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Decanter World Wine Awards
AWARDS Top medals for UK wines
The Decanter World Wine Awards 2021 results have been announced and show the strength of UK wines. Alongside one Best in Show medal, UK wines won two Platinum and nine Gold medals, as well as 81 Silver and 51 Bronze.
The UK Best in Show medal went to Squerryes, Late Disgorged Brut 2011, a Kent sparkling wine made from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. A coveted award as only 50 Best in Show medals are awarded globally. DWWA judges said in their tasting notes: “The drama and intensity of great traditional-method English sparkling wines is now widely recognised. What English wine creators are just beginning to grasp, though, is just how propitious their fi ne sparkling wines are for extended ageing, in large part due to the extraordinary, fl avour-saturated acid profi les bequeathed by the long, luminous yet always fretful English summers.”
The judges awarded the late disgorged sparkling wine a score of 97 and the Best in Show trophy, describing its aromas as, “expressive, harmonious and refi ned after a decade of slow maturation.”
Two still wines won Gold medals. One Gold went to White Castle Vineyard’s ‘Pinot Noir
Reserve’ 2018, made with Pinot Noir Précoce in Monmouthshire, Wales. This was the fi rstever Gold medal won by a Welsh wine in the DWWA. The other Gold went to Kent-based
Chapel Down winery’s ‘Kit’s Coty’ Bacchus
2019. Platinum medals were awarded to two sparkling wines from Kent: Chapel Down Rosé Brut, non-vintage (NV), and Gusbourne Blanc de Blancs Brut 2016. Seven sparkling wines won Gold medals. They included Buckinghamshire winery
Harrow & Hope’s Blanc de Noirs Brut 2015
and Surrey-based Denbies’ ‘Cubitt Blanc de Noirs’ 2014, as well as supermarket
Morrisons’ ‘The Best English Sparkling
Brut’ 2010. Wineries in Kent enjoyed a particularly strong year, although 21 UK regions from Cornwall to Derbyshire and Conwy in North Wales were represented on this year’s medal table. Sarah Jane Evans, Master of Wine (MW) and DWWA 2021 Co-Chair, said of this year’s competition: “You know that this is something that's been through a really rigorous judging process. We're not playing at judging here. White Castle Vineyard’s ‘Pinot Noir This is blind tasting. We have absolutely no This is blind tasting. We have absolutely no
> Robb and Nicola Merchant
idea what the wines are and we're tasting them not only in panels together where we have to each discuss and think about them deeply, but then they go up to Regional Chairs who are experts in those countries and also have a chance to step back and decide whether they really are the right Gold medal winners.
Our dream for 12 years came true and with our fi rst entry to Decanter world wine awards 2021 – with our Pinot Noir Reserve made from Pinot Noir Précoce vintage 2018 . To win a Gold was beyond our dream however this underpins everything we strive to achieve in producing quality Welsh wine. It’s been a rollercoaster of excitement, congratulations and well wishes from near and far, something that we will cherish forever.
Robb Merchant, co-owner White Castle Vineyard
i
The full list of winners is available on the Decanter website htt ps://awards.decanter.com/DWWA
We are immensely proud to have been awarded Best in Show at this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards, especially as we are the only English wine to make the list of the top 50 wines globally. This award is not only testament to our team’s hard work and expert winemaking skills, but it reinforces our place as one of the best Champagne and sparkling wine brands in the world.
Henry Warde, Squerryes’
“Then they go up to the Co-Chairs who re-taste and think again. So actually, that rigour, that independence is really, really a wonderful thing to have for a medal, so whether you get a Bronze, or a Silver or a Gold you can know it's been hard won.”
Stephen Skelton MW, Chair of the judging panel for UK wines commented: “Out of 149 English and Welsh wines submitted for the 2021 Decanter World Wine Awards, 12 of them were awarded Gold medals or higher, around the same as previous years. The top fi ve scoring wines (four sparkling and one still) all came from Kent wineries using overwhelmingly Kent grapes, with the others from Hampshire, East Sussex, Buckinghamshire, plus a remarkable Pinot Noir Précoce from Monmouthshire in Wales. The top two scoring wines were a superb 2011 Squerryes Estate “Late Disgorged” Brut, showing how well English sparkling wines can age, plus a relatively youthful 2016 Gusbourne Blanc de blanc, again showing what a few years of bottle age can do. The other top scoring sparklers were all from 2015 or older, which goes to show whilst having good stocks of older wines might be damaging to the cash-fl ow, in terms of quality, age counts. Still wines didn’t fare quite so well this year, and whilst a Chapel Down Bacchus and the already mentioned Welsh wine got Golds, the Chardonnays on show could only manage Silvers. Maybe when the 2020s come of age, more still wines will merit Golds. Overall, the quality of wines entered was higher than ever, with only fi ve wines not getting medals. DWWA judges to international standards and any medal awarded is done so on the basis of genuine world-class quality, not just because it’s English or Welsh.”
Matthew Stubbs MW judged on the UK panel for the fi rst time in 2021 and commented, “I was very impressed by the overall quality. I was expecting great fi reworks for the sparkling wines, which we got, but also some excellent still wines, which demonstrates that the UK is not a one trick pony.”
In the 2021 DWWA competition more than 160 expert judges, including 44 Masters of Wine and 11 Master Sommeliers, tasted a record 18,094 wines from 56 countries.
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