SYDNEY INTERNATIONAL WINE COMPETITION

Australia's International Wine Show. Founded 1982. European Union Accredited.

Only Major International Wine Show to Judge Finalists Alongside Appropriate Food.

P O Box 210, Wentworth Falls, NSW 2782, Australia
info@top100wines.com tel +62 (0)2 4757 4400

e-NEWSLETTER

Friday 9th September, 2011

Dear Friends - in Wine and Food

NOW OPEN - 2012 COMPETITION’S JUDGES’ FAREWELL DINNER
Date: Friday, 21 October 2011. 7.30 pm
Venue: Ballroom, Mercure Sydney Airport Hotel, 20 Levey St, Wolli Creek, Sydney  
Tickets: AUD $185 per person. Table of 6 - 8 people: AU$175 per person.
Maximum: 40 Diners, includes Judges.
A trio of high quality wines of similar style, mainly chosen from the Competition’s
library of current and previous Trophy and TOP 1OO Award winners, will be offered alongside each of the five Dégustation food courses. During the Dégustation, the Australian and International Judges comment, blind, on one of the trio of wines presented, suggesting their identities, offering their observations and personal preferences in relationship to those wines’ complementary role to the dish in question. Diners will be invited to comment and/or question. Highly entertaining! Judges will be seated amongst diners at all dining tables.

WINE MENU (At table, each Bracket of wines is presented in random order.)

Check out the availability - and current value - of these wines on Wine Searcher!
Farewell Dinner Tickets Now Available Online

TROPHIES & AWARDS PRESENTATION BANQUET
Date: Saturday, 25 February 2012. 10.00am for 12 Noon
Venue: Grand Ballroom, Shangri-La Sydney Hotel, The Rocks
Early Bird Ticket Prices soon to be announced. Register.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"There's no question, it has a marketing and sales input so if you can put a trophy or gold medal on a wine it definitely helps sales. But from a wine producer's view, it's a really good way to benchmark yourself against your competitors. It's a true independent assessment of your wine's quality." Chris Hatcher, Treasury Wine Estates.

STELLAR JUDGING PANEL
At least six members of the Competition’s stellar Judging Panel offer consumers (and Award Winners) their individual comments and guidance on each of the Award winning wines, which comments are published on the world-wide-web.
The Competition’s 2012 Judging Panel comprises: (alphabetically by surname)

Most of the Judges’ Résumés can be found here.

SAMPLES DEADLINE - ALARM BELLS ARE RINGING!
Entrants, please forward your Judging Samples asap. The deadline for Judging Samples is 30 September. Entries started arriving 1st June and are still arriving, from over 400 entrants to date. (Entries close next Friday, 16th September.) But as of now, less than 15 percent of judging samples have been delivered. Which means there is going to be an avalanche of deliveries just before the deadline. There is much work to be done sorting and cataloguing the samples after the cut off and late arrivals can miss the cut.

WE DO NOT SEND YOU SPECIAL LABELS
Please send fully dressed bottles where possible. This enables us to check spelling and other vital details against entry information. Clean-skins with lab labels are accepted but must bear full details - name of wine, grape varieties, vintage and most importantly, name of winery/entrant. You do not need to nominate a class or category. Our Judges themselves do the consumer friendly classifications into Lighter, Medium or Fuller Bodied palate weight categories. This is the process that allows us, uniquely, to judge wines of similar palate weight side by side with an appropriate food dish. We judge for technical excellence, certainly. But we also judge for that vital X factor - a wine’s ability to complement appropriate food.

GOODWILL CANBERRA CALLING
Each year, we visit a particular Wine Region, to meet the winemakers, visit their Cellar Doors, meet their people. Last month, we visited the Canberra and Hilltops Regions. READ ON

Talk again soon?

Warren Mason
Competition Director