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What good are wine competitions?

Are wine competition medals a useful buying indicator for consumers? Or are wine competitions a scam where producers buy medals to make their bottles look impressive? This article explains (in quite a lot of detail) what wine competitions are and how they work. I also describe why I think wine competitions are a helpful indicator of quality for consumers and why you can, in general, trust the medals as a “plus signal”. But not all wine competitions are equal. I discuss differences between how they are organised and the worth of their medals. All of this is based on my experience as a wine competition judge and taster for over twenty years on four continents. I also include a brief discussion on what quality is, and if you can evaluate quality objectively — or if it is always subjective, with a short note on “typicity”.

What is a wine competition? How does it work?

A wine competition is essentially a big tasting where wine producers have submitted wines to be tasted. The wines are tasted by an experienced tasting panel (tasters, sometimes called jurors or jury) and given scores. The best wines are given medals. Often, there are three different levels of medals: gold-silver-bronze, grand gold-gold-silver, or some other classification. Sometimes there are “super medals”, like best-in-show, best-of-category etc. It varies from competition to competition. The wines are submitted by the producer. For each wine they submit, they pay a participation fee.

The medals are announced with fanfare and can be used as a marketing tool by the producers. They can be a purchasing guide to consumers. Medal stickers or neck collars are often pasted on the bottles. In some competitions, such as the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles CMB, the tasters are required to give a short written description of the wines in addition to the numerical score, which is then synthesised (using AI tools!) and given to the producer together with a graphical representation of the tasting comments.

I have participated in quite a few competitions in several different countries and of several different types. This article is based on my experience from these competitions. The one I most frequently participate in is the “CMB” (Concours Mondial de Bruxelles) that exists in several different versions: red and white wine, sparkling wine, sauvignon blanc wines, rosé wines, Chilean wines, sweet and fortified wines and some more. (The “Bruxelles” part of the name is historic; today, the only link to the Belgian capital is that their office is there, but the competitions take place elsewhere.)

This type of flavour chart or flavour profile is one of the feedback given to the producers at the CMB Concours Mondial. They also get a synthesis in words of what the tasters have commented:

I’ve also done many other competitions, Grenaches du Monde, Concours Amphore (organic wines), Apulia Best Wine, Rendez-vous du Chenin, The Silk Road Wine Competition (Silk Road Competition, China), Michelangelo International Wine & Spirits Awards (MIWA, South Africa), VinCE (Hungary), Challenge Entre-deux-Mers, Citadelles du Vin and many more. (More on our participation in competitions here.)

There is an abundance of wine competitions around the world. Here are some of the others that are well-known (I have not had the possibility to participate in either of these):

• International Wine Challenge (IWC), UK
• Mundus Vini, Germany
• Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA), UK
• Balkans International Wine Competition
• Vinalies, France (for oenologists)
• Vinordic Wine Challenge, Sweden (being Swedish, I have to mention it, don’t I? Although it is very regional.)
• And many more

Many competitions focus on a specific grape variety: syrah, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, vranec/vranac etc., sometimes with the (fake) claim to select “the world’s best”. We, BKWine, have also once organised a wine competition: The Scandinavian Wine Fair Competition in Paris in the early ‘00s.

What’s the purpose?

The primary purpose of a wine competition is to select and honour wines that are considered particularly good. From a wine producer’s perspective, the purpose is, of course, to serve as a marketing tool. A wine with a medal may sell better. And maybe get recognition for a job well done. The benefits to a consumer is that medals can guide you to good value or excellent quality wines or wine regions that you might not otherwise have discovered. It is a buying guide in a similar way that critics’ wine scores or tasting notes guide people to “better” quality wines.

Given that wine competitions generally are more or less blind tastings, they can be seen as more reliable buying guides than commentaries from wine critics who have tasted wines non-blind. If you are at Chateau Thisorthat or Domaine Grandvin and taste their wines, you are inevitably influenced by the environment and the people there. If you taste wine in elegant gilded salons of a Bordeaux chateau, the luxurious cadre and ambiance will influence your scores for the wines. No one, no matter how experienced, escapes that. Even if you taste the wines (in some way) “blind” in that kind of context, you’re biased. If you know what kind or category of wine you’re tasting, you’re biased in one way or another. Most wine competitions are not subject to the same bias, at least not those that are fully blind.

Another difference between competitions and wine critics’ individual scores is that in a wine competition the wine has been tasted and appreciated be several independent professionals with an acknowledged competence, not just by one single person (sometimes with an unknown competence). In fact, looked at it this way, a commendation by a wine competition is more reliable and trustworthy than a tasting commentary or a score from an individual wine critic or wine journalist.

Wine competitions also give lesser-known wine regions (as well as producers) the possibility to shine and be judged fairly. I once tasted a series of very impressive Bordeaux style wines. The panel I was in scored the wines high. If we had known that it actually was a series of Chinese wines, I believe we would have been more reluctant to put such high scores. As I said, no one is free from bias or prejudice, no matter how experienced or professional you are. But again, this only works if you taste blind, not knowing what category of wines you are tasting. Not all competitions work like that.

From the organiser’s point of view, a competition is a business. They charge the producers a fee. The CMB charges up to €185 per sample. The Decanter World Wine Awards charges up to £170 + VAT. The International Wine Challenge charges up to £153 + VAT (2024). Grenaches du Monde, €120 + VAT, etc. Not an awful lot of money. Some of these competitions have many thousands of participating wines, the CMB Red & White some 10,000, the Decanter DWWA 18,000, so it is a big organisation and complex logistics to put them in place.

Can you trust wine competitions? Do they help the consumers?

I used to be very sceptical about wine competitions, doubting that they added any value to consumers. After participating in a few, I changed my mind. I saw how it worked and the serious effort that was put into them by the tasters. Today, I do think they serve a purpose for consumers and that the medals can generally be trusted. Wine competitions are not very different from wine scores (points) or reviews from individual wine tasters or critics (Parker, Suckling, Wine Spectator etc.). People use tasting scores (points) as a guide to if a wine is good or not. A buying guide.

Wine competition medals are very similar; they’re an indication of the “quality” of a wine. The main difference is that in a wine competition, the wine has been tasted by several different people, and they have all more-or-less agreed that the wine is of a certain quality. More than one person has liked it. Another difference is that wine scores give the illusion of being exact; a 94-point wine is supposedly better than a 93-point wine. Wine tasting and wine quality are never that exact. One can argue that it is a more realistic evaluation of the wine with ranges of scores that give a medal. For example, “a score above 92 is a Grand Gold”. (Competitions usually don’t publish the exact scores, just the medal.)

Some people prefer the scores of a certain individual taster, “I know I have the same preferences as the wine critic John Doe, so I go with his scores”. But in reality, very few wine consumers care so much about it that they get to understand how different tasters score.

So, for me, a medal (preferably from a well-run and reputable competition) does carry a weight and does give an indication of quality.

“Competitions make money, so it’s bad or corrupt”

One reproach that is sometimes mentioned regarding wine competitions is that they are commercial enterprises organised to make money for the organisers. “They’re money-spinners.” “They charge a fee to the producers that send in their wines!” That seems to me a misguided critique. What else should they be? Organised by governments or charitable organisations?

There is nothing wrong with having a profit motive. Quite the contrary. It is the same for everyone, journalists write about wine in the (often vain) hope to make money, wineries make wine to make money, sommeliers serve wine in restaurants to make money. As long as the competition is well-organised and professionally run, criticising it for having a profit motive makes no sense.

“The best wines don’t participate in competitions”

Another criticism that is sometimes voiced is that the best wines don’t participate. This is mostly correct. But there’s nothing surprising in this, nor anything that diminishes the value of a competition. Wine competitions are essentially a marketing tool to help bring lesser-known wines out into the spotlight and a consumer guidance tool. Wine celebrities (famous wines) may think that they don’t need that.

For famous names there might also be a certain risk involved. What if they don’t get a medal? How embarrassing…! Well, no, not getting a medal would not be embarrassing since it is never (to my knowledge) made public which wines participate and don’t get a medal. But it might be embarrassing for a famous name to get a “lowly” silver and not a Grand Gold, of course.

Do medals “work”?

Do wines that have received a medal sell better? Is it a good marketing tool? In general, studies indicate that, yes, medals are a good signal to consumers. See, for instance, “The Causal Impact Of Medals On Wine Producers’ Prices And The Gains From Participating In Contests”, mentioning a 13% impact on price. But it depends. Some markets are less keen on medals.

One would hope that consumers could tell the difference between a good medal and a not so good medal. (How much is a medal worth from a competition that gives 80% of the wines medals?) But I doubt that is the case. I fear that most consumers have no idea of the reputation of different competitions. It is probably more important what nationality the medal is. French medals work better in France. For example, the Salon de l’Agriculture competition. British medals work in the UK but less so in France. Australia, also a country keen on wine competitions, prefer Australian medals. If people even bother to read what it says on the medal…

Equally, I don’t think the colour of the medal makes that much of a difference. For the consumer. A medal, any colour, is good. It is probably more important for the producer (or the wine buyer, distributor). A Grand Gold is a bigger confidence boost than Silver.

Europe, yes — What about USA, Australia…?

This discussion is, admittedly, very Euro-centric. The competitions I know well are mainly European or organised in a European style.

I understand that Australian competitions can be quite different, for example with long rows of 20-30 wines that you can taste back and forth as you wish and change your mind on as you go along the flight and also discuss with other tasters. At least some of the competitions. For some you need to do a pre-competition training (that you might have to pay for). Overall very different. I know nothing about American (US) competitions. I have never participated in a competition in the USA (although I have attended a few in South America).

The day I am invited to participate in a competition in the US, Australia, New Zealand or any other non-European country, I will be able to say more about them. Invitations are welcome!

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