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 With 1,165 entries Italy remained the biggest entrant to the competition, followed by Germany with 784 and Spain with 752 samples. Portugal followed with 329 and France with 313 labels. There were no entries from India even as Brunei (1) and Taiwan (2) debuted this year for the summer edition of the Competition organised for the 21st time since 2001.
A total of 164 jurors travelled to Neustadt an der Weinstrasse from 41 countries. These included highly regarded enologists, wine journalists and judges, specialist wine merchants and sommeliers. As always, India was represented solely by Cav. Subhash Arora who travelled for the 12th consecutive time to participate, making him the only judge participating for such a long consecutive time in the short history of the infant Indian wine culture.
The Competition was held at the traditional Saalbau Neustadt- the official festival hall of the Palatinate city, about 100 kms from Frankfurt Airport. The summer edition is held over 4 days, Friday-Sunday, starting on the last weekend of August.
For the blind competition, there are generally 7 jurors, including 3 from Germany in each panel. Around 50 samples are tasted by each panel daily in 3-5 flights. Grape variety and the major variety in a blend and vintage are known. Sugar level, Barrique aging if any, is also given out. Any jury member can request another bottle in case there is any defect suspected. To calibrate the palates and tastes, 2 wine samples, usually white and German, are tasted on the first day and 1 sample on the rest of the days. The judges are expected to mark various attributes of the wine (to enable compilation of a flavour wheel of each wine) before rating for the individual attribute.
 The competition started in 2001 was held annually till 2013. It went biannual in 2014 in order to offer an opportunity to the wines of the southern hemisphere. When Arora judged for the first time in 2007, there were 4925 samples with the number increasing every year. A record total of over 11,000 wines were tasted during the 2 Tastings in February and August, 2017.
Arora was the first Indian to have judged the competition for the 10th consecutive time last year in the Summer Tasting of 2017. Having attended the Spring Edition earlier this year, this was a 12th consecutive participation by him. The 20th edition was held earlier in February 2017 and was reported by delWine. 6150 labels were entered, making the gross total for 2017 at a record 11,075, crossing the 11,000 figure for the first time.
During the first tasting in 2007, Arora had remarked to Christoph Meininger, co-owner of the Competition with his sister Andrea, that he must be excited that the competition would soon be touching the 5,000-mark, an enviable feat 10 years ago. He told me then and told the jurors again during his welcome address on August 31 that it was not the quantity but the quality that they looked for and always strived to improve. The competition is well-known among the participating expert jurors from around the wine world to be a well-oiled machinery and is conducted in the most proficient way possible.
 Christian Wolf, the Degustation Director explains that his team constantly evaluates results from one team to the other by serving the same wine to another panel and also to the same judge on a different day by making it a part in another similar flight. ‘But in principle, we believe in the integrity and experience of the judges and don’t like to interfere with their judging prowess or assert in any way. Judges are given a sheet the day after the judging for each day in which the score band of the panel and their individual score is tabulated as a graph so that they may compare how they scored against the fellow members. The only time a particular score of a juror is not included by the system is when it is outside the pre-defined range’, says Christian.
Another time when the results are uniformly adjusted is when there are too many medals awarded by panels. ‘We limit the awards to 40% of the samples submitted. Although Silver medal is awarded for wines scoring an average of 85/100, this number is appropriately upped if too many medals have been awarded. Thus a wine must score not only 85+ to win a medal, it must also meet the criterion of 40% cap.’
The results for Mundusvini are announced in record time and this year will be no different and will be announced on the coming Wednesday September 6 and will be available on the website www.meininger.de.
Each edition has been chronicled by delWine since 2007 and may be Google-searched in www.indianwineacademy.com . Please visit:
Mundusvini Wine Competition completes the record 20th edition
Arora participates at Mundusvini for Record 10th Consecutive Time
Mundus Vini: Judgement at Neustadt
Subhash Arora |