Inside the world’s biggest wine contest where 67,000 bottles bid to be the best

At a warehouse in east London, rows upon rows of heavy cardboard boxes are lined up.

Each box contains 12 bottles of wine, but the labels taped on won’t tell you their brands.

They are here for the world’s biggest wine contest, which could launch ordinary bottles such as those sold in Waitrose or Aldi into highly sought wine royalty. 

Metro went along to the Excel Centre today to see the huge operation, learn what goes into the judging… as well as sample a few potential winners ourselves.

6,000 boxes of wine tasted in one week

This week, judges will provisionally crown the best bottles for the annual Decanter World Wine Awards, before winners are announced next month.

Simon Wright, head of logistics, told Metro that 148 industrial pallets of wine arrived this year from around 40 depots around the world, so it’s a challenge to make sure they’re all lined up unbroken and in the right order.

There is too much wine in the 67,000 bottles of the 17,000 entries for it all to be drank by judges, so the excess is poured away into tanks, where it will be anaerobically digested for fuel.

‘We crush all the bottles on site to make it easier to transport the recycling,’ he explains, showing us an industrial metal machine that crunches up glass like Doritos. 

It’s the best smelling rubbish I’ve experienced, and I’m tempted to ask if I can rescue some wine myself to fuel my own body instead. But it’s too late, and we’re onto the judging.

‘A little bit tennis bally’

Judges started their tasting flights at around 9.30am: there’s no hesitation here about booze before noon. 

After being handed an unidentified glass of what may or may not be pinot noir, I’m told it is a faux pas even to ask the time. 

The atmosphere in the tasting rooms is more like a business meeting than a boozy lunch. Judges sit in front of laptops on conference tables, with a long line of semi-full wine glasses and a spittoon next to them. 

I overhear one judge remark that she finds a contender ‘a bit tennis bally’, and wonder if I’ve misheard, before Google informs me this is a fairly common descriptor for wine, and has something to do with sulphur content.  

Wines will be judged against others of their region and type, with a value category for bottles until £15 (so, most of the wines you’d see in the supermarket), a mid category for £15 to £50 bottles, and a more expensive category for wines over £50.

Wine writer Andrew Jefford, who as co-chair is responsible for deciding the best of the best, told Metro that disagreements between judges aren’t unusual, as many experts are passionate about their preferences. 

‘If you just do it mathematically, you get crude results, or you get everything evened out in the middle, with nothing coming out at one end or the other,’ he says. 

‘No curry for breakfast’

You won’t be surprised to hear that a key part of the lunch served to the more than 200 judges is cheese, with huge wheels on offer next to salted broad beans, crackers, and dried apricots. 

Judges are not given a list of food they can’t eat before tasting, but there is common sense to it, such as no spicy curry that could affect their palates.

A bigger danger for some is over consuming, with so much booze on offer, and a fine line between being thorough with tasting, and going overboard.

‘Moderation is the way to go,’ Andrew advises. Asked if judges have ever had to retire on these grounds, he admits ‘it has happened’ in the earlier days of the contest, but if there ever are unfortunate incidents, the judge ‘will not be asked back.’ 

Those invited to judge are professionals in the wine industry, ranging from writers to master sommeliers in restaurants. They will judge in their area of expertise, such as Asian wines or French wines, and each wine will be tasted some three times by three panellists in each stage before bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and best in show medals are decided.

‘A rule you cannot break’

The contest is not a truly ‘blind’ tasting, where wine is served in the dark, or judges are told nothing about the wine.

They are told the general price range, the vintage, and the area it comes from. 

But if they dare to look at the label on a bottle, this would cross a line. 

‘If anybody were to peep inside to find out who the producer is, they would be immediately ejected,’ Andrew says. ‘That’s a rule you cannot break.’ 

‘There’s no formula for a gold medal’

After watching the judges swish so many wines around, I’m keen for a glass myself, so I ask Andrew for some tips.

Unfortunately, he says it’s not as simple as just ticking off acidity, colour, fruit notes etc, and there’s no formula but it ‘must always be outstanding and memorable in some way’.

When it comes to wines in the lowest price category, what he looks for most is pure ‘deliciousness’ rather than aging potential or layering: It should simply be something people will enjoy drinking.

I try one of the Canadian wines provisionally assessed for gold, which is a light red, and say it smells herby – though don’t want to admit that I’m actually picking up a pungent note of marijuana. Given it’s legalised there now, maybe it’s not so uncultured a reference.

Last year, the UK achieved its highest medal count yet, including a first-ever Best in Show for English sparkling rose, which went to Chapel Down based in Kent.

French Champagne house Louis Pommery’s England Rosé Brut NV from Hampshire, and Cornwall’s Camel Valley Pinot Noir Rosé 2023, were also recognised as standout wines.

This year’s results will be announced on June 18.

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