The seventy edition of the X-Wine Contest, a fine wine competition that pits young oenophiles from major French and international universities, took place at Château-Figeac in St Emilion, last Saturday (3 February). db’s Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay was one of the judges. The competition, meticulously organised by the prestigious École Polytechnique starts with a qualifying round that sees 15 student teams (comprising three people in each team) pit their skills against one another in three blind-tasting trials interspersed by two theoretical tests, with the three highest-scoring teams going through to a final blind ‘taste-off’ to win the coveted glass goblet. The practical part of the contest in the qualifying round consisted of three flights of four wines – a white flight, a red flight and a mystery-themed flight of wines linked by a common feature revealed to the contestants only at the last minute. This year the theme was wines produced from vineyards planted on volcanic soils. The teams were given 25 minutes for each flight and asked to identify the country, region, appellation, grape varietal(s), vintage and estate of each wine in the series. A four-strong panel of judges oversaw proceedings. It comprised Philippe de Lur Saluces (of Château de Fargues in Sauternes), Cloé Azaïs (the director of the Négociant house, Legrand & Associés in Bordeaux), Frédéric Faye (the general director of Château-Figeac itself) and, presumably to make up the numbers, myself (representing The Drinks Business and not on this occasion Sciences Po, Paris – who had also
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Fine Wine
