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Sommeliers Choice Awards 2020 – The Gold Gets More Precious

Photo for: Sommeliers Choice Awards 2020 – The Gold Gets More Precious

15/11/2019 2nd Edition of the Sommeliers Choice Awards – Stakes get Higher!

The 2019 edition of the Sommeliers Choice Awards brought an absolutely unprecedented number of participants. But thanks to the judges of the competition and the judging process set by Beverage Trade Network, the first edition was nothing short of absolute success.

Sommeliers Choice Awards 2019 witnessed wine bottles from across the world.

Wine bottles from the United States, Australia, Germany, Austria, Spain, New Zealand, France, Italy, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, and many more nations were brought together under one single canopy. These were then judged by some of the topmost Head Sommeliers, Master Sommeliers, Wine Buyers and Wine Directors of the biggest known brand of the USA wine industry.

The Purpose of Sommeliers Choice Awards!

The on-premise wine only accounts for a quarter of the entire wine industry but the revenue that it generates is 50% of the total revenue of the case volume value of the market. This shows how important the on-premise wine market is.
The two main questions that judges need to answer while judging the wine bottles are whether “Would we stock this?” and “Will the consumers buy the second glass?”. 

Sid Patel, CEO, Beverage Trade Network (the venture organizer of SCA) began a competition of such a stature to serve a bigger purpose beyond wines competing against each other. Coming from having owned a successful private label himself, Sid understands how complicated it is to get your wine onto shelves and into glasses repeatedly, especially in a crowded market like the USA. Hence the creation of Sommeliers Choice Awards came into play for multi-fold purposes mentioned below:

  • For a fair wine competition amongst quality wines of the world.

  • To bring actual business value to the participants of the competition.

  • For veteran sommeliers, wine buyers and wine directors of the industry to tag their favorite wines.

  • To give an opportunity to international wine labels to better understand the taste palate of USA's topmost buyers in the business!

Having achieved all that with the first edition in 2019, there was only room to grow and make the competition bigger and more worthy for its participants for the year 2020!

Beverage Trade Network has built better Rewards for SCA 2020!

A lot of positive feedback was received from the first edition participants and judges! It brought a learning curve to create a bigger and more rewarding 2nd Edition. A lot of market research and discussions with top buyers and sellers concluded the addition of a “Winning Impact” for the competition winners! You may click the link to find out what are the new awards for wines that win.

Rewarding All Participants

This year is rather special for every participant! With the commencement of a new decade, the wine competition has introduced tasting feedback.

Most old or new winemakers are always on the lookout for:

1) Top buyers of the wine industry tasting their wine.
2) Top buyers of the wine industry giving individual attention to their wine bottle.
3) Getting a comment or tasting feedback on their wine from the top buyers in the industry.

Tasting Feedback

Whilst giving participants' wine bottles from around the world enough exposure to some of the topmost buyers in the industry, this year tasting feedbacks will be provided to them.

Tasting feedback is a calibrated tasting note written after a collaborative discussion by the judges about a particular wine on the tasting table.

Business Value!

Sommeliers Choice Awards beginning this year will allow its participant to use the tasting feedback as a marketing tool and in point of sale material with the SCA logo without any additional fee.

Judges

This year the competition will get even more stringent with not only more number of participants embracing the competition but also more number of judges judging. This would mean more number of judges judging every individual wine, making it that much more difficult to compete.
So yes, this year, the stakes will get higher for the better rewards that Sommeliers Choice Awards has introduced.

Below you may also find the key details pertaining to SCA 2020:

Key Dates:

Registrations Ends July 20, 2020
Warehouse closes July 30, 2020
Judging: August 12, 2020
Winners Announced: August 31, 2020

Pricing:

$ 125 - Registration ends on July 20

If you would like to enter your wines click here 

A unique opportunity to present your wines to America's top sommeliers. The wine scores are benchmarked for on-premise channels by top sommeliers, master sommeliers, wine directors and restaurant wine buyers. Domestic deadline is April 24.