(L-R) Huon Hooke with his Australian panel co-chair Justin Knock MW, Anne Healey, DWWA co-chair Michael Hill Smith MW, Lenka Sedlackova MW and Andrea Pritzker MW. Huon Hooke
The Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) is the world’s biggest wine competition, this year setting another record, with entry numbers topping 18,000. Entries were received from 57 countries.
A massive team of 236 judges was assembled from all corners of the earth, including 69 masters of wine (MW) and master sommeliers (MS). A handful of Australians made the trip to London this year for a week of tasting 80 wines a day in one of the best-run wine shows I have ever participated in.
One of the pleasures of judging at DWWA is that every day, we panel chairs taste with different people, often from disparate parts of the world.
Retired Brokenwood chief winemaker and MD Iain Riggs AM and Sydney wine educator Andrea Pritzker MW joined myself and Australian-born Londoner Justin Knock MW and co-chair (chief judge) of the competition, Michael Hill Smith MW AM, for the week. Justin and I chair the two Australian panels.
I can’t tell you the results as they won’t be announced for several weeks and we judges won’t know the identities of the wines we tasted until then.
The joke when I arrived was that Australia had won an almost embarrassing number of gold medals last year. To the response “Should we be tougher this year?” the answer was invariably “No, not at all. The
This Article was originally published on The Real Review
