Canadian and fortified wines ahead in World Wine Awards

(©Fred Goldstein)

French wines from Bordeaux and the Loire Valley underperformed in this year's World Wine Awards, while new world Canadian wines proved surprising competitors.

Canadian and fortified wines are catching the judge's eye at this year's Decanter World Wine Awards, sponsored by wine magazine Decanter. The full results of the awards will be revealed live on Decanter.com on September 1, but an August 10 report on the website revealed that 80 percent of the entries from Porto and Madeira achieved either a bronze, silver or gold medal.  

Additionally Canada, not usually internationally renowned as a wine-making region, performed surprisingly well, with 75 percent of Canadian wines entered gaining awards. In marked contrast, bastions of old world wines Bordeaux and the Loire Valley underperformed with only 25 percent of their wines winning awards.

In total only 148 Bordeaux wines managed to win an award and out of those 148 wines, only four won gold medals. The Loire Valley performed even worse with only 38 wines making it into the medal table but not one was awarded gold.

In total, 10,983 wines were entered into the contest, of which only 1.9 percent won gold medals. Australia was at the top of the medals table with 33 Australian wines winning gold.

For information on how to watch the announcement of all the international results of the Decanter Wine Awards visit: www.decanter.com

Canada's wine industry is growing at a fast pace, the annual Canadian Wine Awards invites entries from over 1000 wines around the country, all of which have to be 100 percent Canadian grown, fermented and bottled. This year the winners of the Canadian Wine Awards will be announced in November.

More information about the Canadian Wine Awards hosted by Wine Access magazine can be found at http://www.wineaccess.ca/cwa