Are Wine Competitions a Load of Rubbish?

Should you care if your wine boasts a chintzy gold sticker?

I wanted to title this post What’s the Point of Wine Competitions? But all-round feather-ruffler Robert Joseph already claimed that headline in 2014. So I channelled my inner Daily Mail clickbait demon instead.

If you’re a natural wine fan like me, you probably wonder about the point of wine competitions. After all, the natural wine movement generally positions itself as the counter-culture. Point scoring and medals is surely the business of the evil establishment? I’ll get to that, and why I still participate as a judge in at least one major competition. I also ask whether all competitions are equal, and who benefits from them.

First, a quick reprise. What exactly are wine competitions, and how do they work? Most of you will have seen those bottles on the shelf with shiny gold, silver or bronze stickers emblazoned on the neck. This is the extent of the average wine drinker’s exposure to wine awards.

There are dozens if not hundreds of these competitions worldwide, ranging from small and localised (Danube IWC, Thessaloniki International Wine & Spirits Competition) to huge (Decanter, IWC, Concours Mondiale de Bruxelles). They all operate in a similar way:

• Wineries submit their wines to the competition, in return for a fee, usually somewhere between €100 - €200 per wine submitted.

• The competition organisers invite a number of wine professionals to participate as judges. Big names and senior judges add prestige to the larger competitions.

• Judges taste the wines blind, in flights organised by style, region, price or other factors. Typically judges work in panels of three or four, and judging for major competitions can take three or four days or more.

• Scoring systems vary, but in general the average score from a panel determines whether the wine receives a medal, a commendation or nothing at all. Some competitions cap the number of medals that can be awarded.

• Once the results have been announced, wineries can buy stickers to put on their bottles, highlighting the relevant medal and revelling in the glory.

Clearly, major competitions are also major money-spinners. In some cases they provide financial support to less lucrative parts of a business. Decanter magazine would almost certainly be toast by now, were it not for the revenue from the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) - now the world’s largest wine competition, with over 18,000 entries each year.

It’s worth noting that the largest competitions (DWWA, IWC, CMB etc) are quite extraordinary logistical accomplishments, requiring massive warehouse operations, fully computerised stock control and custom IT solutions that allow judges to work quickly and digitally through their flights.

Who benefits from wine competitions?

The marketeers tend to push the consumer piece harder than anything else. Decanter says “Winning a medal at DWWA is a trusted mark of approval for consumers and buyers internationally” in their promotional flyer. Concours Mondiale de Bruxelles takes a typically more ornate tone, stating their mission “to provide consumers with a guarantee: that it will single out wines of irreproachable quality offering a truly pleasurable drinking experience.”

In my experience consumers often display both healthy scepticism and involuntary attraction towards medal stickers. It’s not unlike our relationship with advertising. Everyone loves to proclaim they are not susceptible to its influence, in truth everyone is to some degree.

A medal on the label is proven to positively bias purchasing decisions, albeit mostly in environments where no expert advice is available - supermarkets, basically. The actual medal (bronze, silver, gold, grand gold, platinum) probably matters a lot less than the awarding body. Savvy consumers are unlikely to be as impressed by the Thessaloniki International Wine & Spirits Competition as they will be by Decanter or the International Wine Challenge (IWC). Then again, not everyone looks that closely. It can just be a case of “ooh look, shiny things”.

But it’s not simply about sales. For many wineries, gaining awards is about kudos. It’s about putting themselves out there and benchmarking performance against their competitors.

Wineries from lesser known regions and countries are often particularly eager to gain positive press and media attention. When a Vranec from Northern Macedonia or a Škrlet from Uplands Croatia receive a gold medal in a major competition, it sends an important message to the world that these are serious wine producing areas.

Not all wine competitions are equal

As I mentioned above, some competitions are huge and truly global in the scope of entries and influence, whilst others are very regional. There are also big differences in terms of judging methods and the specifics of awards. I’ve detailed some of Europe’s biggest below, plus the larger category of OIV competitions. The USA boasts a clutch of similar major awards, of which I have zero experience. Here is a useful list.

I will be chairing a new orange wine panel at this year’s Asia Wine Trophy in Korea this October. More on that later in the year.

Decanter World Wine Awards

The competition that I know best is DWWA, having judged it since 2018. Decanter judging panels are put together based on specialism. So, for example, I judge on panels for the Caucasus (entries mostly from Georgia) and the Balkans, including Croatia and Slovenia.

As judges, we know the country, region, sub-region, grape variety, style and price category of the wine. A panel of three or four judges will taste the flight in silence, and then discuss their scores and opinions before agreeing on a final result for each wine.

Scoring uses the 100 point system (of which I am not a fan, but hey), with 95 points and up needed for gold, 90 and up for silver, and 86 and up for bronze. Anything scoring 85 or less gets no medal. Gold medal winners are retasted a week later by a senior panel, at which time some may be demoted while others might be promoted to platinum (97 points and up) or even Best in Show.

My experience of Decanter judging is that the quality, experience and professionalism of the judges is exceptional. Discussions about the wines are high level, and often the regional chair can learn from judges based in the country or region under scrutiny. Most importantly, I’ve generally found my fellow judges to be open-minded when some of the more non-standard wines are encountered. Yes, we do judge low intervention and orange wines - sometimes even entire flights.

International Wine Challenge (IWC)

This major competition is also judged in London in the spring. It has a star-studded panel of co-chairs including Tim Atkin MW, Jamie Goode, Helen McGinn and Oz Clarke. I’ve never judged for the IWC so I asked my fellow judge Will Hill, who has done time at both competitions. Comparing IWC to DWWA, he said “There is much less focus on regional speciality here. I found myself judging flights one after other from England, South Africa, Loire, Chile, Spain.” While he appreciated the variety he adds “I think it would do the wines more service to have regional specialists staying focused on what they know.”

Nonetheless, the IWC has a rigorous, multi-stage judging process where an award winning wine may be scrutinised up to three times before any medal is confirmed. The medal structure is similar to DWWA’s, as is the quality of the judges.

The IWC also has a sake category in addition to grape-based wine.

International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC)

Also judged in London, one of the IWSC’s points of difference is its focus on spirits, vermouth, liqueurs and other categories not covered by DWWA or IWC.

The IWSC’s methodology is comparable to DWWA’s with regional specialists and panel discussions before decisions are finalised.

The IWSC limits the number of samples tasted per day to 65, significantly less than DWWA where most judges will taste around 80 wines per day.

Competitions under the patronage of, or using the methodology of the OIV

The largest group of competitions are those affiliated to the OIV (The International Organisation of Wine and Vine), which is a global institution headquartered in France that creates and oversees standards and collects statistics on every aspect of wine production and consumption. The OIV grants what it calls its ‘patronage’ to 27 competitions, then there are many others such as the aforementioned Concours Mondiale de Bruxelles (CMB) that adopt its tasting and scoring methodology. Mundus Vini is a major competition organised by the Meininger publishing group which used to be OIV-affiliated, but now uses its own - albeit similar - system.

I’ve judged twice for CMB and also for other smaller OIV-affiliated competitions, and I am not a fan. The methodology is regimented, old fashioned and - in my opinion - often meaningless in today’s wine world. Awarding up to 15 points for a wine’s appearance is clearly going to be an issue when judging unfiltered wines, which I don’t personally think should be penalised.

The worst aspect of the OIV’s pedantic rules isn’t the scoring rubric, but rather their insistence that judges should not discuss their scores before they are finalised, nor should the panel chair try to influence any of the judges. What exactly is the point of having the judges taste together at all?

Many gold medal winners in DWWA would never have got over the line without discussion, retasting and encouragement from the panel chair. It is in most judges’ nature to be rather cautious, especially in the sterile atmosphere of a bland tasting room and the context of blind tasting.

Another characteristic of the OIV method is that tasters have no information about what they are tasting, beyond the colour/style (red/white/rose/orange) and sweetness level. This is so far removed from any consumer experience (no-one buys wine without knowing at least what country it came from, do they?) that I don’t see any advantage. All wines need context.

The OIV’s medal thresholds are significantly lower than the other competitions mentioned here. Bronze is 80 points and up, Silver 85, Gold 90 and Grand Gold 92. CMB dispenses with Bronze altogether, starting at Silver.

It’s a poorly guarded secret amongst supermarket buyers that sending wines to CMB is money well spent because it’s easier to get a medal for a fairly humble wine. That said, CMB and the OIV cap their medals at 30% of the entries, which is not the case for DWWA or the other UK competitions I mentioned above. DWWA has been criticised for awarding too many medals (up to 80% of the entries get an award), but I’m not honestly sure if artificially capping the number of medals is a better approach.

CMB’s standard of judges can be somewhat variable. Anyone can apply, given the merest hint of wine industry experience. Judges are paid travel and accommodation expenses only. The attraction for judges is an all-expenses paid trip somewhere nice (CMB changes its location each year), with only the mornings taken up with judging and the rest of the day free for winery visits or general tourism. Expansive lunches and dinners are a key part of the proposition.

Why I judge wine competitions

You might think that spending a few days to a week judging industrial swill wouldn’t be much of a draw to a natural/artisanal wine fan like myself. But you’d be wrong. The quality and range of the wines submitted can be very high, depending partly on the prestige of the competition.

DWWA receives around 200 entries each year from Georgia alone. This year, around 40 were amber wines. These are always fascinating flights to judge, as they span the gamut from no holds barred Kakhetian monsters with tannins that could wake the dead, to slick, manipulated examples that have the merest nod to Georgia’s traditional style.

The submissions from Croatia, Slovenia and the Balkans are similarly varied, from dull, supermarket Malvazija to exciting rare varietals and orange wines of all shapes and sizes. How often do you get the chance to taste an entire flight of Prokupac? One of Serbia’s indigenous red varieties, it can be quite excellent.

Although small production, artisanal wines are generally what I buy, drink and write about, I am not slavish. Natural wine as a concept can easily become ghettoised. Judging at competitions like DWWA allows me to put my head above the parapet and take a temperature reading of what else is going on in the wine world.

It is fascinating to see to what extent low intervention winemaking has penetrated the mainstream world. At DWWA there are often surprises when a flight of what looks like straight-up supermarket plonk suddenly reveals an intruder. It might be an obviously unfiltered wine, a white with undeclared skin contact or a nouveau style of Plavac Mali. Equally interesting is how fellow judges react.

The collegiate atmosphere of tasting and discussing wines, often with a very diverse range of experience and opinions, is empowering. Every year I learn a lot from my colleagues and from the whole experience. Any competition that can engender such a positive atmosphere must have something of value for the wine world at large. Maybe I am not the audience for most medal-winning wines, but there are some that I’d love to meet at the dinner table again.

Competitions are a bit like the wines themselves. They vary hugely in terms of size, quality and influence. None of them are trivial however. A huge amount of effort and thought goes into their processes. Whether you value the outcome will depend on your personal purchasing habits and wine preferences, but in all cases multiple wine professionals tasted, swirled, cogitated and sweated over the results.

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I’d love to hear your take on this. Do you ever buy award winning wines? Do you care who and what the award is? If you’re primarily a natural wine fan, would you like to see natural wines with medal stickers on the labels?