The 2012 Decanter World Wine Awards results were officially announced this morning at The London International Wine Fair.
With 14,119 wines tasted this is the largest entry ever for the Decanter World Wine Awards, now in its 9th year.
Full results are available on the Decanter stand at the fair.
‘The quality of any awards is only as good as the quality of the individual judges, DWWA chair Steven Spurrier said, announcing the results this morning. ‘And we have the best judges in the world.’
Over 200 wine merchants, sommeliers, journalists and authors including 54 Masters of Wine and 11 Master Sommeliers, took part in a week of judging in April.
Although the majority of wines entered come from the world’s great wine regions, a particular strength of the Decanter World Wine Awards is its championing of lesser-known and smaller regions.
Out of the 47 countries which sent wines to the Awards, UK wineries, for example, entered 97 wines, of which 89% won a medal, of which two were Gold, and one was a regional trophy, the UK Sparkling over £10 trophy, which went to the Gusbourne Estate Blanc de Blancs 2007.
The only country in the world to do better than this was New Zealand, with 92% of wines entered receiving an award.
Another smaller region that did exceptionally well is Greece. Though the economic crisis has put it at the forefront of the news, one area in which it has been quietly excelling for some time is with its wines, with 72% of all wines entered this year receiving an award.
Gaia Wines swept the board with a total of three Gold Medals; Lyrarakis, Estate Argyros and Domaine Gerovassiliou also won one Gold Medal each.
A number of other unusual winemaking countries fared particularly well this year. Turkey saw 83% of its wines receive an award, Slovenia achieved 77% and Croatia 63%.
Tastings director Christelle Guibert said, ‘It’s great to see so many rarely-seen wine-producing countries do so well at this year’s DWWA, often faring much better than more established countries and famous regions. It just goes to show how far the quality of wine has come in countries that, like the UK, were once considered to be on the fringes of wine production.’
Written by Decanter.com staff
