How do wine shows decide their awards?

All the capital cities and just about all the wine producing areas of Australia have their own wine shows - and the judging criteria varies with each show.

There are two main shows in the Hunter Valley:

• Hunter Valley Wine Show (Singleton) looks for traditional Hunter Valley styles of wine to determine who best upholds the traditions of the area. It is open to all growers that produce grapes in NSW, north of Sydney GPO (included Mudgee, etc)

• Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show (Maitland) rewards classic and emerging styles but is only open to Hunter Valley growers producing under 50 tonnes of grapes. 

Very seldom will a producer do well at both shows in the same year. The wines don't change, the judges and criteria do.

Wines are judged like against like in classes - current vintage Semillon, one year old Semillon, etc. In some instances there may then be 100% Hunter fruit in one class, multi-region blends in another. Some classes may ask for a named vineyard and require all the grapes to come from that one specific block of land.

Wines are judged in unmarked glasses with judges seeling just a code number with no way for them to identify the producer. The show stewards take great pride in not giving anything away.

Wines are generally judged by a team of three wine judges, experienced wine industry professionals selected by the Show Committee for their established expertise in that particular field. In some instances international judges are invited in to stop the shows becoming too parochial.

There are also usually three Associate Judges - usually professional winemakers training to become full judges, but spending the day tasting and learning from the experts. The Associates score points for discussion, but their points are not counted in the medal count.

Each of the three judges score points out of 20 on an international scale. No wine ever scored 20 / 20! 

• If a wine scores 18.5 or higher from each judge, a total of 55.5 / 60 it is regarded as "exceptional" and is awarded Gold.

• If a wine scores 17 or higher from each judge, a total of 51 / 60 it is regarded as "outstanding" and is awarded Silver.

• If a wine scores 15.5 or higher from each judge, a total of 46.5 / 60 it is regarded as "well above average" and is awarded Bronze.

In many shows the wines in some classes are regarded as good enough for Gold or even Silver so only Bronze may be awarded. In other shows / classes there may be 3 or 4 wines all good enough to get a Gold.

Once the Gold, Silver & Bronze have been decided, in most shows there are Trophies awarded for "Best in Show" so all the gold medal winning wines from a group of classes are re-tasted to decide the Best Semillon / Best Chardonnay and then Best White Wine and Wine of the Show.