What’s in a name? Or, in the case of wine awards, what’s in a sticker?
The green-and-gold Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show sticker on your bottle of wine has quite a story to tell – one of 977 wines that entered, tasted by nine judges over three intensive days to find 631 medal winners, of which just 40 achieved gold medals, and were whittled down even further to 23 winners of ‘best in class’ trophies.
Respected UK wine critic Jancis Robinson, who has served on the show’s international judging panels, reckons “this may indeed be the world’s toughest wine competition”.
As consumers on the sidelines of all this rating, judging and medal-awarding (and there are LOTS of wine competitions), we can all be forgiven for sometimes wondering how much to rely on all those different stickers and awards tables, especially when competition results can vary so widely – a wine wins gold here, but nothing there; different panels giving vastly different ratings to the same wine.
Isn’t it all rather random, personally subjective? A roll of the dice or a spin of the roulette wheel?
Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show chairman Michael Fridjhon said it’s not just about statistics but also about the consistency and credibility of the results, pointing to the “extraordinary coherence” of this year’s results: about 90% of the trophy winners had won gold medals in the past five years, and several also appeared on the podium for the second year running with a next vintage of the wine that won last year.
These included Leeuwenkuil Heritage Syrah, the 2015 vintage taking best red wine of the show this year, as the 2014 did last year; and Stark-Condé’s Round Mountain doing the same, with the 2017 taking best sauvignon blanc trophy, as did the 2016 last year.
The key point is that these results and judgments as to what constitutes the very best of the best, come from almost completely different judges each year.
The majority of the judges – and especially the three international judges – are “new” each year, or rotated to judge different classes than the previous year. The wines in each class are tasted blind – no indication of name or price – by a panel of three of the nine judges.
While some judges will taste more than one class, no class has the same panel of three as any other.
What possible chance then can past winners have of achieving a gold medal or trophy the following year? The answer must be that, firstly, the consistent winners are achieving consistent quality, and, secondly, that “the panellists are skilled judges, able to discern and reward the criteria the show sets out to identify and commend,” said Fridjhon.
Those criteria, he said, relate to guiding consumers to quality wines amongst the ever-increasing array of choices, since “wine isn’t (or shouldn’t be) made to win prizes, it’s made to be consumed, and with food”.
The trophy, gold and silver medallists are all available at Makro (makro.co.za/trophywineshow), while stocks last, until the end of June at their pre-award prices.