Sibling blog Grape Wall of China organized an annual contest called Grape Wall Challenge (GWC) that features Chinese consumers judging wines that retail for less than rmb100.
The sixth GWC was held in mid-December at Temple Restaurant Beijing, which kindly provided event space and food, and the results are below. By the way, if you want to know why we organize this event and where we get the wines, click here.
To decide the winners, we ask the consumers / judges to taste each wine and then choose “love it” (10 points), “like it” (7 points), “dislike it” (4 points) or “hate it” (1 points). We then divide the total score by the number of tasters. The best average scores win.
As in previous years, wines from Argentina and South Africa made the top five. And it would have been a “new world” sweep if not for a wine from Spain.
1. Trivento ‘Tribu’ Malbec 2013 from Argentina. Distributed by Summergate, available at Pudao Wines, rmb95.
2. Santa Alvara Carménère from Chile. Distributed by French Wine Paradox, rmb81.
3. Bocopa ‘Alcanta’ Merlot 2010 from Spain. Distributed by French Wine Paradox, price rmb65.
4. KWV ‘Classic’ Pinotage 2012 from South Africa. Distributed by China Wines & Spirits, available from CWS, price rmb87.
5. Nederburg ‘Foundation’ Shiraz-Pinotage 2013 from South Africa. Distributed by ASC, price rmb89.
We also asked each judge to pick a “gold“, “silver” and “bronze” medal winner, in other words, their three favorite wines. You can get those results and links to past Grape Wall Challenges here.
Thanks to the consumers / judges, to Ignace Lecleir and Temple, to professor Ma Huiqin and her students, and to distributors ASC, China Wines & Spirits, East Meets West, French Wine Paradox, Links Concept, Summergate and Torres for their support.
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