By Camellia Aebischer

You may have click-bait style articles popping up in your Facebook feeds recently praising the Aldi rose that was placed as “one of the best in the world” by an award “just like the wine Olympics.”

Although Daily Wine News did cover the silver medal award, which is a great achievement for the winemaker and retailler, there are some major flaws to this claim.

The Aldi marketing team did a stellar job at publicising their award considering there hasn’t been much press from other winemakers who won Platinum Best medals, which are three levels higher than the Aldi win.

To put this in to perspective, Aldi’s Rose – named The Exquisite Collection Côtes De Provence 2016 – was among 3340 entries that were also awarded silver medals at the International Wine Competition. It was also one of six wines that Aldi won silver medals for, so why the specific praise right before summer? (Hint).

That was out of a total 14,693 wines that were placed, ranging from Platinum Best, Platinum, Gold, Silver and Commended categories. These are only wines that were acknowledged, and don’t include any that had entered without success.

One last major flaw in the claim, is that unlike the Olympics, the wines judged in these competitions were only included because of their initiative to enter. There is a 126GBP entry fee plus VAT (tax) for those who are part of the European Union.

The winemaker also must arrange shipping of the wine (4 bottles to enter) to the UK at their own expense, and if they are successful in receiving a medal must pay additional fees for the stickers to place on their bottles.

Aldi have every right to talk up their success, but it seems that the credit is being unevenly distributed. Perhaps it’s time for smaller wine labels to take notes on marketing techniques.