Wine Champions 2020

The SB discussion amused me.
I happen to like Marlborough SB when it is in your face with gooseberry, lychees etc.
This was the debut version of Montana.
I adored the early, non-industrialised Cloudy Bay, sadly no longer amongst us. :bouquet:
I detest any wine that either reeks or tastes of lemon or grapefruit. :lemon:
I once opened a Spanish white that was so grapefruity, that Del Monte might have bottled it. All 749.5 milli-litres went down the sink!! :clap: :clap:
Riesling is the wine for the petro-chemist, and they are welcome to it!! :oil_drum:
Malbec for those eviscerated of a discerning palate. :open_mouth:
RosƩ for the fence sitters, who cannot make their minds up. :thinking:
And so it goes, we are all different, we have individual palates, what suits one may not another.
That is precisely why our Wine Society stocks over 1,500 different wines; in a semi-futile attempt to cater for all of us.
And long may it be so!! :wink: :wink: :dragon:

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Just been looking at the pdf of ā€˜our ultimate blind tasting’ and the first thing that strikes me is that, in the red/rose/white categories, none of the wines cost more than Ā£14.95.

The pdf makes reference to ā€˜rules’ but I couldn’t find any.

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I think there’s a ā€˜fine wine’ champions list which comes later this year.

I do agree though that I’d prefer to simply see collated into the single offer and that I’ve always thought the distinction between wine and fine wine to be fairly dubious.

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Maybe, but the WS champagne is included in the fine wine list.

If you search the site, last year’s Fine Wine Champions is still in PDF although not in stock> It was in September.

Oh yes, thanks

Here it is

Edit: So looks like it takes over the majority of the Fine Wine List later on in the year.

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Not yet but I did the same and find myself in the same position as you. It was interesting to read that it shone at the end of the tasting so I’ll give it a two hour decant before trying. It’s now on the hit list so the next time I cook something suitable I’ll pop the cork.

As an aside, the 2016 was one of the best Langhe Nebbiolo I’ve ever tried. Yes, it was a great vintage but my hopes are still high that the 2017 will compare favourably. The 2015 wasn’t too shoddy either !

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Thanks, your suggestion sounds perfect. I also tried the 2015, but somehow managed to miss the 2016 :unamused:

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I don’t know how to link to another thread but @JayKay notes ( thanks again ) in the 6-8th March 2020 weekend drinking thread give plenty of insight into what we might expect.

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Is this the note you’re thinking about, @Embee?

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That’s the one, many thanks (once again ) for helping !

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No problems :slight_smile:

All you need to do, if you want to copy a link from another thread, is click on the ā€˜link’ icon at the bottom of the specific post you want, which will highlight the URL. You then just copy and paste that particular URL and job done :+1:

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Thanks once again for the micromanaging !

Even I should be able to cope with that :slightly_smiling_face:

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A post was split to a new topic: Wine Champions 2020 EVENTS WIKI

I am a bit perplexed about the Wine Champions. For one thing a lot of the wines are less than Ā£10 a bottle. From experience, and I know a lot other people who drink wine who will agree, it’s difficult to find a bottle of white wine, in particular, that is in any way can be described as decent at that level. For white wine, you normally will do much better in the Ā£12-25 bracket. So can the tastings really be that blind? Last year I bought the a Three Choirs white wine that was on the list (I forget the exact bottle). It was very very average not a champion at all in my opinion. This year I see an entry level Dr Loosen has made the list. The latter is clearly an excellent house but I’ve tasted that wine before and it is a lot less interesting/good than his single vineyard bottles.

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Hi Simon,

I asked this in the Buyers’ Q&A on Tuesday. The wines above Ā£15 will be in the Fine Wine list released in July.

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I thought the July fine wine list is different and the champions fine wine list (which is I think my least favourite of the year) was September or October. But I may be confused.

I tend to agree on the under Ā£10 point. Well, not that you can’t find a decent bottle of wine under Ā£10 but just it is rare to find a wine under Ā£10 that really blows you away.

I understand that they do taste in price brackets, and it took me a few years to work this out. So they will have a session of Ā£5-10 wines, Ā£10-Ā£13, Ā£13-15 etc. I am not sure they are the exact brackets but it is a similar system. They don’t overly publicise this so I think there may be some valid confusion that someone thinks that as they are all declared champions, and tasted blind, the Ā£7 bottle will be as good as the Ā£15 bottle.

So, you’d have to assume that when they declare a Ā£8 wine a Wine Champion that it is very much a ā€˜Wine Champion’ if you tend to spend Ā£8 on a bottle of wine but probably very much not a wine champion if you tend to spend Ā£15 on a bottle of wine. Obviously, this may not always be the absolute case but they do not taste price blind. So just because you see two white champions, one at Ā£8 and one at Ā£15 does not necessarily mean they are actually comparable in quality, just that they should be better than other similar types of wine at similar prices.

To make it slightly more confusing, there is a secondary announcement of fine wine champions later in year starting at roughly the Ā£15 bracket. Personally, I’d rather they did the whole lot in one go or at least raise the price point for the ordinary competition to Ā£20. It would also be nice if the wines declared Champions were identified in the bracket they were tasted (new world white under Ā£10 as an example).

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Thanks!

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I agree. I would taste/score them all together. You can then segment by price. Sort of Quality/price ratio.