The results of the 2024 Decanter Awards competition have been released. 530 South African wines earned medals. Of these, two were awarded Best in Show, 1 Platinum, 28 Gold, 220 Silver and 282 Bronze. The whole story can be seen HERE
There are many wine competitions, several in South Africa, but this is one of the most highly respected and it judges the wines blind against their peers from all the wine-producing countries. While respecting their opinions, it must be remembered that all wine judging is subject to many influences - emotion, atmosphere, personal prejudice, national pride and taste preferences.... Some of the results in the table below tally quite closely with results in South African competitions such as, most recently the Investec Trophy Wine Show, and others have quite large differences. That is the nature of the beast.
Entry into the Decanter Awards costs £170 (R3862) plus 20% VAT per entry and four sample bottles are required per wine entry. This is obviously a very serious consideration for producers, especially the smaller ones, and that is without the cost of getting the entries to the publishers of the magazine or the cost of buying bottle stickers for winning wines - £55 (R1250) per roll of 1000.
On the subject of scoring, the current favourite system is scoring wines out of 100. We are, perhaps, old-fashioned, but we agree with the opinion recently expressed by Tim James that it is too exact for something which is subject to the influences above. The Decanter site shows scores out of 100. In the table we show here, we have added a column in which the scores are converted to scores out of 20.
Not many years ago, a wine scoring 90 (18/20) would have earned a Gold medal. The standard has risen, Gold is in a narrow band between 96 and 95 (19/20) and a score between 94 and 90 is only worthy of Silver. The bottom line is that any wine which scores 90 or above is worthy of consideration. Two of the Gold medallists, Spier Albariño at R85 and MAN Family Vintners Essay Red Blend at R115 (ex cellars), have an additional note that they are Good Value which, in Britain, means that a bottle sells for less than £15 (±R330). British retail prices are taken into consideration in the judging.
Stellenbosch wines were the best performers, obviously with the most entries, and they scored 181 medals in all categories but there was a good spread of Gold and Silver medals across our principal wine producing regions. It was good to see one of our favourites, Oak Valley's Groenlandberg Chardonnay earning a Platinum medal. We were pleased to see how many MCCs won medals.
You may notice some unfamiliar labels such as wines with the names of British supermarkets, Aldi, Asda and Marks & Spencer may or may not be available here (such as M&S Creation Chardonnay).
You can see the Gold and Silver medallists here:
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