IWSC winners take pride of place in ADT Gold Room

IWSC winning wines took pride of place in a dedicated ‘gold medal winning wines’ tasting room at Wine Australia’s annual Australia Day Tasting (ADT) earlier this week.

The Gold Room featured 60 gold medal winning wines from international competitions, 20 of which were IWSC winning wines, including wines from Penfolds, House of Arras, Tasmanian winery Josef Chromy and Adelaide Hills based Bird in Hand. The room was free-pour, and remained bustling throughout the day with buyers, sommeliers, journalists and educators enjoying the wide selection of award-winning products.

The ADT is the largest annual trade tasting of Australian wine outside Australia, welcoming over 1000 visitors to taste nearly 1100 wines from 41 different regions and 243 wineries. The event also played host to 38 winemakers and winery owners who flew in from Australia to present their wines and meet with members of the trade at the event, including IWSC 2017 winners Sam Clarke, owner of Thorn-Clarke Wines, Andrew Nugent, owner of Bird in Hand Winery, and Jeremy Dineen, chief winemaker at Josef Chromy Wines, whose wines were presented in the Gold Room.

The three winners were quick to emphasise the value of winning a medal at the IWSC. Andrew Nugent said, “The IWSC is one of the world’s premier wine shows, so for us winning a medal is an indication that our wines are on track with our goal of becoming one of the world’s great wineries.”

“The advantage for us about winning an IWSC medal is international recognition, particularly for a region like Tasmania which is relatively small. It’s great to get a bit of international recognition to help put Tasmanian wine on the map”, added Jeremy Dineen.

Wine Australia CEO Andreas Clark, who was also in attendance, said ‘This year’s Australia Day Tasting in London was a great success. There was a fantastic atmosphere, full of people discovering wines they hadn’t tasted before and renewing old acquaintances, while exhibitor tables had a constant flurry of visitors, and master classes were well-attended. The annual ADT is a very important event to showcase our wines on an international stage and I was delighted to see the enthusiasm for Australian wine’.