Medals – do they mean the wine is good?

Many of us have been wondering thorough a bottle shop and seen a bottle of inexpensive wine festooned with more medal than General “Stormin” Norman Schwartzkoff has pinned on his uniform.

So, it would be fair to assume the wine should be pretty damn good, in fact with that much gold it should be fantastic. You plonk your $20 down the counter, grab the change, walk down the road to your favourite BYO, the cork is pulled, you order the food, you taste the wine and go “hummm, this is pretty ordinary.”  So why? How come it won all those medals, and what’s Class 56 at the West Bowral Show anyway?

To answer these questions, you need to understand a little about the show system. I have broken the shows into four classes.

1.  Small Regional shows like say Mudgee, Cowra, and Ballarat etc. These shows are small and most wines entered are from the local area. In many of these small shows, a high percentage of medals are awarded.

2.   The next category includes the larger regions like the Barossa, and the smaller Capitol city wine shows like Hobart. Medals are normally a bit harder to get here.

3.  The third category is where the men are separated from the boys. The major Capitol City shows like Melbourne and Sydney. These shows tend to have a lower percentage of medals awarded and “not every child wins a prize” if you know what I mean.

The National Wine Show in Canberra is the most prestigious show. To enter, a wine must have already won a medal in a regional or capitol city show, so in theory only the best wines make it to Canberra. Generally speaking there are less medals awarded in Canberra than in most other shows.

4.   The final category represents the overseas wine shows. These medals are a marketers dream. The medals like “Top Gold in the Reykjavik Wine Show,” sounds impressive, but its not! All the wines entered may have all basically been mass produced swill that belongs in a plastic bladder that’s wrapped in a cardboard box. But the medal looks great on the bottle!

Some of the other classics are “Judged Best Wine in the World” at the XYZ City Show. Another one that sounds impressive, but to enter 100,000 bottles of the wine may have to be produced and the wine must be less than 12 months old and cost less than $5.00. Get the picture? More high grade swill!

Generally speaking, the smaller the show the easier it is to win a gong. So if you see a wine that has won 5 bronze medals at wine small regional wine shows, it doesn’t mean much. However if the wine has won 2 Silver in Canberra, 3 Gold in Melbourne and 2 Bronze in Sydney, it should be a pretty good wine.

So, the moral of the story is don’t be impressed with the medals on the bottle, unless they are from major shows there are no guarantees. You are much better asking for advice from the bottle shop attendant, friends, or try and follow a wine writer like say James Halliday. You will quickly see how their taste and yours differ and where you agree or disagree with their findings.

Ah, and that wine that won a Gold in Class 56 at the West Bowral Wine Show mentioned at the start of this article. What’s class 56 anyhow? Isn’t that the class for the bottle with the best-looking label? Yep, these medals can mean a lot, but a lot of nothing in many cases.

Cheers

Ric

Copyright © Ric Einstein 2003