Wine competition

A wine competition is an organized event in which trained judges or consumers competitively rate different vintages or bands of wine. There are two types of wine competitions, both of which use blind tasting of wine to prevent bias by the judges.

Types of wine competition

The most common form of wine competition is intended to obtain valid comparisons of wines by trained experts. The awards are given to groups of wines in various categories on the basis of the blind tasting. The awards are frequently bronze, silver, gold, and double gold medals. However, ribbons of various colors are also sometimes used.These competitions often include a "Best of Class" award, producing a clear category winner among those vintages awarded a gold medal, for example the Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition. The other form of competition is most often organized by wine lovers and is consumer-oriented. The judges also evaluate the wines blind. However, instead of giving numerous awards, the wines are ranked by number from high to low in each wine category, a process known as ordinal ranking. Thus, there is only one first place winner, one second place, one third place, and so on down to the lowest place.

Wine competitions

There are critics who argue that the results of such competitions may be misleading and should not be relied upon as a measure of quality. Other commentators argue that, because of wine competitions, wine quality has improved in many countries around the world.

• World Wine Competition: A segment of the Worlds Largest Beverage Competition, the World Wine Competition was created in 1991 to celebrate the creation of the World Trade Organization.
• International Wine and Spirit Competition: 300 experts, considered to be the oldest and most prestigious wine and spirit competition in the world
• International Wine Contest: A competition organized in Brussels by Monde Selection, an international quality institute.
• New York Wine Tasting of 1973: Fourteen experts, including France’s Alexis Lichine, ranked 23 Chardonnays from France, California, and New York State.
• Paris Wine Tasting of 1976: This notable wine competition known as the "Judgment of Paris". The tasting was repeated at the San Francisco Wine Tasting of 1978 and at the tenth anniversary Wine Spectator Wine Tasting of 1986 and French Culinary Institute Wine Tasting of 1986
• Concours Mondial de Bruxelles “wine world-championship” with more than 6000 participating products from the four continents. As a whole, these samples represent more than 500 million marketed bottles.
• Wine Olympics (1979): A French food and wine magazine organized a competition of 330 wines from 33 countries evaluated by 62 experts.
• Great Chardonnay Showdown (1980): A total of 221 Chardonnays from around the world were evaluated by 25 judges.
• Grand European Jury Wine Tasting of 1997: European jury tasted three vintages (1989, 1992 and 1994) of 27 Chardonnays from seven countries.
• The Tasting that Changed the Wine World: 'The Judgment of Paris' 30th Anniversary. A 30-year anniversary replication of the 1976 Paris competition.

See also

• Globalization of wine
• Vertical and horizontal wine tasting
• Food and Drink competitions