The Glass of Bubbly Awards 2019 review

We saw another year of increased entries globally as the awards further their awareness and importantly also the understanding of the concept within wineries and distributors looking to communicate their wines better to consumers / buyers. I certainly agree that there seems to be more and more wine awards appearing so it is important that an awards offers more than simply giving results and badges which is why Glass of Bubbly offers a year long close marketing offering, free online sales and live event promotions plus so much more.

We were also very pleased to initiate a new relationship and trophy with Slow Food by introducing the ‘Sustainability Trophy‘ that looks to recognise the best scoring winery meeting sustainability requirements.

The Marriott County Hall Hotel in Westminster were once again our hosts for both the judging days (which we had expanded room size for more judges this year) and the awards evening that combined a sparkling wine tasting reception prior to dinner and trophy announcements.

We saw trophy winners from far and wide including Japan, England and Argentina. Surprising that only one of the category trophies went to a Champagne (Frerejean Frères) though of course the main title of The World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly for 2019 also went to a Champagne label with Roger Brun collecting the Carynx to keep for the year thanks to their Reserve Familiale 2004. Best performing countries were Italy, taking home five trophies, Slovenia who took home four trophies with English Sparkling Wines taking three.

The judging days once again attracted fine individuals from as far and wide as Alaska and Australia, nationalities and ages galore though all held the same passion: Bubbly! Marin Berovic was again our chairman of judges and of course, we were delighted to have Michael Edwards attending all days of judging as our honorary judge.

Styles of wines included reds, rosé and bruts with countless grape varieties and dosage plus new for this year, sparkling wines in cans. A once again total blind tasting format where medals are awarded and a category selected best suiting each wine. Second round of judging where both Gold and Silver medal winners of each category are judged again on how well they are suited to the category descriptions (Fruity & Floral, Oaky & Toasty, Sea Breeze etc) and the best scoring takes the trophy in question. A whole new system still to conventional wine judging.

The World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly trophy, the Carynx, has already spent a year with Champagne Deutz, Villa-Sandi over in Italy and will do so until Aug 2020 at Champagne Roger Brun in the grand cru village of Ay.

Here’s the full list of this years winners: Glass of Bubbly 2019 winners.

So more judges, more wines and more trophies, we now extend a warm invitation to all sparkling wines globally to come on board the Glass of Bubbly awards and enter for 2020.