Don't be taken in...
Don't be taken in by prize-winning wines. The Times, Friday 10 November.
"....what nobody bothers to tell wine drinkers is that the big British gong-giving publications - notably Decanter and Wine International - that scatter medals like confetti are actually making quite a bit of money in the process. Tasting competition fees range from about £75 to £120 per bottle and with as many as 9,000 bottles entered per annum, a staggering 2/3 of which receive a gong...those publications are making more money from running contests than they are from selling their magazines." Jane MacQuitty, wine correspondent for The Times.
Cento per Cento's view - We never enter our wines for those competitions because they are really marketing tools for the supermarkets and other volume vendors trying to shift huge quantities of often mediocre wines. Since the majority of all wines entered obtain an award of some sort, the whole scheme is inherently misleading from a consumer standpoint.
Article created on: 13 Nov 2006
