This year saw the first year of the Gold Wine Awards and there was a surprisingly large number of entries.

The Gold Awards was born out of a need to help the consumer make educated buying decisions and to help worthy wines to sell. With the huge amounts of wine available to the consumer on shelves, there is very little to guide them especially in the lower price categories.

Wines were judged by graduates from the Cape Wine Academy and the results were then statistically linked to the price of the wine to determine which wine was real value for money.

It was found that if wine tasters knew the price of a wine they would become prejudiced. Cheaper wines would be scored down and expensive wines would be tasted more critically. Throughout the double blind-tasting, the tasters did not know the identity or price of the wine.

The wines have to be R70.00 including VAT or below, and available somewhere in South Africa to the consumer at that price. The price limit will be adjusted every year to allow for inflation and the average increase in price.

Only Gold medals were awarded.

Wineries that did extremely well were Vondeling, Alvi’s Drift, Goudini Wine Cellar and KWV.