Are medals on wine labels really important?

Should we trust medals and other competition rankings wine present on labels? The shortest answer is no! but you deserve some explanations.

If you buy your bottle of wine in a supermarket or traditional wine shop, you have seen this medal, “Medaille d’Or au Concours X” or “Gold Medal wine awards”. This type of medal is everywhere around the world, not only a French thing.

How a wine can get this kind of medal? Pretty simple, the winemaker needs to send a wine sample and pay a participation fee. Because the majority of time of the time this is a commercial enterprise. And, The competition only tests wines from paid participants.

The testing process is the interesting part. Most of this competition will test a lot of wine, and a lot of wine means a lot of tasters. It is not something easy to reunite hundreds or thousands of wine tasters. But for some competition is not even a problem. Everybody can be a wine taster. Generally, you can apply online, and often the only condition is to be more than 18 years old. No wine experience is needed.

The ranking system is also interesting, when you think about a gold medal, you think of a sort of race in your mind, with a first, a second, and a third. The rest of the participants get nothing. That is not how it works. Wines are tasted on several critters and rated out of 100. Wines note 85 or more receive the gold medal, bellow they can receive the silver or the bronze medal or nothing.

how is it effective? well, in European competitions a gold medal is given to 30 to 40 percent of tasted wines. That is a lot. But, in some international competitions, you have ¾ chance to win a medal, the exploit is to not get a medal here.

Recently, in a French TV show, they tested how accurate the process is. A winemaker bought two low-price wines in a supermarket (less than 3 euros a bottle). He poured the wine into its bottles and sent them to a prestigious wine competition. Surprise, surprise! The 2 wines win a gold medal. Two wines, just good to cook, won a gold medal in an international and well-known competition.

Why? Maybe the 2 low-cost wines were excellent, but it’s very unlikely. The main reason is competition are commercial enterprises. Their goal is not to taste the wine but to sell marketing products. Because once a winemaker wins a gold medal it can put it on its bottles and increase the sales. Of course, the right to put a medal on a bottle is not free. It can be very expensive, depending on the fame of the competition. We are talking about several thousand euros to put the medal on 5000 bottles.

Medal most of the time is not worth it. It is a marketing strategy. Someone choosing a wine in a supermarket or wine cave will see the medal as a sign of excellence when it is just made to sell more wine.

So don’t trust this medal. If you need advice try to find a real passionate wine merchant or better a natural wine merchant. You can also use a wine guide that does not ask for financial participation from winemakers and conduct the test with professionals only (I use one of these guides personally). No medal here, only a description and notes. They test both natural and conventional wines.

So if someone serves you a wine with this kind of medal on the label, you can say 2 things; Your host chooses the wine in a supermarket, and your host doesn’t know how to choose wine. But don’t be arrogant, he/she doing their best.

Bonus a video from Belgian television in French on how to turn a 2 euro wine into a gold medal.