International Medals and Awards

[Roy Hersh]

Do these matter to you at all. Do you find them interesting? Do they influence your purchases whatsoever?

I am thinking specifically for Port.

[Moses Botbol]

Only on the low end, as if there’s awards, medal, accolades, etc… on an affordable product I have not familiar with; I would go for it based on that. Taylor or Graham getting an award means nothing to me. I have had enough of their vintages to form my own opinion and I am not active on buying recent vintages of any port. I don’t plan to buy any vintage newer than 1995 unless it’s a deal I can’t refuse.

I did get burned on two bottles of Tequila that had awards on them and were touted by a salesman. To be fair to him, he is a Tequila expert and had not tried either bottle, but the label had an “award” on it and he said people were raving about them… Not impressed and glad they weren’t too expensive. I am not a “huge” Tequila fan, but have amassed like 20-30 fancy bottles as my parents live Mexico part time and one thing leads to another…

This is to say I am skeptical of awards and medals. I would trust the opinion of someone on this Forum that I have drank with over any medal or professional review.

[Frederick Blais]

I think the name of the contest has more value than the color of the medal. But still....

I find contest like Decanter one's interesting as they provide the full list of contestant. This is the most important part in my opinion as you can see if the Port did only win because he was alone or he did really beat the big guns. Then you want to see the region of where the contest did happen.

In Belgium or France, they are giving more points to the style of Port houses like Cruz are doing because this is what people like there. So Cruz can get a medal while Taylor would not.

In the end, I personnaly never consider those medals, there is more chances that it means nothing than it rather does.

[Glenn E.]

I agree with both of you - an award for a lower-tier product might attract my attention if it is from a recognizable authority, but that's about it for me. I don't need to see awards for the top-of-the-line products, and an award from "Joe's Wine Blog" doesn't mean a thing to me.

[Eric Menchen]

For Port, no I don't really pay attention to these. If it is a small producer, I might give it a thought; but I'm also thinking, "I wonder if they are going to jack the price up now."

For beer, I'll try the GABF winners in categories I like, but I've usually had most of them already. I look at the World Beer Cup winners list and take mental notes. Like others mentioned for wine, the color of the medal isn't usually that significant--pick different judges and good luck getting the same rankings again.

[Marc J.]

I do notice any awards that a particular wine might have won, but it really doesn't influence my buying decision. For me, awards are an interesting side note - although I also check out the date of the award (was it this decade????), as that I can also give an indication of the current relevancy of that accolade.

Marc

[Roy Hersh]

Marc,

Just like old tasting notes written 2 decades ago, it is important to see how recent the awards are too, in this we certainly agree.

Relevance from a purchasing standpoint is something that varies by individual. It is interesting seeing the opinions here so far.

[Andy Velebil]

Any award or rating I check to see when it was actually given or written. Nothing is worse than a 20 year old note or a 10 year old award...and was that award actually for THAT vintage of wine. I've seen many a producer of wines use little stickers on different vintages of their wines to say it won an award at such and such fair/tasting/etc several years earlier.

I'm not a fan of any award where the tasters are tasting hundreds of wines in a day and spending less than 30 seconds with each wine, than scoring it or giving it a medal. While there may be some deserving ones, there also are some that may not be showing well during that particular few seconds the raters tasted it.

I also like to see the full list of what was tasted. I've seen some mediocre wines get the top billing. When you look at what they were up against, the reason becomes quite clear. That's another reason I have some issues with these type of wine competitions. It isn't about the wine, it's about how it stacks up against other wines in the same competition. If those other wines are plonk, then even a poor bottle can get a gold medal.