Choosing a good wine is not easy for most consumers. The awards, scores and medals that appear on the labels serve as a guide to choose the best, at least theoretically. Because behind these prizes, always subjective, the rigor that could be expected is not always given. And it seems it’s not that hard sneak it to the jurors.
This was the approach to one of the last challenges that the team from the Belgian television program ‘On n’est pas des pigeons!‘ (literally, “we are not pigeons”, which in Spanish would be something like “we are not fools”), about consumption. The magazine focuses on unraveling the marketing strategies that the industry uses so that the consumer can make his choices without being deceived or defrauded.
With the number of wine rankings and competitions around the world, how reliable are their distinctions? Who is behind it and what criteria are they based on? To delve into this issue, they requested the collaboration of the sommelier and expert Eric Boschmannwho confirmed what they suspected: many they only care about making money at the cost of distributing their distinctions.
How a cheap bad wine gets a gold medal
The program team decided to send a cheap wine in disguise like a bottle from a prestigious cellar. Boschman himself was responsible for choosing the “worst wine in the supermarket”, a red from 2.50 euro purchased at a Delhaize chain store. You they removed the label to place one of his own design, renaming the concoction as Chateau Colombier.
For their experiment they chose the international contest Gilbert et Gaillard, which awards medals every three months, and which enjoys a certain prestige in the sector. Signing up is very easy, you just have to pay the fee -50 euros in this case- and send the desired bottle to be valued.
And there are no more admission criteria? Actually yes; the usual thing is to demand a lab test that certifies various parameters, but many contests, like the one in this case, do not verify where that test came from. In other words, the program was able to send the analyzes it wanted, created to its liking.
After the established time, his brand new bottle of 2.50 euros returned with a gold medal and the following notes from the jury: “Smooth, nervous and rich palate with clean and young aromas that promise a pleasant complexity. Very interesting.” Of course, to be able to show off that distinction in their bottles they had to pay 60 euros for each run of 1,000 labels. In other cases the price is much higher.
With this joke in the form of a television experiment, the program On n’est pas des pigeons! wanted to demonstrate the lack of rigor that often surrounds the contests and competitions that are becoming more abundant every day in the world of wine and gastronomy in general, and even more so when so much money is behind it. They even mention the case of the journalist sami hosniwho managed to infiltrate as an expert jury in another contest, demonstrating that not even the tasters who judge are trustworthy.
Whether or not to wear an award on your product can give you a lot of visibility, since it is a juicy claim That attracts sales. That is why there are many producers who prefer not to question the racket, and simply accept the rules of the game. Strict or not, it doesn’t hurt that all the awards and lists are subjective and follow their own criteria.
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