For all the wine trade’s love of terroir and sense of place, the average wine consumer chooses what bottle to buy primarily on how much it costs, what it looks like and what it tastes like. Not always in that order, but there or thereabouts. It’s why the London Wine Competition uses those three criteria to choose the medal and trophy winners in its competition. Here’s how you can enter its 2021 competition and take advantage of early day pricing if you enter by November 30, 2020.

The London Wine Competition now into its 4th year hopes to provide a platform to help producers and importers not just assess their wines, but crucially go on to promote them.

As the competition has developed it has also listened to the wineries and suppliers entering and taken steps to really help them then promote whichever wines end up with a medal or trophy at the end of the process.

That is where the London Wine Competition looks to improve and widen its appeal to the international wine industry.

“We want to be seen as a true partner that can help producers and their importers promote their wines directly to the consumers they want to be buying their wines,” says Sid Patel, founder of the competition and chief executive of the Beverage Trade Network that runs them.

To help promote the winners and the competition to the public the Beverage Trade Network has set up the London Drinks Guide to keep those consumers interested in the latest drinks blog, trends, products and award winners. A new platform to also help promote the medal and trophy winners in each of the London Competitions for wine, spirits and beer.

London Drinks Guide

Entries open for 2021 competition

The entry process for the 2021 London Wine Competition is now open and anyone looking to enter can take advantage now of an early bird pricing package  – up to November 30 – that allows you to save £15 per entry.

Once again all wines entered into the competition will be assessed and judged by a leading panel of top-level wine buyers with current direct commercial buying responsibility. The panel also includes wine consultants and experts who are also directly involved in the development of new wine brands or buying wine for commercial resale.

These are the buying experts that are judging and assessing wines every day in their working lives and are therefore ideally placed to pick out the winning wines for the 2021 competition.

They are also ensuring any wine that receives a gold, silver or bronze medal will work on any on-trade wine list and help outlets sell more wine and attract more customers.

Here are the key details for the entry process for the 2021 competition.

Key Dates:

Early bird ends: November 30, 2020

Registration ends for entries: February 20, 2021

Warehouse closes for entries: February 26, 2021

Judging date: March 15, 2021

Winners announced: March 30, 2021

Fee Schedule:

£95 Early Bird: October 1 to November 30, 2020

£110 Regular Entry Fee: December 1 to February 20, 2021

The Judging

Greg Sherwood of Handford Wines taking part in the London Wine Competition

Judges are asked to give scores to the wines based on the key criteria with a weighting system in place to ensure quality wines come to the top.

The awards are broken down like this:

Q (Quality Score) + Value Score (V) + Package Score (P) = London Wine Competition Score.

A separate weighted score is given for each of the three parts of the judging process (Quality gets twice the weight. The scores are calculated with other judges for the same product on the team to give a final score from which individual prizes will be awarded.)

Quality score: marked out of 100

Value score: marked out of 100

Packaging score: marked out of 100

The competition also added 3 new masters of wine judges into its panel - Simon Field MW, David Round MW, Barbara Drew MW and 2 more Master Sommeliers - Yves Desmaris M.S., Svetoslav Manolev MS

Barbara Drew MW, Berry Bros & Rudd

Barbara started her wine career in 2011 at Berry Bros. & Rudd and is now their Events Manager. She coordinates and hosts a wide range of events, both in-person and online, from introductory wine courses to in-depth masterclasses, with a particular focus on Italy and the New World. Besides, she mentors teach judges and runs.

The 2021 competition is open for entries and anyone looking to enter can take advantage of the early bird pricing that is available till November 30, 2020.

What’s new:

• London Drinks Competition (covering wine, beers and spirits) winners will be promoted and stories will be shared on the London Drinks Guide platform to help promote the drinks and producers that win and the venues selling them.
• London Drinks Competition winners products will also be integrated with BTN’s new direct to consumer platform Get Drinks Delivered for producers and brands looking to grow their direct to consumer sales.
• Entrants will now get tasting notes, shelf talker templates with tasting notes and scores when the 2021 results are announced.

• The shelf talkers will be available in the entrants' zone free of cost. Along with the above new features, The Top 100 wine list of the best performing wines, spirits and beers in the London Competitions will help give consumers an even bigger steer on what products they should be buying.

You can enter this year’s competition here.