May 2009
DRY GERMAN WINE INCREASES MEDAL SHARE ACROSS ALL 2009 AWARDS
Medal-winning German wines increased by over 30% at this year’s wine awards, with a total of 331 gold, silver and bronze medals across the 2009 Decanter World Wine Awards, the International Wine and Spirits Competition, and the International Wine Challenge, compared to 251 medals in 2008.
Another important trend revealed in the results is the increased recognition of dry style German wines, with these wines receiving 57% more medals in 2009 than 2008.
Monika Reule of the Deutsches Weininstitut commented, “We are very pleased with Germany’s continued success on the international stage, and are especially satisfied to see dry wines being acclaimed at the highest level. German production of dry wines has increased by 26% since 1995 to 40 % in 2008, and recognition at these awards shows what we have long known: that Germany is capable of producing some of the best dry wines in the world”.
International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC)
This year marks the 40th anniversary of this well-established competition, which is judged by a highly qualified panel, including 40 MWs. Judging teams evaluated wines from 33 different countries in the Northern Hemisphere programme, and awarded 102 Gold Medals, representing just 3% of the total entries.
Germany won a total of 115 medals, including 12 Gold Medals. This represents over 10% of the total number of Gold Medals awarded, a great success for German wines. In 2009, Germany saw a slight increase in the number of medals awarded, with 115 compared to 2008’s 107 awards.
Looking at the styles of wine, over 60% of wines awarded a medal by the IWSC were trocken, or dry, compared with just 37% of dry wines in 2008.
International Wine Challenge (IWC)
With entries from a record 41 countries, the judges awarded a total of 3,458 medals, with 304 Gold medals, up 13% on last year, 1,304 Silvers and 2,154 Bronzes. The winning wines were each tasted by panels drawn from almost 400 experienced judges
German wines were presented with 112 awards, and of these, over 14% were gold medals, with silver medals making up a further 44%. Germany showed a 29% increase on the 89 medals awarded in 2008.
Over 50% of the medal-winning wines were dry in style, compared to 2008’s 44%, highlighting Germany’s shift towards drier style wines.
Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA)
This year, a total of 10,285 wines were entered, more than double the amount when the competition launched six years ago. Despite the large number of entries, medals are awarded remarkably consistently: on an almost identical scale to previous years only 64% of wines were awarded a medal, and of those just 2.8% won a gold medal or a trophy. 12.5% won a silver medal.
German wines saw an incredible 89% increase in medals in 2009, with 104 wines recognised compared to just 55 in 2008.
43% of German wines awarded medals at the DWWA were dry in style, while the DWWA judges continued to recognise classic styles, with 6 of the 7 golds awarded to Auslesen and Trockenbeerenauslesen.
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