Golds from London 21 May 2008

The International Wine Challenge much preferred Cape whites (but offers some confusion too)

Claiming more than 9 000 entries, using more than 400 judges working over two weeks, the London-based International Wine Challenge (IWC) calls itself ‘the best and biggest blind tasting in the world’. Certainly, under the scrupulous direction of an eminent panel (Tim Atkin, Charles Metcalfe, Sam Harrop, Derek Smedley, with Bob Cambell as the ‘International guest co-chairman) it seems to work extremely hard to be as fair as a large competition of this kind can be.

The results of the 2008 competition have just been announced. Unfortunately, with a website that doesn’t choose to answer all questions, it takes quite an effort to gauge the results for a particular country. One cannot, for example, find national results broken down into medal categories, to find, for example, how many South African wines won gold, and which they were. A search found seven gold medallists from the Cape (interestingly, given the controversial nature of Cape reds in the UK, nearly all of them are white wines):

Bellingham Fair Maiden 2007

Ken Forrester Forrester Meinert Chenin (the FMC) 2006

Iona Sauvignon Blanc  2007

Klein Constantia Vin de Constance  2002

Oak Valley Chardonnay  2006

Spier Private Collection Cabernet Sauvignon  2005

Villiera Cellar Door Chenin Blanc 2007

Grape was informed, on further enquiry, that South Africa had in fact won eight gold medals (rather than the seven revealed by a search). We are awaiting further response to our query about this.

Another unfortunate problem is that the Oak Valley Chardonnay appears twice in the results – firstly as a Gold medal winner, but also as achieving a mere Commended certificate (the level below a bronze medal). Whether or not this means it was tasted twice and the judges reacted markedly differently to the two bottles is unclear. We are awaiting clarification on this too, and will report as soon as we get it. [Later note: Following our query, the IWC now shows the wine getting golds for both mentions in the results list, which remains rather odd, but less obviously problematic.]

International results

The IWC website does not give any overview of the results or any national breakdown. Our enquiry to the the organisers produced some interesting comparisons, however. This has always been a competition in which Australia has shone, and this year is no exception. While South Africa won 8 gold and 49 silver medals out of the 611 wines entered, Australia won 48 gold and 222 silvers out of approximately double that number of entries. France, too, performed well, with 60 golds and 234 silvers out of 1873 entries. Chile had slightly fewer entries than South Africa but did markedly better in the medals table, with 10 golds and 63 silvers.

CORRECTION MADE: This article has been amended from what was originally published, thanks to Jaco who pointed out that the trophies we mentioned, and that are given alongside the 2008 results on the IWC website, were in fact from the 2007 competition. Later note: Folowing our query, there is now a note given above the 2007 trophy results, stating that the 2008 trophies will be announced on 16 June.

• Link to the IWC website