The Royal Food Awards have been created to celebrate Western Australia and all of the local producers and their talents through a variety of different categories.
The wine show is undoubtedly one of the main events. Local wine producers competed with their peers at a national level. A lot of scrutiny and meticulous planning ensures that the wines were in their best shape and temperature. Discretion is absolute since the anonymity of the wines guarantees impartial results. Dozens of people worked for weeks to prepare for this competition, amongst them, Judges international and from all over Australia who tasted and compared wines of different styles to select la crème de la crème, the best of the best!
I was honoured to have been behind the scene one of the judging day and exercised my 5’s of wine tasting (see, swirl, sniff, sip and savour) to some of the wines judged: Clean fruit flavours, heady wines that lured you on and on with endless expression and depth, of winemakers properly focused on Terroir, others on fruit expression while others teased you into deep thought over their play with both and a sly little mix of barrels.
Visitors, with or without wine experience, can have a lot of fun in these events as well. At the end of the week there is an Exhibitors Tasting before the Awards Presentation. Being able to try different wines and meet the people behind them is a fantastic way to get further into wine, make notes for future purchases, and learn about the diversity of wine Australia offers today.
All wines judged were the wines that were finished and available for commercial release.
Rows and rows of white sheeted tables with glasses poured minutely with wine. There are no bottles or labels, just numbers and colour. Glasses were changed frequently as more entries rolled in. Judges were intentionally left at the gracious mercy of their senses, soon to be entranced in sheer concentration.
26 Judges tasting and judging 1915 wines in 4 days. Not every Judge was involved in judging all the wines, each judge tasted about 150 wines a day making sure that every exhibitor’s wine had a good chance and treated fairly: 1 Chairperson, 5 panel chairmen, 10 senior Judges and 10 associates.
Judges awarded Bronze, Silver and Gold medals along with a few trophies for the best wines in each category, for the trophies awards all the judges were involved and only wines awarded Gold medals were eligible for Trophies.
This year, Evans & Tate from Margaret River have taken out the coveted Best Wine of the Show Trophy with their Broadway Chardonnay 2016, also The Best Western Australian Wine Trophy, Best White Table Wine Trophy, Best Western Australian White Table Wine Trophy and Best Chardonnay Trophy.
For a complete list, please click the link to the 2018 Perth Royal Wine Awards Results Catalogue.
Big Thank you for the opportunity to the Royal Agricultural Society of WA.
Cheers to Perth Wine Awards!!!
