I wonder if someone from Australia can give me a breakdown of the gold medals awarded to wines there. In other words, which ones are really significant etc.? Many relatively inexpensive bottles have one or more usually gold but sometimes silver stickers announcing the awards. For example, of what value is the Mudgee Trophy Class 18 or a Gold Medal Class 81? It seems rather nineteenth century like when every bottle of brown sauce or box of tea seems to have collected a gold medal at some time.
Hi James This is, I think, a can of worms you may have just prised the lid off. I personally pay little attention to medals, trophies etc. To me these are simply more for their marketing verbiage than anything. The single most prestigious trophy awarded in Oz is the Jimmy Watson Trophy (JWT) awarded at the Melbourne Wine Show for the best 1 year old red wine. This is of course odd in itself, the best 1 year old red is then hailed by the general (not wine) press as the best red wine in the country. These wines are nearly always a totally different creature by release. A great marketing opportunity sure but who would give a trophy for a building that is half finished? Yet the Oz wine industry continues to do it year after year. Some winerys also make their wines in an attempt to win this trophy and only the big boys generally can afford to play those games. Last years winner was Cassella Premium Cab Sav 03. These are the people who bring you Yellow Tail and reap enormous profits for their efforts. The have very little "street cred" amongst the Oz wine community and so I guess they thought they would purchase some by buying up some good fruit (not riverland stuff for sure) and custom designing a wine to win the JWT. (Though I have been told but some tasters I respect that their premium range is pretty darn good).
To try and actually address your question though, The Capital City Shows (Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra) top the list, followed by the wine region shows. Trophies are best followed by gold, silver and bronze medals, the class simply refers to wine style. You can find some info about the classes and major awards from the upcoming Melbourne wine show here
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You will see that there are classes for commercial wines (more than 2500 cases production) so wines are benchmarked in their class and compete for points based on that premise (which is of course known to the judges) This is how some of the relatively inexpensive wines have gold medals (in their class, is the unstated sub text). This will be clean and well made wines (though usually a bit dilute in flavour) fine for everyday drinking but still a $10 wine. Hope that helps shed some light for you.
The number of 'shows' are far too numerous to mention. Most regions have their own show, each state has a 'Royal Show', then there are a plethora of fringe shows. I recently saw a label on a red wine boasting 12 medals.... NOT one of the medals won would amount to any great accolade imho.
The Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide Shows are significant, the Jimmy Watson (for a 2 yo red) is worth money in the bank, and I keep an eye on the Mclaren Vale show results only because it is the home region of my fave Shirazes, and is judged by local winemakers...thus the awards are given to their peers afer comparing the regions wines amongst temselves.
Hope this helps.... and don't listen to Auntie Flo' who won a gold medal at the Nar Nar Goon Flower Show for her 2004 Dandelion Wine...:>)
??>> I wonder if someone from Australia can give me a breakdown ??>> of the gold medals awarded to wines there. In other words, ??>> which ones are really significant etc.?<
??>> >>> ??>>
??>> AG> To try and actually address your question though, The AG> Capital City Shows (Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart, AG> Perth, Adelaide, Canberra) top the list, followed by the AG> wine region shows. Trophies are best followed by gold, AG> silver and bronze medals, the class simply refers to wine AG> style. You can find some info about the classes and major AG> awards from the upcoming Melbourne wine show here AG>
??>>>>>>>> More snipping apologize for my ignorance, much as I appreciate ??>> Australian wines. Is the real example I gave, "Mudgee", a ??>> recognized region? ??>>
??>> James Silverton. MF> Snip
MF> Hi James - look at
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for all sorts of MF> official stuff about Australian wine. In particular go to MF>
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for official regions - click on MF> links in the tables for sub-regions etc.
Martin!
Thanks very much. That's a very useful list. At least I now know that Mudgee is for real even if it's just a sub-region of Central Ranges. I wonder, would there be a Central Ranges Gold medal in contention?
??>>>>>>>> More snipping apologize for my ignorance, much as I appreciate ??>> Australian wines. Is the real example I gave, "Mudgee", a ??>> recognized region? ??>>
??>> James Silverton.
Hello, Martin! You wrote in conference alt.food.wine on Mon, 11 Jul 2005
08:39:13 +1000:
MF> Hi James - look at
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for all sorts of MF> official stuff about Australian wine. In particular go to MF>
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for official regions - click on MF> links in the tables for sub-regions etc.
The vintage statistics available at
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are also most interesting particularly increases in Chardonnay, Colombard and Traminer and vintages for grapes I have never seen before like Durif.
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