satisfied, and some stand behind the podium and thank the academy.
Regulations govern the classification of wine in many regions of the world. European wines tend to be classified by region, by grape colour (red, white), by grape variety ( Shiraz , Merlot, Cabernet, Chardonnay), by vintage (made from grapes that were grown and harvested in a specified year), by method of vinification (sparkling, white, rosé) and fortified liqueur wines. A recent addition involves wines made from organically produced grapes.
Competitions that specialise in judging according to regional classification such as wines of particular appellations are arranged in groups (mostly of 10) and evaluated by judges who are unaware of the geographic origin or producer. In contrast, other competitions group wines by grape varietal name and suggested retail price. Selected for their familiarity with wines from specific growing regions, the judges represent some of the most qualified experts in the industry: food and beverage media, winemakers, wine marketers, oenology and viticulture professors and researchers, restaurateurs and sommeliers, hospitality and tourism consultants, and fine wine retailers.
In the paragraphs that follow, reference is made to a number of current wine competitions approved by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) and a handful of other international competitions to provide an understanding of how they operate. This is not, however, an attempt to evaluate which competitions are best to enter, nor which ones seem more prestigious or have the best-qualified judges.
The OIV was established on 3 April 2001 with its head office in Paris , France . It is an intergovernmental organisation of a scientific and technical nature, and is recognised for its works concerning vines, wine, wine-based beverages, table grapes, raisins and other vine-based products. It has adopted specific standards for approved international wine competitions. For these competitions, an expert commissioner is appointed who participates in the works of the different juries and verifies that the rules and standards are observed. The approved competitions should be open, without discrimination, to all wines and promote knowledge of wines, encourage their production and responsible consumption as an active part of civilisation, make known and present characteristic types of wine produced in various countries to the public, and raise the technical and scientific level of producers and contribute to the development of their production. All entries must have an indication of the country of origin, including the place where the grapes were harvested and where the wines were made. All samples must be presented with labels and commercial presentations, exact identification of the participant and the exact designation of the product, in accordance with the regulations of the country of origin and analysis certificates carried out by an accredited laboratory.
The organiser is responsible for designating the jurors from several countries in cooperation with the OIV. The majority of jurors shall be oenologists or persons with an equivalent diploma in the field of wine. Persons having demonstrated a high qualification for tasting in the field of wine and may complete the jury. Within the same jury, the absolute majority of the jurors may not come from the organising country.
Each juror shall taste at the rate of no more than 45 samples per day, without prejudice to possible tastings asked again by the President of the Jury. This takes place in three sessions of approximately 15 samples each of dry wine, or two sessions of 15 samples of dry wine to which may be added a session of 10 samples from other categories.
Wines are judged according in groups to their classifications. The objective of categorising wine is essentially to present homogenous, successive series of samples based on the following categories and criteria: geographic provenance, vine varieties, vintage, sugar contents, wooded or un-wooded characteristics.
The wines are grouped and tasted by jurors during sessions in the following order:
1. Sparkling whites
2. Still whites
3. Sparkling rosés
4. Still rosés
5. Sparkling reds
6. Still reds
7. Wine under a film of yeasts
8. Natural sweet wine
9. Ice wine
10. Liqueur wine
A total of 100 points are allocated for judgment as follows: Visual (15), Nose (30), Taste (44), Harmony – Overall (11).
The sum of all the medals awarded to the samples must not exceed 30% of the total of samples presented at the competition. If this percentage is exceeded, the samples that obtained the lowest score are eliminated. The samples having obtained a determined number of points for a tasting shall be classified according to the following award level categories:
Grand gold – at least 92 points
Gold – at least 85 points
Silver – at least 82 points
Bronze – at least 80 points
List of major European and World wine competitions
1. Concours Mondial de Bruxelles: Belgium *
2. MUNDUS vini: Germany *
3. Berliner Wein Trophy: Germany *
4. Vinalies: France *
5. Thessaloniki International Wine Competition: Greece *
6. Concours International BACCHUS: Spain *
7. Concours International des Vins MONDE SÉLECTION: Belgium *
8. Concorso Enologico Internazionale VINITALY: Italy *
9. Mondial du Rosé: France *
10. Chardonnay du Monde: France *
11. Citadelles du Vin: France *
12. Concours International de vins du Brésil: Brazil *
13. Mundus Vini: Germany *
14. Mondial du Merlot: Switzerland *
15. TERRAVINO: Israel *
16. Chisinau Wines and Spirits Contest: Moldavia *
17. VINOVITA: Croatia *
18. La Selezione del Sindaco: Italy *
19. Vinagora: Hungary *
20. Concours professionnel International de vins et de spiritueux: Russia *
21. Cyprus Wine Competition: Cyprus *
22. International Wine Competition Muvina: Slovakia *
23. International Wine Contest Bucharest : Romania *
24. International Wine Challenge: UK
25. Decanter World Wine Awards: UK
26. International Wine and Spirit Competition: UK
27. American Wine Society Commercial Wine Competition: USA
28. Starwine International Wine Competition: USA
29. New World International Wine Competition: USA
30. San Francisco International Wine Competition: USA
31. Sélections Mondiales des Vins: Canada *
32. Intervin U.S./Canadian International Wine Competition: Canada
33. Sydney International Wine Competition: Australia
34. Vinalies Catador America Latina : Chile *
35. Malbec al Mundo: Argentina *
36. Vinandino: Argentina *
37. Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Wine & Spirit Competition: China
* Note: Competitions sponsored/accredited by the OIV. The conditions for granting sponsorship are defined by the guidelines as provided in the Internal Rules of the OIV.
One of the critical factors in the reputation and recognition of a wine competition and thus success is an effective communication channel with various target groups. A competition’s influence increases when more people can read or learn about it. This is why publishing houses or exhibition groups stand behind the most recognized wine events.
The following three leading British independent wine competitions constitute good examples of the current trend in the organisation of wine competitions in the form of a business venture:
1. The International Wine and Spirit Competition
2. The International Wine Challenge
3. Decanter World Wine Awards
International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC)
The International Wine and Spirit Competition is an annual wine competition founded in 1969 by the oenologist Anton Massel under the name Club Oenologique. In 1978, the name of the venture was changed to the International Wine and Spirit Competition and, within a short space of time, the disciplines of the competition were redefined. The original aim of the IWSC was to award excellence to wines and spirits worldwide encouraging consumer and trade recognition for quality products. A couple of years ago, the IWSC became part of Nexus Media Communications group that also owns Harpers weekly. In 2009, William Reed (owner of the International Wine Challenge) acquired Harpers from Nexus and the IWSC announced a new media partner, The Drinks Business.
Each year, the competition receives more than 70,000 entries from over 80 countries worldwide. The awards given by the competition are considered to be some of the highest honours in the industry. The two-stage judging process takes place over a six month period, comprising of blind tasting and detailed technical analysis undertaken by an independent laboratory. The competition has its own storage facilities and cellaring for over 30,000 bottles. All wines, spirits and liqueurs are blind tasted in groups divided by variety, region and vintage as necessary. Entrants are encouraged to get their products to the organisers as early as possible to give them time to settle. Wines and spirits are judged by panels drawn from 300 specialists from around the world. Many are Masters of Wine, some are winemakers or distillers, and others are trade specialists. Every judge is screened and panels selected for their knowledge and expertise and only taste products that they know well and understand.
All judges also attend an IWSC judges’ induction course. Judges sit in dedicated tasting rooms and are served only numbered glasses and an assessment sheet – at no time do they see the bottles. It takes over six months to judge all the products as they are sorted into over 1,500 categories. Initially, all judging is by region/area; variety/style/type; vintage/age etc. Wines and spirits that win awards may then go forward to the appropriate trophy category to compete at national or international level. It is the thoroughness that makes the IWSC’s awards so valuable. Awards are made on a points system and sponsored trophies are presented in selected categories. Technical analysis is carried out on Gold, Gold (Best in Class), Silver (Best in Class) award winning wines, spirits and liqueurs to ensure that all products are technically sound and will be of the same high quality when they reach the consumer as they were when our judging panels originally tasted them. The IWSC is the only competition to judge northern hemisphere wines and southern hemisphere wines at different times of the year in line with the different harvest times to ensure an equal and fair process. The competition has the support of many of the world’s top wine and spirits producers. The unique combination of detailed technical analysis and specialist judging panels means that gaining any IWSC award is an outstanding achievement.
International Wine Challenge (IWC)
The competition was launched in London in 1984 by Robert Joseph and Charles Metcalfe, originally as a feature in the Wine International magazine, later renamed Wine & Spirit, and now the Harpers Wine & Spirit Trade Review. The International Wine Challenge is a wine competition that attracts from around the globe over 10,000 entries each year.
The results of the competition are published on the International Wine Challenge website in May, in trade bi-weekly magazine Harpers Wine & Spirit Trade Review and the World’s Best Wines Guide. As for judges and judging procedures, the International Wine Challenge claims that their lists of judges include over 40 Masters of Wine. The IWC assesses every wine blind and judges each for its faithfulness to variety, region and vintage. Every wine is assessed independently of its price. Value for money awards are made after the wine has been judged for quality.
The competition takes place over two weeks. There are three rounds of blind tasting: groups of eight to 14 wines of the same style are tasted and scored by tables of four judges. There are over 400 judges. Wines scoring more than 84 points out of 100 advance to round two, where they are tasted again and gold medal winners in each style are awarded. Round three is a tasting of gold medal winners to decide on trophy winners. Throughout the rigorous judging processes, each medal winning wine is tasted at least three times and sometimes as many as six. There is no set number of trophies awarded. In September, the IWC Awards Dinner is held in London . Each year, the achievements of the top medal winners, and the leading wine merchants, are publicly rewarded at the International Wine Challenge Awards Dinner, with over 800 guests from the UK wine trade plus international producers and winemakers. The IWC awards ceremony officially unveils the Champion Trophy Winners, Merchant of the Year Awards, Great Value Trophy Winners and Winemaker of the Year Awards, along with Personality of the Year and Lifetime Achievement Award. Each year the tasting focuses on 10-year-old and five-year-old wines.
Decanter World Wine Awards
Decanter World Wine Awards was founded in 2004 and gained a reputation as one of the world’s most respected and influential wine competitions. Pulling out its roster of high-calibre wine writers to judge, this competition was immediately seen as a major player, not only in Britain but also around the world. An expert panel of tasters from around the world, chaired by Steven Spurrier, judge wines on a regional basis reflecting variety, style and retail price. The Awards are one of the most important competitions in the UK wine trade. The 2009 Decanter World Wine Awards attracted in total 10,285 wines – more than double the amount when the competition was launched six years ago. This phenomenal growth is due to Decanter’s reputation for using only the very best judges, coupled with its unparalleled global reach for the results. Any type of wine from anywhere in the world can enter the competition, whether red, white, rosé, still, sparkling, sweet or fortified. Wines must be labelled in accordance with the European Community provisions to show the name of the region and the geographical area of origin, the nominal volume and alcoholic strength. Wines must be made 100% from grapes grown in the country in which the wine is bottled, with the exception of those cases of cross-regional and intra-national blends recognised by the EU. A thorough understanding of regional style is crucial in order to recognise quality, rather than just rewarding “competition wines”. Wines are tasted blind in groups of 12 and in eight price bands. The success of the Decanter World Wine Awards rests on its unique judging process and world-class judging panels. Results are made on a regional basis to promote a sense of origin, and judges are only selected when they have an intimate knowledge of a specific region.
Decanter has around 200 judges including regional chairs, sitting on four-person panels. Three people on each panel do the main judging; the fourth is that region’s regional chair responsible for recording the results and serves as a tie-breaker. Most regional chairs participate in the discussions as well. The judges are an international who’s who of wine, and are well-known and highly regarded wine professionals. Four bottles must be submitted at a cost of £80 ($145) per wine if the samples come from in the U.K. (from the agent of an overseas wine) or £98 ($175) per wine if the sample comes from overseas. Wines do not have to be commercially available in the U.K. Decanter prints 50,000 copies of their Awards issue, which are circulated to over 80 countries. To showcase Gold medal wines each year, Decanter hosts a big event in September called “The Decanter World Wine Awards Presentation Dinner”, where results of the Awards are announced to the trade with a high-profile stand at the London International Wine Fair and at Vinexpo. The glamorous Awards dinner gathers together the crème de la crème of the wine industry under one roof.
Like all issues associated with wine, there are those for and those against wine competitions. The challengers argue that wine competitions are nothing more than money spinners. Slow moving stock is used for entering competitions. Medals are given out in thousands and have no value. Who is benefiting from these awards? It has to be the wine houses that clear their stock, the supermarkets who can drum up sales from promotions, and the companies which organize the competition.
Though some people view wine competitions as the domain of large-production brands, it is also true that they can help boutique wineries make a name for themselves. No matter which model is chosen, a competition is a type of business activity that should be commercially attractive for its organizers. When organized correctly, a competition will cut even in the first year and turns into a profitable business from the second or the third year. According to an internal source in one of the leading publishing houses, competitions generate the third largest revenue in the list of company’s activities.
Wine News and Information
* During his 42-year music career, Julio Iglesias, the Madrid-born singer, has sold more than 300 million albums in 14 different languages, making him among the top 10 best-selling musicians in history. The singer has bought so much wine over the years that he seems to have lost count of how many bottles he has in his three cellars in Spain , Miami and the Dominican Republic . “I’ve got about 5,000 top wines and hundreds of thousands of normal wines,” he admits, without hyperbole. Generous with his plentiful stock, he gives away about 100 cases of wine to friends every year.
Brought up in Madrid in the 1950s by his doctor father, Iglesias got by in the early days by drinking “any old stuff from Valdepeñas”. In his late teens, he played as a goalkeeper for Real Madrid football club until a near fatal car accident in 1963 ended his sporting career. During his rehabilitation, to develop dexterity in his hands, he started playing the guitar and subsequently writing music. The rest, as they say, is history.
Iglesias’ wine epiphany was equally notable. In 1973, he was invited by Baroness Philippine de Rothschild – a big Iglesias fan – to a dinner party at her home in Paris after one of his concerts. “She asked me what I thought of the wine and I told her that I’d never tasted anything like it,” Iglesias recalls with brio. “She summoned the butler to serve a second wine, this time in a decanter, which I later learned was Lafite 1961. It was the first time in my life I’d felt a wine all the way down to my toes. It worked its magic through my body and made me realise that wine had a lot more mystery and history than I had first thought.” The memory of the Lafite lingered, sending Iglesias on a lifelong wine journey. He began picking up the odd case in the countries he toured in – reds in France, whites in Germany – and got seriously into collecting in 1978, after building a 4,000-bottle cellar in the Miami home. Outside of France , Iglesias is a big fan of Spanish icon wines from Rioja and Ribera del Duero. “I love trying wines from lesser-known Spanish regions like Calatayud, Jumilla and Zamora ”. He also dips his toe in the New World via Australia , South Africa , California and Argentina .
* Despite continuing global financial woes, a sunbeam of optimism has started to shine brightly on the Italian wine industry. Figures released by the Italian Wine and Food Institute (IWFI) in New York named Italy the leading importer of wines in the USA . The news follows a recent Gallup Poll finding that says Americans now drink more alcohol than they have in a quarter century. In addition, a recent European study named the U.S. market the most robust and dynamic worldwide in terms of foreign wine sales. Overall, international imports to the U.S. decreased in quantity but increased in value this year. Yet, Italy still remains the number one imported bottled wine-producing nation with 850,160 hectolitres against Australia ’s 583,580 hectolitres. Meanwhile, the Spanish trade institute in New York released a report aimed at European vintners that paints a very sunny picture of the US imports market. Thanks to interest in wine by the so-called millennial generation, wine consumption in American has grown 32% from 2000 to 2009, the report said. It described the US market as “the most robust and dynamic”.
Monolithos Monthly News
The 2010 vintage is over. All the fruit has been picked. The white wines’ fermentation has been completed. The reds are all pressed and the fermentation is progressing under temperature control. During the 2010 vintage, a spell of hot weather in July accelerated ripening, necessitating the harvesting of a lot of grapes at short notice. However, we enjoyed a beautifully good harvest enhanced by a great team of dedicated friends comprising a team of expatriates. Martin Wood managed all the picking and hence the harvesting went as smooth as silk.
If at any time you are passing near the village of Pachna and wish to visit the winery or purchase any of our products, Martin Wood will be pleased to meet and assist you at his “Fig Tree Villa” in Pachna, so do not hesitate to phone him at 25-816212 or 99-165995.
We thank you for your continued support. Take care and always remember:
“Wine is sunlight, held together by water.”
Galileo Galilee
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