New Zealand’s Marlborough wine region took home 36 gold medals, the most gold medals for any region in the nation this year, at the 2019 New Zealand Wine of the Year awards.
After three days of judging over 1200 wines, 75 gold medals have been awarded to the best wines of the year from different regions across New Zealand.
Chair of judges Warren Gibson says it was particularly pleasing to see a spread of gold medals throughout the majority of the New Zealand’s wine regions.
The larger areas of Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay and Central Otago took out the lion’s share of awards, with multiple golds also given to the Gisborne, Nelson and Canterbury regions.
Golds were also awarded to the Wellington and Auckland regions with Northland achieving strong silver medals.
Marlborough dominated the gold medal tally with close to half of the awards with a particular strength in the Sauvignon Blanc category.
Central Otago was prominent in Pinot Noir, and Hawke’s Bay dominated the full-bodied red category, while also fighting Marlborough for Chardonnay bragging rights.
The aromatic white varieties were well divided between regions.
“The average quality of the wines was very high, with a strong return of both silver and bronze medals suggesting the current vintages of 2018 and 2019 are both good ones,” said Gibson.
In addition to the 75 gold medals, 235 silver medals and 456 bronze medals were awarded by a team of 29 judges. There was a total of 766 medals awarded across 15 classes, including the Provenance Class, in which wines were judged over three vintages.
The 75 gold medal winning wines are now contending for the Regional and Varietal trophies tat will be announced on Monday, 4th November.
The final act will be the awarding of the eight major trophies for the New Zealand Wine of the Year competition.
These will be announced at the New Zealand Wine Awards on Saturday, 16th November and include; New Zealand Wine of the Year Champion, Best Single Vineyard White Wine, Best Single Vineyard Red Wine, Best Open White Wine, Best Open Red Wine, Best Organic White Wine, Best Organic Red Wine and Best Wine of Provenance.
