IWSC spirits judging complete, wine judging starts this week

Updated on 3 August 2020.

Like everyone in the industry, here at the IWSC we’ve been actively adjusting our plans all summer to put our customers, experts and team first. Our goal, nonetheless, remains to find a way to again showcase your wines, spirits – and stories – once normal service resumes.

We’re delighted to report that the first set of judging for this year’s awards – for all spirits, with the exception of Scotch whisky, which is set for later in the summer in Scotland – took place as planned over the last three weeks. The trophy judging was completed at the weekend, with some tough battles in the gin, brandy and world whisky categories in particular. The results will be announced later this week.

Now we are all set for the first part of our wine judging. We are lucky in that the format of our wine tasting sessions – small groups, high frequency – gives us a welcome degree of flexibility. And while restrictions in the UK remain cautious, this year’s wine judging is set to begin at our usual venue of The China Exchange in London from Tuesday 4 August with the Northern Hemisphere wines.

The sessions will run over two weeks, with six – rather than the usual ten – panels per day to ensure that social distancing can be maintained. The results from the judging will be announced in early September, enabling producers to market these results by the time – hopefully – the market returns to some sort of normality in autumn.

The judging sessions for Southern Hemisphere wines – including wines from South Africa, which will this year be tasted in London rather than Cape Town – remain as scheduled, commencing in the week of 21 September. These results are due to be announced in early October.

Updated timeline

Northern Hemisphere judging begins: 4 August 2020

Southern Hemisphere (including China, Japan, Taiwan & Hong Kong) entry deadline: 18 August 2020

Southern Hemisphere (including South Africa, China, Japan, Taiwan & Hong Kong) delivery deadline: 4 September 2020

Southern Hemisphere judging begins: 21 September 2020

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