Competitions can be enterprising - some even give medals to cheap plonk

o you want a medal for your wine? No problem, there are plenty of companies in the wine industry who can provide medal stickers. In fact, it’s such a money-spinner that entry fees can lead to a certain amount of complacency in awarding accolades. At least, that’s the conclusion the Belgian programme ‘On n’est pas des pigeons’ (or in English, Don’t think you can fool us) came to on May 9 on Belgium’s RTBF channel. It entered a low quality red wine sourced from within the European Union – “worse, a wine retailing for €2.50 bought from a Delhaize supermarket” – in the competition organised by the Gilbert & Gaillard magazine owned by the Vinipresse group. The bogus entry, labelled as Château Colombier from Côtes de Sambre et Meuse in the Walloon region of Belgium, went on to win a gold medal and received a very flattering comment on the competition’s website: “Smooth, nervy, rich palate with young, clean aromas offering the promise of lovely complexity. Fine spices and a touch of soot drive the middle palate. Very interesting”.

Blind tasting is, without doubt, a humbling experience, for fine and not so fine wines. But according to the RTBF, “receiving a gold medal for our disgusting ‘plonk’ selling for less than 3 euros” demonstrates a “lack of rigour” for Gilbert & Gaillard medals. Honouring a fellow Belgian competition, RTBF claimed “obviously, there are competitions that do a good job, like the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles”. The person behind the phoney entry designed to test the limits of a competition was Belgian sommelier and critic Eric Boschman. RTBF failed to mention that the international Gilbert & Gaillard challenge has been clearly optimised so that it does not have to comply with rules defined by French regulations.