2023 Wine Judging - deliberations from our judges - days 9 & 10

As we come to the end of our 2023 Wine Judging, we took an opportunity to gather further highlights from this year’s awards from our Wine Judging Committee members. To finish the many wines that have been tasted this year, our judges were treated to flights of Prosecco and wines from Canada.

Sarah Abbott MW, who last summer led our Prosecco Awards in the Northeast of Italy in Conegliano Valdobbiadene, this year has been overseeing our panels as they taste through the Italian sparkling wines. Abbott commented, “We’ve had a really diverse and delicious range of wines from Prosecco today”.

Our judges were particularly impressed by the drier styles of Prosecco from Rive, winning a handful of silvers and a couple of golds. The Proseccos in the Cartizze category also stood out to our judges, for their elegance and beautiful balance. Across all the categories and denominations in Prosecco our judges were encouraged by the very high levels of consistency.

Alistair Cooper MW was back leading panels of our experts, this time through flights of wines from Canada. Cooper noted, “We had an impressive number of entries from Canada this year, and it is heartening to see that through the last four or five years there has been consistent improvement in the wines from Canada”.

Our judges felt that the flights of red from Canada showed more judicious use of oak and slightly less extraction, meaning the wines were more drinkable and accessible. Moving to the whites, there was a standout Sauvignon Blanc from Ontario, with a little bit of oak, which really impressed our judges, they didn’t hold back in awarding the wine a gold medal.

Ending the judging on a real high, it was the ice wine category that stole the show, with three gold medals awarded to standout wines. Our judges commented how the flights from Canada usually leave our judges wanting more, and this year they did not disappoint.

As we wrap up another year of wine judging we would like to thank all our incredible judging experts for their time, their knowledge and their expertise, they are the heart of the IWSC.

The IWSC’s 2023 Wine Results will be available from 22 May 2023. Discover other deliberations from this series on our News page here.