Judging criteria

The judging panel of the Sommeliers Choice Awards will consist entirely of top sommeliers, master sommeliers, wine directors and on-premise buyers at U.S. restaurants, bars, pubs, and clubs. The goal of the Sommeliers Choice Awards is simple: to provide on-premise buyers and sommeliers a valuable benchmark for understanding which wines would make a compelling addition to a wine list.

Scoring system

Each wine will be blind-tasted first for the food parability, typicity, quality and value score. Once the bling tasting is done, a packaging score will be given and judges will be able to assess the package. Entrants will be able to see a detailed score breakdown giving them clear feedback on how they did. A final individual judge score for each wine is calculated based on the below formula and an average of the panel is then taken to determine the final score. Each panel will include a master sommelier in the team as a chair.

F (Food Parability Score) + T (Typicity Score) + Q (Quality Score) + Value Score (V) + Package Score (P) = Sommeliers Choice Awards Final Score.

Food parability

Food Parability of a wine is measured based on the variety of dishes that wine can be paired with instead of just one or two.

Typicity 

Typicity is a term in wine tasting used to describe the degree to which a wine reflects its varietal origins and thus demonstrates the signature characteristics of the grape from which it was produced, e.g., how much a Merlot wine “tastes like a Merlot”. It is an important component in judging wine competition when wines of the same variety are judged against each other.

Quality

Quality will be assessed based on how agreeable the wine is for its target customer and chemical analysis. SCA will measure quality by Appearance, Aroma, Body, Taste and Aftertaste.

Value

Value in this context means how well the wine is priced based on its quality. Judges will blind taste and write what they think should be the cost on which they will buy the wines and is fair. If they think it offers excellent value, the score should be close to 100 and if they think it should be priced lower, then the score should be low. The metric to be used here is the on-premise price vs quality.

Packaging

Packaging will be measured by how well judges think the wine will be perceived by the consumer. The package will be judged for the On-Premise market considering factors like label design and information, closure, and overall look. This does not involve boxes, cartons and bags. It is how they think the product will be perceived when placed on a wine shelf amongst thousands of other wines.

Medals are then awarded based on the final score the wine gets.

Double Gold – 96 points and above
Gold – 90-95 points
Silver – 80-89 points
Bronze – 70-79 points