National Wine Challenge honours some of South Africa’s top cellars …

IT’S REPORTED that there were over 500 entries in the 2017 edition of the National Wine Challenge, now in its seventh year as a competition that culminates with awards for the Top 100 entries from South African vintners and Grand Cru awards for the wines judged to be best in each class. The number of submissions is some way off the levels of industry involvement realised at the country’s Trophy Wine Show, Veritas Awards and Michelangelo Awards. The detail and PR could be better and there’s a fair amount of puffery. However, the judges have included some heavyweights in the world of wine assessment, the Top 100 accolade is sought after and participating wineries include a number of the very best in the Cape – the Top 10 most successful cellars honoured at the 2017 Challenge given here in alphabetical order:

Boschendal Wines of Franschhoek
Cederberg Private Cellar
Doolhof Wine Estate of Wellington
Fairview of Paarl
Jordan Wine Estate of Stellenbosch
La Motte of Franschhoek
Paul Cluver Wines of Elgin
Rustenberg Wines of Stellenbosch
Spier of Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch Vineyards
Vrede en Lust of Paarl

UK wine critic Jamie Goode chaired the panel of judges, who also included London-based South African Master of Wine Greg Sherwood, Canadian wine journalist Treve Ring and Matt Day. SA Master Sommelier Higgo Jacobs was the ‘tasting director’ commissioned to ‘oversee flight creation and assembly during judgement week’.

For the full results and more information about the competition, see here.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

One comment

  • Mark Johnson

    Why no results of the National Wine Challenge on their website by the end of May? [More than a month after the awards presentation] Embarrassing!

Want to have your say?