John Stimpfig
THIS MONTH, I want to hand out a couple of much merited tributes. The first goes my talented and hardworking colleagues on Decanter.com for winning one of the top honours at the AOP Digital Publishing Awards. At the end of June, Decanter was deservedly named Best Online Media Property or Brand. It’s a significant and prestigious win in a highly competitive category. It’s also recognition of the quality, transformation and growth that Decanter.com has achieved, both in content and global reach.
Moreover, it reflects the undoubted success and impact of our new Decanter Premium online offering. This has now attracted more than 3,000 subscribers around the world. If you haven’t yet given Premium a go, why not take advantage of the 20% discount for magazine subscribers? Just use the promotion code ‘LOYALREADER’. You’ll then have unlimited access to unmissable content and an ever-increasing database of over 23,000 searchable wines.
My second tribute is to all the people who organised and took part in the highly successful 15th Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) earlier this year in London. In total, they comprise a cast of thousands including colleagues, judges and the wine producers who submitted the all-important entries. Together, they continue to make this the biggest and best international wine competition.
This year, 275 international judges rigorously blindtasted a bumper crop of nearly 17,000 wines. That resulted in 50 Best in Show medals, 149 Platinums, 439 Golds, 3,454 Silvers and 7,079 Bronzes. The winners come from around the world and span all styles and price points. Not only are you spoiled for choice, you can also have total confidence in all the brilliant wines featured in our Awards supplement, which appears with this month’s magazine.
To my mind, these medal winners present the perfect risk-free opportunity to seek out and discover something new and exciting. I will certainly be using it to read about and try labels that I’ve never previously encountered.
You may also notice that the Awards supplement is slightly different this year. In particular, we wanted to devote more space to the top medal-winning wines. Consequently, it only includes wines which won Best in Show, Platinum and Gold. To access all the results in their entirety, please visit awards.decanter.com.