Wine Competitions are One Big Racket - My thoughts exactly.

August 20, 2008

Here is an article I wish I had the acumen to write - it echoes my sentiment precicley:

Wine Competitions are One Big Racket by Vinography

Now perhaps it’s the cynic in me but I just don’t trust wine competitions one bit and here is an excerpt from Pendock Uncorked that supports this notion:

“January’s WINE magazine Chenin Challenge continues a tradition of controversy.

As usual, the judging process was contentious with 19 wines declared “seeded players” and given a free pass to the second round judging, while 15 others were selected from the remaining (less fashionable) 103 the hard way – at a blind tasting.”

Now I don’t know who seed’s these wines and decides that they must go through to the next round, but it’s seriously dodgy and come to think of it - just downright ridiculous.

Here are some great excerpts from the Vinography article on wine competitions:

If I ever wanted to make a lot of money in the wine industry, I know just what I’d do. It wouldn’t be starting a vineyard, or publishing a book, or making my own wine, or marketing someone else’s. No if I wanted to make a pile of money, I’d simply organize a big wine competition.

Such competitions and their gold medals are good for one thing and one thing only: making a pile of money for the people who organize them. I don’t believe the do a bit of good for the wine industry as a whole, no matter how excited all those gold-medal-winning wineries are.

I’ve seriously thought about creating a competition myself : The Consumer’s Choice Award.

There is something vaguely evil about the whole scenario. It’s like a whole little economy that has sprung up to feed on insecurity, mediocrity, and hope.

The current state of American politics springs to mind…

And with so many wine competitions out there, from state fairs to so-and-so’s international wine competition, the thousands of gold medals handed out have become completely meaningless.

Veritas, Michaelangelo, Old Mutual Trophy Show, Winemakers Choice, Platters, Wine Magazine Challenges - where the hell do you look? And these are just some of the competitions we have here in SA!

If the Olympics awarded medals to 73% of the people that competed, it would be a completely worthless exercise

Most wines entered into these competitions are awarded Bronze medals - who cares about the Bronze medal winners and why reward mediocrity in the first place?

I’ve had my say, what do you think about wine competitions?

Posted in Awards, Views & Opinions