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Hi everyone! New to The Wine Society and so to the Community and it’s good to be here 
I have a question I hope you might help with. Back in 2017 one of our community members broached the subject around award stickers and whether they impacted your buying decision. Six years on and we’re having a bit of a review of things and wondered what you currenntly thought of award medals. Historically we enter our wines into IWC (International Wine Challenge) and Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) and we’re curious to hear what your opinions are on whether a medal impacts what you buy? And does it matter what competition the award is from? I’d love to know. Thank you!
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Welcome to the community!!
Personally the medals don’t make as much of an impact on the wines I buy. I’m more influenced by reviews /comments from other members on this community and from the reviews on the website (still need to sort out the page that aggregates the latest reviews).
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Thank you - great to know! 
I’d broadly agree with that. I’d put much more weight on a respected single critic, or some of the members on here than some label from a dubious awards factory. Which is probably unfair to some award makers, but true for a lot. And I can’t be bothered to work out which ones matter.
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A Platinum or occasionally Gold award might make me sit up and take notice, but otherwise aren’t they a bit like a primary school sports day, where everyone gets a prize?
I probably take more note of the Wine Champions, although they’re awarded fairly liberally.
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Same here. There seem to be so many competitions that awards are almost rendered meaningless. I too value opinions on this community and these do help “shape” my buying.
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I’m WAAAAAAAAY more likely to be led astray by the esteemed members of this Community than any bauble on a bottle.
I was a good person before I fell in with this bad crowd…
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I had spare cash before I joined the community.
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Personally I’m not that bothered by award stickers, but, anecdotally, I know of several supermarket wine buyers that religiously only buy wines with an award. They don’t typically seem to know anything about the awards and I suspect any invented award sticker slapped on the bottle would influence them just as much as ‘real’ ones 
.
I have a suspicion that this community are sufficiently well informed that their approach to such stickers may not be representative of the greater community!
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TWS now have that cash…you have some bricks in a warehouse! 
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I never take any notice of awards. There are far too many of them. The whole awards scheme has become meaningless. The English are the worst for them…just about every English wine producer has a website that opens with the ubiquitous phrase “Our award winning wines.”
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Oh dear - I can see I’m going to spend a lot of time on here…
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Which is now storing my free wine! Everyone wins.
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Suppliers / importers / producers all pay to take part in competitions, then pay to send wine in (is it 6 bottles minimum?) and then pay for the stickers afterwards. What are they getting out of it? I think all you have to do is look at the total number of wines awarded anything as a percentage of those who entered that competition.
Those stickers might work to attract attention on a shelf full of bottles in a supermarket but do nothing to sway my decision-making when browsing online.
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Friends who don’t know much about wine will choose stuff that has medal stickers on it over others that don’t. But then they are shopping in supermarkets and aren’t TWS members.
I know a bit about wine, and enough to know that most awards are a bit meaningless because for any given region there will be numerous good producers who dont bother to enter. So ‘gold’ does not mean the wine is the best example of its type.
As others have said, I’m more guided by certain critics, community members, and sometimes comparative tasting reports where a representative range of wines from a region was entered.
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On here I don’t pay too much attention to them, I trust the buyers and my tastes.
In a supermarket it wouldn’t influence my decision but if it was a Decanter or IWC I would take note. I dont have much trust in any of the others.
As everyone else says I’m more guided by members here suggesting stuff and the critic review. The thing I miss most of all is the Press Reviews section that showed you all the wines, I always used it too add a couple to my basket on top of my own free choices. Bring this back not gimmicky medals.
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When faced with an array of unfamiliar producers in a French supermarket I’ve found that a gold medal from the Paris Concours General Agricole is a pretty good indicator of quality.
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I was always sceptical about awards, until I listened to a podcast about the Decanter judging process and understood a bit more about how it worked. Knowing that wines are judged against their peers in terms of region, price point, grape etc makes me feel like a Gold award actually means something. Platinum and Best in Show is then another level up from that.
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In my opinion…Decanter ‘awards’ are not worth the shiny metallic ink they are printed on. In 2022 a massive 14,865 medals were awarded from 18,244 entrants. A 81% win rate and virtually meaningless. nb: these stats do not include ‘highly commended’ which clearly isn’t.
The cynic in me asks WHY these wines need the accolade of a decanter sticker to sell ?
As to TWS winning awards as “(insert wine region) Merchant of the year” etc… it’s good to see the hard working folk at TWS getting recognised by their peers.
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I would second winestwit’s first comment on this, especially on the return of the aggregated reviews. I found those useful. Awards- not so much.
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