On Sunday, winners of the Decanter World Wine Awards were announced at Vinexpo in Bordeaux, the world’s biggest wine trade fair.
And one of the biggest winners from the prestigious wine competition, was a bottle of 2014 Marks & Spencer Macon-Villages white, that took the award for best chardonnay in the world under £15 ($23 USD) in a blind tasting carried out by a panel of 240 international wine experts.
“A really lively wine with an expressive, pure, mineral nose which also exhibits a saline slant beside the white fruits,” reads the Decanter wine description.
“To taste it’s zesty, youthful, floral and upfront, with fleshy, persistent fruit on a finely balanced, distinguished palate where those crunchy flavours linger impressively.”
Wine experts tasted, sampled and spit 15,929 wines from 48 countries before whittling down the pool of entries to 35 international winners.
Overall, France led the leaderboard winning eight International Trophies.
In the wine equivalent of the best actor award — best Red Bordeaux varietal over £15 ($23 USD) — Spain’s Miguel Torres took the International Trophy for its Reserva Real 2010, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.
The wine cements Spain’s growing reputation as a premiere wine growing country and “the most exciting thing happening in European wine right now,” said Sarah Jane Evans, a Master of Wine and regional chair for Spain and sherry at the Decanter World Wine Awards.
International trophies are the highest awards at the Decanter World Wine Awards. Already gold medal winners, the wines are then pooled against each other in blind tasting sessions that were conducted by a select team of experts in London.
Other surprising wins at this year’s edition shone a spotlight on unexpected wine-producing nations including Slovenia, Japan and Thailand.
The awards recognized Japanese Koshu wine, white wine grape variety grown primarily in Yamanashi Prefecture, as a wine to contend with: the Grace, Koshu Private Reserve was awarded the regional trophy for Best White for the Middle East, Far East and Asia over £15.
Thailand’s Monsoon Valley, Colombard 2014 took the award in the same category, for white wine under £15.
Another big story out of this year’s Decanter awards is the rise of sherry, which boasts the biggest medal haul: 94 percent of wines entered were awarded a medal.
Vinexpo runs June 14 to 18 in Bordeaux. For the full results visit decanter.com.
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