In April this year, the first London Wine Competition announced the first set of awards for wines tasted by its prestigious London judges in March. Founded on principles of quality, presentation, and value, its unique approach to awards was on show at the 2018 London Wine Fair. The London Wine Trade Fair 2018 held at London Kensington Olympia earlier this month was an excellent showcase for the glittering array of medal and award winners from this year’s inaugural London Wine Competition. With visitor numbers up to 17% to 14,250 over the 3 days and a whole host of new features and innovations there were more serious trade visitors to taste these outstanding wines. It really is the highlight of the British wine trade calendar, and all the great traders, writers and retailers come together to discuss the latest trends and what’s hot for 2018 and 2019.

At the Fair, the London Wine Competition showed many medal winners Gold, Silver, and Bronze as well as the Best in Show wines for Quality, Presentation, and Packaging. We spoke with a number of medal winners and here is what we learned about what the competition and medals mean for the wines and their producers.

The London Wine Competition is about finding the right caliber of judges, and not purely for its own sake, but for the entrants and competitors. Any entrant to a wine competition needs to know that their carefully crafted vinous offering is being judged by people who know wine. It is such a complex category, where the on-eyed can be king. However, LWC requires two-eyed, well trained and highly skilled judges.

The LWC brought together a mix of 35 vastly experienced commercial buyers, 19 professional Sommeliers and Master Sommeliers, and 6 Masters of Wine make up the expert panel. As Melaine de Matos says – for Hoffman and Rathbone to enter, they had to know that the right caliber of judges was in place for them to even consider entering the LWC. Many can like wine but few can judge it!

Educating Consumers

The market is moving upwards. Every market statistic points towards consumers buying less but better. The average price is at its highest level ever at £5.78 according to the research and big data company IRI. Further, still, wine is returning to value growth of 3.5%, after a stagnated period. As consumers buy more expensive wine they require education and quality guidance as to where best to spend their hard-earned cash.

London is the Centre                        

To all of the interviewed Gold medal winners, London is the center of the world’s wine trade.

For Marco at Velenosi, he draws a sporting analogy “To present a wine on London’s market is like playing the Champion’s league”.

For Rob at Cape Barren, it is “the driver and style setter for wine consumers”.

He continues that London’s ability to embrace international acceptance for everything wine makes it the launch pad for world recognition for so many producers. Whilst for English producers Hoffman and Rathbone and Raimes London is the important domestic market. For the former, it is one of the biggest celebration markets.

In its first year, it is clear that apart from signaling its arrival into the competition scene, the London Wine Competition has established itself as one of the leading International competitions. Its three-pronged judging process of Presentation, Quality, and Value, allied with its strong relationships with high-quality judges make for a compelling proposition for producers to appeal to consumers and distributors. London is the hub of many things wine and has the ability to project on to an international stage. This aspect makes London an important part of any wine export strategy; a place where reputations can be won and much can be learned from the success of others in a truly global context.

Super early bird registrations for 2019 London Wine Competition is now open. Australian wineries can submit their wines now at super early bird rates and take advantage of the flat rate shipping program. Find more information on how to submit your wines here.