Wine competition results

There has been lots recently about the 2008 competitions run by Decanter and the IWC. Given I've decided my next and final Diploma unit 1 essay will be about wine competitions I'm looking carefully at how the results are portrayed.

Sunday's Observer Food Monthly has 2 pages on "cheap but not plonk - Drink for under £10" which gives the medal winners from the DWWA available from the high street.

Tim Atkin's in Sunday's Observer magazine goes over the wines from M&S in an article entitled "Top Marks". Marks and Spencer won supermarket of the year award from both the IWC and the DWWA.

It's interesting analysing how the DWWA and IWC are promoting their results. Decanter has the advantage of having a magazine fairly easily available in the high street (M&S even now sells it in selected stores). It also has a name more readily known than Wine & Spirit magazine, published by William Reed the company behind the IWC. With "Spirit" in the title and less widespread availability than Decanter, its high street appeal is less. However the IWC has Tim Atkin who writes for a number of publications and is one of the co-chairmen of the IWC. The competition whose results don't seem to get as much visibility is the IWSC. I'm not sure why that is.

The title of the essay I'll be writing is Glittering Prizes or Fool’s Gold? – How useful are wine competitions? I see from an entry over at Jancis Robinson's site another candidate is preparing their essay and asking questions about competitions. I'll probably do something similar as we have to contrast and compare competitions in both hemispheres and I know nothing about Southern Hemisphere competitions.

I'm going to attempt to show no bias. As a helper at the IWC over the last 2 years and a judge at the IWSC I'll own up to my personal involvement. I don't feel the competitions offer either "glittering prizes or fool's gold" but given the kind of features over the weekend in the Observer, these wines are bound to see a positive impact on sales. Are they good wines? Well, having had experience of the judging I would say "yes" they are. Some may be commercial but that doesn't make them "bad" wines.