On an annual basis, I blind taste the current champagne offering twice, first for The Champagne and Sparkling Wine World Championships (CSWWC) and then for FINE Champagne and thetastingbook.com ‘100 Best Champagnes’ classification. Both competitions are rigorously judged and include the very best wines of the region, making them uniquely comprehensive snapshots of the quality of champagnes available on the international markets. For me they are extremely important, as blind tasting gives such a useful reality check for any brand prejudices. Hopefully these will be good shopping lists for you! Here you can see the results from all the years.
The Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships CSWWC
The Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships (CSWWC) is a new global wine competition launched by internationally renowned specialist writer and author Tom Stevenson. It has been created to provide consumers and trade with the definitive annual guide to the very best champagnes and sparkling wines in the world.
This is the first wine competition to be judged exclusively by Champagne and sparkling wine specialists and the only global competition in which every judge agrees to all the medals awarded. The combination of these two unique attributes ensures an unprecedented level of consistency in the medaling process.
According to Tom – “Champagne’s higher divinity”:
“Essi Avellan MW and Tony Jordan are the two greatest and most consistent specialist Champagne and sparkling wine tasters I have encountered, and I have tasted literally thousands of Champagnes with both of them. Essi is the most naturally gifted Champagne taster I have seen, while Tony’s experience and technical understanding of sparkling wines is unsurpassed.”
Tom Stevenson
”I greatly enjoyed judging with Tom and Tony at the inaugural CSWWC. Tasting the world’s best sparkling wine side by side is a fascinating exercise. One gains a good indication of who’s who region to region and where the world of sparkling is headed. I am really pleased about the outcome of the inaugural competition. We awarded a very strong selection of great wines world wide, from the acknowledged classics to newcomers and revelations world wide. Outside Champagne, it was England, Australia and Franciacorta that impressed us the most. Still, great sparkling wine can come from anywhere as was demonstrated by the Serbian sparkling wines of Alexandrovic. We judge rigorously − every wine awarded with Gold and Silver is a highly recommendable one. If you are after fine bubbles world wide, I recommend you start exploring with this list!”
Essi Avellan MW
Read more at champagnesparklingwwc.co.uk