England storm home with 16 gold medals in the Champagne & Sparkling Wine

England storm home with 16 gold medals in the Champagne & Sparkling Wine.

English wines have achieved another impressive competition success, with the Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships (CSWWC) announcing that England have won 16 gold and 20 silver medals out of a total of 149 Gold & 143 Silver medals awarded to all countries in 2016 – the competitions highest number of awards to date.

Founder and Chairman of the judges, Tom Stevenson, comments; “With 16 Gold medals and 20 Silvers, England was the third most successful sparkling wine country in this year’s competition. It is mostly the new ventures (from and including Nyetimber) and the renewed, replanted and revitalised old names (such as Hambledon) who mop up all the medals.

As I have said in the past, if English sparkling wine can build a world class reputation and achieve the competitive success with such young vineyards and very little reserve wine, imagine what might be achieved as the vineyards mature and producers build up their reserves.”

With the unrivalled sparkling wine experience of the three judges

With the unrivalled sparkling wine experience of the three judges ( of the three judges (the “Dream Team” of Tom Stevenson, Essi Avellan MW and Dr Tony Jordan), no other competition can boast the breadth and quality of entries that the CSWWC receives. With 22% more entries than last year and producers competing from no less than 26 countries, including first time participants from Armenia, Croatia, Moldova and Ukraine, the CSWWC is the largest and most relevant sparkling wine competition in the world.

France gained the largest haul of Gold medals with a fantastic 69, of which 67 were awarded to Champagnes and the others two from the Loire.

The Best in Class, National Champions and four World Champions by Style will be revealed at this year’s CSWWC Awards Dinner at Vintners’ Hall in September. These awards will be published in Q3 Issue of The World of Fine Wine magazine, which is due out later that week, while tasting notes and price categories for all this year’s Gold and Silver medal winning wines in addition to a full listing of the awards will be published in Tom Stevenson’s Champagne & Sparkling Wine Guide 2017 (due out in October 2016).

Tom Stevenson. went on to say “It is worth reiterating for any journalist or publication new to this competition that we taste blind (which is to say we have no knowledge of the identity of each wine beyond its origin, basic style and grape varieties); we judge medals and Best in Class strictly in flights of the same origin and style (Cava Rosé exclusively against Cava Rosé, Australian Blanc de Blancs exclusively against Australian Blanc de Blancs etc.); we judge wines conventionally as Gold, Silver, Bronze, Commended, No Award, Possibly Faulty and Definitely Faulty, but we award – unconventionally – only Gold and Silver medals because these are the truly outstanding wines; and we only judge in flights of different style for National trophies and different origin for World Champion trophies.

The CSWWC is the first and only terroir-driven competition judged exclusively by internationally renowned fizz experts who taste each and every wine submitted to guarantee an unprecedented level of consistency and accuracy of the medals awarded.