DWWA 2015: Judging week in numbers

Ever wondered what goes into running the world's largest wine competiton? With a record-breaking 16,000 wines entered for the Decanter World Wine Awards 2015, see our infographic and read about what is happening at judging week.

Click on the infographic above for the DWWA judging week in numbers

As each entry must provide four bottles each, to allow for any corked or oxidised wines, more than 64,000 individual bottles are manually checked, bagged, organised by region and category and transported to Tobacco Dock in London, ready to be tasted by our team of 240 judges. Regional experts are brought in from across the world – this year from a total of 22 countries – including 85 MWs and 23 MSs, meaning some of the world’s best palates are judging the wines entered.

To make judging as fair as possible, every wine is tasted from the same kind of glass; the Riedel Chianti Classico, of which 40,000 are ordered for the week. On average a judge will taste 85 wines per day and to help cleanse their palates, 12,000 water biscuits are consumed and 2,700 bottles of Belu water. Tasting notes and scores are made directly onto 230 iPads and keyboards, which are then collated by Decanter’s team.

During judging week, wines can be awarded commended, bronze, silver and gold medals, with the best of the gold medals from each region winning Regional Trophies. The Regional Trophies are then retasted on 7th and 8th May to compete for the highest award of International Trophy.

Keeping the judges and 96 staff members happy over the week involves 1,332 hot lunches (plus one barbeque for the judges’ party), 4,750 Nepresso coffee capsules and 125kg of cheese – an average of 25kg a day!

See the live coverage of judging week here

Find out more about the Decanter World Wine Awards

Read more about the 2015 judging panel here

Written by Ellie Douglas