Reviews

MUNDUSvini wine competition: insider’s view
(fine)wines №2 autumn 2007

Wine competitions remain an important instrument allowing a producer to send a message in a shortest possible way about the quality of his product to a wine merchant and to a final consumer.

They serve a good function and are firmly fixed in the marketing arsenal of many wine producers.

Among various formats, it is difficult to single out one as universal to suit all organizers and countries. Yet, any authoritative international event is a good starting point to understand the main principles of work. German MUNDUSvini was a recent event of the kind. It will serve as a convenient base for analyzing the situation in which wine competitions find themselves today.

Competitions are important for regions and countries with established or actively developing markets of wine production or consumption. On the one hand, each winemaking country, be it France or Chile, has events where participation is limited to local producers and their results target only regional or national audience. On the other hand, large markets for wine consumption, especially those with little or no local production, wine competitions as a rule are international in their essence. They invite a wide range of producers from different wine regions of the world. Competitions run in the UK are exemplary in this respect; event on the up-and-coming markets such as Japan, China or India are also gaining momentum. Their main aim is to create conditions for promoting foreign wines in the mentioned countries. However, they also get a good international coverage which is an additional benefit for its participants.

MUNDUSvini kills two hares with one shot. Germany is a historic wine producer and is one of the key winemaking countries in the world. It is also the largest importer by volume and the fourth biggest market for wine consumption. Thus, MUNDUSvini is attractive both for German producers and for the foreign ones who wish to get or to consolidate their presence on the German market. This year German entries accounted only for a quarter of the total number of wines, and there is a trend for a decreasing number of the German entries. On the contrary, the share of foreign participants is increasing. It is especially so for three leading exporters to Germany — Italy, France and Spain.

MUNDUSvini is not the only competition in Germany. Annual Berliner Wein Trophy has been run since 1994, but it lacks behind both in scale and in international recognition.

The reason of MUNDUSvini success lies in a choice of strategy. The competition is organized by Meininger, one of the oldest and largest publishing houses with a number of well established wine publications. The company’s solid reputation, various target groups reached through specialized press and broad circulations helped to attract over 2,200 entries in the first year of the competition.

The organizers have also worked hard to strengthen the international status. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) and the International Union of Enologists (UIOE) were chosen as partners. This automatically raised the awareness inside the industry. The mailing database of the monthly Wine Business International magazine that targets a global audience and was launched by Meiniger last year brought the information to the key players in the wine trade.

Thus in six years MUNDUSvini turned into a serious international competition and competes with its peers in the UK which are traditionally regarded as leading in the category. This year wines from 35 countries were entered, and the judging panel consisted of experts from 45 different states.

Robert Joseph, founder of The International Wine Challenge and member of the MUNDUSvini organizational committee since 2007, states that wine competitions begin to have real impact on the world industry when the number of entries exceeds the 5,000 threshold. This year 4 925 wines were entered in the German competition. Its stable growth allows to forecast with a high probability of accuracy that next year MUNDUSvini will pass the critical level. In any case, it is already among the top five European competitions which also include the British International Wine Challenge, Decanter World Wine Awards, International Wine and Spirit Competition and the Belgian Concours Mondial de Bruxelles.

The number of judges (247 in total this year) is also on par or even slightly higher in comparison with other competitions. A three-day judging shift means only morning sessions which last about 4 hours and where a judge tastes 40-50 at each session. One of the Australian judges at MUNDUSvini was very positive about such format as in Australia, for example, a panel judge has to taste up to 200 samples a day which can deteriorate the quality of judgment due to human tiredness.

The judging panel is split into 20 commissions with 7 people each. Wines are tasted blind, judges write their assessments, then there is a discussion. Each commission has a superjudge who collects evaluation sheets and announces preliminary results. Then all scores are analysed by a computer programme, and a final result is drawn.

A three-tier award system includes double gold (95-100 points), gold (90-94 points) and silver (85-90 points) medals. The competition is run by the standards of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine which exclude bronze medals and recommendations and restrict the number of award-winners to 30 percent from the total number of entries.

Not everyone agrees with such severe limits. A valid question is being asked, “Why should the entries which meet the medal requirements but don’t fit the quota should suffer?” Leading British competitions don’t have such limits, for instance.

The evaluation system may also be subject to criticism. It is presented as a table with several parameters of the visual, olfactory and gustatory analysis. A quality scale (from ‘insufficient’ to ‘excellent’) is offered for each element, according to which the taster should award points. This system is used at all events under the guidance of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine, but a linear approach may be viewed as one-sided which may not consider a total wine experience.

As for the entries, judges get only technical information about colour, type, aromatic potential and sugar content, an example being a “still white wine from an aromatic variety with sugar content less than 12 g/l”. Knowledge of regional origin and a price bracket may lead to a more focused assessment.

And one more thing. If organizers aim for an international status and invite a big number of foreign experts, it would be logical to use English as an official language of the competition. Nearly everybody is fluent in it. Instead, during general presentations judges had to listen to three languages which led to a loss of interest and time. There were occasions when superjudges would hold a discussion in German thus excluding people who speak other languages. The number of judges in sub-commissions should also perhaps be reduced from seven to four-five for better effectiveness and without losing on the quality of judgement.

The last comments are connected to internal organization rather than general structure and are likely to be addressed in the near future. Overall, German orderliness and effective organization make MUNDUSvini an international competition that meets requirements of the top leading events in the category which allow to monitor general trends of the global wine industry.