A welcome return to our global judging panels
It was the DWWA’s first time back at full strength since 2019, and it broke all records. An astonishing 18,244 wines were assessed by 237 judges, but the selection process was as tough as ever. Our Co-Chair explains the process of awarding the sought-afte
Great to be back! After two years of dislocated schedules, two years without our vital overseas judges and two years without the social interaction that makes the Decanter World Wine Awards a kind of informal wine-world summit, this 2022 edition of the competition re-established the familiar pattern we last enjoyed, pre
Covid, back in 2019. Everyone loved it: thank you, vaccines and those scientists who worked so hard to create them.
Once again, we broke records with our entry this year: 18,244 wines tasted from 54 countries. Some 3,379 wines went home with no medal, and there were 8,074 Bronzes awarded to ‘sound and satisfying’ wines. Silver medals (where we hope you will find ‘excitement and personality’) numbered 5,900, or 32.34% of the total – but it is with Gold medals (‘outstanding and memorable’ wines) that we get really picky.
After the first two rounds, 891 Golds had been awarded in all. Co-Chairs (see p12) and available Regional Chairs then re-scrutinised these Golds to pick out the very best for a Platinum award, given this year to 163 wines (a smaller ‘Platinum percentage’ of our Golds than in either of the last two years, and just 0.89% of the total entry). Then, finally, an additional 50 Platinum winners were promoted by the Co-Chairs to our prized Best in
Show category (see p31). This left us with 678 Gold medal winners: just 3.72% of the total entries. Remember that the scores awarded to our wines, as ever, relate to the competition as a whole: that universe of 18,244 tasted wines.
EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE
What of the Best in Show selection this year? 2022 was less star-sprinkled for France than 2021 (10 Best in Show wines compared to 15); Spain, likewise (five compared to nine last year). Italy inched up its Best in Show total from seven wines to nine in 2022, but the surf-frothed surge came from the southern hemisphere: Australia won six Best in Shows compared to two last year,
with both Argentina and New Zealand jumping from one to four; South Africa and Chile both won two Best in Shows compared to their singletons last year. Austria did its best for Europe by reappearing in our Best in Show selection for the first time since 2018, with two wines. You will, of course, find variety galore in the top 50: Fleurie,
Jurançon, Toro; an Ontario Riesling, a Sardinian Cagnulari; plus two Cabernet Francs, not from Loire or Bordeaux, but from Luján de Cuyo and Stellenbosch.
At a time of global crisis and spiralling inflation, we are thrilled to have found no fewer than nine Value Best in Show wines in 2022 (marked with a blue circle logo on p32-p59). These are, as you would expect, simpler wines than the rest of our Best in Show picks – but they are wines that over-deliver in terms of fruit, drinkability and pure pleasure. (As always, we do our best to audit prices prior to publication, but current market conditions mean that prices are liable to change at short notice.)
Some producers deserve a shout above the melée – notably the Sons of Eden team in South Australia, source of both the Barossa and Eden Valley Best in Show wines, and the De Schepper family in Bordeaux, the source of both our Margaux and St-Emilion Best in Show wines. These two pairs of wines, each immaculately reflective of their origins, were picked out (on separate days and by separate panels) from among hundreds of other contenders in their regional tastings. They then saw off rival Gold medals from their peer groups in the second week of judging, with scrutiny from new palates once again. For stablemates to emerge, shoulder to shoulder, at the end of that tumble of scrutiny is an outstanding achievement.
Congratulations, too, to those Best in Show winners reappearing in our top 50 from previous DWWA editions: Vignobles Luc Schweitzer in Blaye, Bordeaux; Hacienda López de Haro; Craggy Range; Agri-Roncão (with a 2017 vintage Port to add to its 30 Year Old Tawny winner in 2019); Ciabot Berton from Barolo; and, above all, to Lustau – one of whose VORS 30-year-old Sherries appears for an astonishing fourth time in our Best in Show selection. No, it’s not the hat-trick winning Oloroso on this occasion, but the still-more-fragrant
Palo Cortado. If you haven’t bought a bottle of one of Lustau’s wine antiques yet, make this the year that you do.
‘It is with Golds (‘outstanding and memorable’) that we get really picky’