It is just another wine competition

I just came back from another competition and I find frustrating when wine makers introduce the medals before the wines, suddenly a sticker has made the wine better.

It is just another wine competition, one of the several hundreds, I am only guessing the number since nobody has ever counted them but we should not be too far from the truth. It is just another wine competition for producers looking to stick a medal to their bottles, it does not really matter what the medal says nor its color, it is all about the stickers. Consumers do not know and care about the competition, whether it is the town wine competition between 3 wineries where they all get a medal or an international competition with thousand of wines from all over the world, and wine makers know this and keep entering their wines to all competitions until a medal is won.

Consumers don’t care and don’t want to or have the time to find out what competition is, after all is just a bottle of wine, the medal is enough, it is the sticker that get purchases, and the brighter the color, the more attention the wine gets. Retailers know it and it is down to them to advertise and promote the award, not the wine, and we have seen many times how misleading adverts can be especially when they are about wine. And who cares if medals are now given to pretty much any wine, that to get a medal a wine needs to score just over 80 out of 100 points, not much since below that threshold, wines are not that good.

Wine competitions are businesses on their own that need to make profits, and as long as producers are happy to pay to enter their wines there will always be plenty of, medals are never enough, there will always be a producer willing to pay trying to get one, there is too much competition in the wine industry and a medal is a medal all over the world, from USA to China passing for the UK. Competitions need to give medals and awards, no medals mean no entries and no revenue. Do medals sell? Due to the high number of them, is the retailer that decides their faith.

Looking at the statistics of wine competition, the amount of wines awarded makes the whole competition look like a farce, either every wine is good, or there is something wrong with the system, and as if gold, silver and bronze weren’t enough, a new medal was added, the “commended”. Meaning, your wine is not good enough for a bronze but since you entered it, we will give you a medal, and any decent wine should get at least a commended, I say should because it is all down to the judges and I have already written about it