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CONCOURS MONDIAL DE BRUXELLES 2010: the RESULTS!
On the podium: France leads together with Spain and Italy
The best wines in the world speak Spanish
Sicily, host of this year’s edition, confirms its primacy among Italian regions
The winners of Palermo’s record edition of the “World Cup” of wines and spirits, a competition between almost seven thousand labels hailing from all over the world, have been announced. The results of the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles 2010 constitute a useful guide for both well-established excellences of world oenology and for the new trends which are developing in international tastes, as well as a prestigious accolade for awarded producers.
The composition of the podium has not varied compared to the 2009 edition in Valencia. France is once again the absolute winner of the Concours with 606 medals (401 Silver, 191 Gold, 14 Great Gold Medals) obtained by 2277 samples presented. A commendable performance, thus, by the world’s second largest wine producer, both in terms of the number of samples presented as in terms of the quality detected and awarded by the juries. Spain took second place with 378 medals (225 S, 136 G, 17 GG) out of 1394 labels presented. The largest collection of Great Gold Medals, 17, is also Spanish, and improves by one the previous record, set by Spain itself at last year’s edition. Italy, host to the 2010 Concours, confirms its third place with 228 medals (134 S, 89 G, 5 GG) awarded out of 949 labels sent to the tastings; the 45 more medals compared to 2009 represent an important result, which rewards and confirms the quality and identity of Italian wines worldwide.
An impressive performance by Chile, with a total of 158 medals (80 S, 68 G, 10 GG) and a fifth place in the world ranking, just below Portugal which garnered 177 medals (107 S, 65 G, 5 GG). Apart from this excellent placement, the South American country can boast 10 Great Gold Medals: the double compared to last year’s booty, as well as compared to both Italy and Portugal, which added 5 Great Gold Medals each to their medal collections. Another emerging country which achieved a great result is South Africa, which took sixth place with its 80 medals (45 S, 33 G, 2 GG). Finally Luxembourg, host country of the 2011 edition of the Concours, has conquered a total of 31 medals (24 S, 6 G, 1 GM): ten more compared to last year, including a Great Gold Medal that bodes very well for the next edition, which will certainly yield even more commitment and satisfactions for this small producer country concentrated in the valley of the Moselle.
Altogether the 6.624 wines and 340 spirits in the competition, evaluated by 275 tasters representing 40 nationalities, have registered a considerable growth in quality, with a 1.2% increase in the average score. It has thus been indispensable to increase the minimum score for awarding a silver medal, which has been raised to the 85 – 85.4 points range; this operation was necessary to respect the rules of the Concours, which decree that the awarded wines cannot exceed – under any circumstances – a 30% quota of the participating wines.
Less than 1% of competing wines and spirits have received a Great Gold Medal; among the samples that received the highest accolade, these are the six labels which obtained the highest score in their category:
Best Sparkling: Champagne Baron-Fuenté Grand Cru Brut (France)
Best White: Viu Manent Chardonnay Reserva 2009 (Chile)
Best Rosé: Casal da Coelheira Rosé 2009 (Portugal)
Best Red: Michel Torino Don David Tannat 2008 (Argentina)
Best Sweet: Lustau Solera Reserva Pedro Ximénez San Emilio (Spain)
Best Spirit: Tequila Espolón Reposado (Mexico)
Best Red, Best White, Best Sweet and Best Spirit all speak Spanish, and the Best Rosé speaks Portuguese; we leave the area of the Iberian Peninsula’s languages only with the best Sparkling, which speaks French instead.
(A complete list of the wines is available at the CMB 2010 WEBSITE)
Italy, the world’s leading producer of wine, took third place in the rankings. The results of the nation host to this edition of the Concours deserve particular attention.
The Italian podium for 2010 confirms the positions conquered by the regions during the last edition: Sicily took the highest position with 77 medals, followed by Veneto with 41 and by Tuscany with 28; positions identical to last year, but with 24 more medals. The passionate participation and great results of these three regions, then, is not surprising; together they have presented 653 labels, or 69.39% of all the Italian samples which reached the tasting stalls in Palermo.
A surprising result for Abruzzo, which climbs up one position in the ranking of the most awarded regions, compared to last edition: it reaches the brink of the podium thanks to its 23 overall awards, conceded to 40% of its participating samples. Puglia did just as well, with a few less medals but with the glory of a Great Gold medal, awarded to Terragnolo Primitivo Salento IGT Rosso by Apollonio Casa Vinicola SRL, which marks the absolute record in terms of score among Italian awarded labels.
With its total number of medals, Sicily confirms its primacy among Italian productive regions. Sicily’s Great Gold Medal was won by Antonello Cassarà Kilim Rosso 2007 (Sicilia IGT). The gold medals’ “top five” for Sicily’s wines and spirits in 2010 is completed by:
Donnafugata Chiarandà Bianco 2007 (Contessa Entellina DOC)
Az. Agr. D’Ancona Cimillya 2007 (Passito di Pantelleria DOC)
Società Agricola de Gregorio Rosa di Nero 2009 (Sicilia IGT)
Distilleria F.lli Russo Limoncello di Sicilia
The Concours Mondial de Bruxelles has developed a very effective system to measure the precision, the coherence and the repeatability of the evaluations by its own tasters. This evaluation tool has been developed in cooperation with the Institute of Statistics of the Catholic University of Louvain. The Concours Mondial de Bruxelles is also the first international competition to have established an efficient and constant monitoring of the awarded samples, in order to guarantee the legitimacy of the results. Indeed, after the contest a certain number of awarded samples undergo a set of chemical, physical and sensory analyses, to compare them with the products introduced in the market. Finally, the Concours’ organizational body and all the participating samples undergo a yearly inspection by Belgium’s Federal Economic Affairs Department.
Molto grazie a Alesia Panzeca, Gran Via, Ufficio Stampa Italia.
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