Recently, the Selection Sauvignon Contest took place, and I shared my favorite wines from the competition. Now, I’m going to provide more details about the overall medal winners. The Concours Mondial du Sauvignon/Sauvignon Blanc Selection is a “blind” tasting, meaning that the taster knows nothing about the wines they’re evaluating. Only the vintage is known, but it’s mostly irrelevant. Additional information may only be available in some cases, such as oak aging, but it won’t affect the wine’s rating.
When tasting and judging wines with an open mind, it can sometimes result in a pleasant surprise because wine tasting is fundamentally subjective. There’s no “neutral” or “objective” way to judge wine by universal quality measures. All medal winners from the Concours Mondial du Sauvignon can be found on their website.
France brought home the most medals in the competition, which isn’t surprising given that it has the most Sauvignon Blanc vineyards. Austria’s Styria region received the most medals among wine regions, with 85 medals. The next competition will be held in Austria, where I’m sure there will be more fantastic wines to taste.
South Africa hosted this year’s competition and won 56 medals, indicating a successful grape variety in the country. The Sauvignon Blanc South Africa organization’s focus on the grape variety can be credited for this. The full list of medal winners from the competition is extensive, but some notable ones from lesser-known locations include Argentina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the USA, North Macedonia, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and Switzerland.
My wife and I are passionate about wine, gastronomy, and travel. We publish our online wine magazine, BKWine Magazine, and have contributed to numerous wine publications. We also run BKWine Tours, a wine travel business that takes us around the world’s wine regions for a third of the year. We visit about 200 wineries each year, and my wife’s international wine media powers are listed on her website.