IWC to reveal 90-100 point scores on top medals

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 30 November, 2017

The International Wine Challenge (IWC) has announced that for the first time producers and suppliers will now be able to source medals displaying the score of wines that achieve 90 points or more, translating as Silver, Gold and Trophy level awards.

The move, which the competition says follows requests from entrants, will come into effect imemdiately, covering the forthcoming 2018 awards onwards, with the score appearing on the Silver, Gold and Trophy-level bottle labels given out by the competition.

Commenting on this augmentation of the easily recognisable and long established Gold, Silver and Bronze-based system, IWC event director Chris Ashton said: “The 100-point system has been integral to the scoring of the IWC for the past 25 years - whilst we’ll be keeping the classic medal system, we wanted to give a richer understanding of the ranking of each wine.”

The IWC’s judging system, which has typically seen the 100-point scale used by judges, has been based on a consensus between panels of judges and their individual scoring, with discussion and collaboration helping to calibrate the final award.

“In addition to the panel of judges deciding on a wine’s level ranking, the judging panel chairs will add a point score for award-winning wines. Both those results will be confirmed by the co-chairs,” explained the organisers.

Charles Metcalfe, co-chair of the IWC, added: “Awarding points gives a more precise result within a category. It shows wine-lovers and producers alike if a Silver medal wine nearly won a Gold medal or was closer to Bronze. It will show which are the top Golds, many of which will go on to win IWC Trophies.”

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