Do you ever get disorientated with all the medals and awards on all the bottles when in a wine shop? Do these mean the wine is actually better than the others? 

Well, it’s a funny one this question – there are lots of wine shows and scribes that hand out awards, from tiny little shows that are region only based or variety based right through to huge international events. Marketing and getting your name out into the community is a huge part of the wine industry, just like any industry. Entering these shows is fairly easy but it can be quite costly. From the cost of a show stand to giving out taste samples (this is usually 3 to 4 bottles of each wine) and then if you win a medal, you need to purchase the stickers to add to the labelling process.

If you are a smaller producer who makes amazing wine, you’ve entered this event and won a medal or a trophy, you paid for the stickers – now what? But all your wine is already bottled and labelled, now you’ll have to put a tiny sticker on each bottle? No chance this would take forever! 1000’s of bottles! 

So what ends up happening in a lot of instances is the big guy who produces large amounts of wine and bottles them, doesn't label them all straight away. Some bigger places keep the finished wine in tanks. Generally larger wine sellers wait until awards are given to them and at that point they send them down the line to label with shiny new stickers.

Are these wines bad or unworthy of said award? No, absolutely not, they are judged by professionals and are well deserved of their awards. What we are saying is that there are lots of little guys out there producing amazing wines that might not have the volume of the cash flow to be able to add these stickers to the bottle so they might create a social media post about it or link the award in an email. Some might also just think it’s all too hard and are happy just letting their customer find them over time. 

So is the question answered? Like I said it’s a tricky one – awards often do mean they have stood up against their peers but did the wine that they beat them or equalled them at that show have the means to add that award to their bottle? Often sadly not! Keep a thought for these guys (who make up a huge amount of brands in the wine world) next time you are hunting down a new drop. 

Maybe find a scribe or a website like Winesphere who has similar taste to you and stick with them to find you some hidden gems!