Decanter World Wine Awards

作者: Tony Aspler        来源: 《酒典》www.winemagcn.com|原创作品 谢绝转载

I’ve been the Regional Chair for Canada at the DWWA for several years now and have seen it outgrow its first home – a photographic studio complex called The Worx in Parson’s Green, south west London. The 2014 competition received over 15,000 entries making it the largest wine judging in the world. The statistics give you an idea of the logistical nightmare involved in mounting such a competition: 220 judges from 28 countries (including 67 Masters of Wine and 17 Master Sommeliers). 6,000 Riedel glasses a day. 5,200 boxes of wines that have to be moved around; that means 60,000 individual bottles that have to be put in masking plastic bags, stickered with code numbers, arranged into flights and delivered to the panels.


The woman in charge of this enterprise is Sarah Kemp, long time Publishing Director of Decanter Magazine (billed on its cover as ‘The world’s best wine magazine’). In 2003 she acceded to Stephen Spurrier’s suggestion that the magazine mount a competition to rival the well-established London-based International Wine Challenge. Now that DWWA has surpassed the IWC in numbers there is no love lost between the two organisations.


Stephen Spurrier, whom you will recall set the wine world on its ear in 1976 when he organised ‘The Judgement of Paris’ blind tasting – pitting California Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon against the top white Burgundies and red Bordeaux with eight French tasters – set the competition’s rules and is the chief judge.


Sarah Kemp told me: ‘Originally, I hated wine competitions. The reason was I thought they came out with very solid international-style wines but not wines of typicity which is what Decanter is about. I think the success of the competition was to divide it regionally and put people who really knew the regions in charge. They would be the policemen of typicity and they direct their panels. I recognized that people really needed advice and we could never make recommendations in the numbers that we do without the competition.’


And what makes the Decanter World Wine Awards so successful? ‘We are absolutely rigorous about whom we invite to judge,’ says Kemp. ‘I don’t believe this is a training ground for people. Our duty is to get the very best possible. Why? Because it’s not a bottle of wine we’re judging but a year’s work of somebody’s and therefore we have a professional responsibility because we have influence to really select the very best tasters in the world. And when those tasters come we have to put them in an environment where they have nothing to do but concentrate on the wines.’


My fellow judges on the Canadian panel were Janet Dorozynski from Ottawa and Barbara Philip MW and Rhys Pender MW from British Columbia. After three days of tasting 245 Canadian wines we awarded 14 Gold medals, 36 Silver, 79 Bronze and 45 Commended (for the total results, see http://awards.decanter.com).


When I told my sister-in-law that every April I go to London to judge the Decanter competition, she said: ‘Is there really that much difference every year in decanter designs?’

作者简介:托尼·阿斯普勒, 自 1964 年起就活跃在国际酒界舞台,1975 年 起撰写葡萄酒专栏,连续 21 年为加拿大发行量最大的报纸之一《多伦 多星报》葡萄酒专栏撰写文章,著有 16 本葡萄酒及美食类书籍。2007 年获得加拿大勋章,2012 年入选纽约媒体类葡萄酒作家名人堂。Grapes for Humanity 慈善基金会共同创立人

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