Marginslasher Supermarket – slogan ‘putting the N in cuts’ – has recorded a stunning set of results in yet another bloody wine competition. The retailer claims this means its wines are better than the most famous names in Europe ‘because we say they are’.
Giving it 110%
According to Marginslasher’s Head of Duplicity, Shark Mormon, the retailer picked up a record 53 Golds in this year’s Easy Medals Equivalent To Investment Competition (EMETIC).
The achievement, he said, was all the more remarkable, because they ‘only entered 50 wines in the first place’.
No Shame, no gain
Mormon told Fake Booze that the results were a vindication of their carefully-honed strategy of ‘carpet bombing the fuck out of every competition under the sun’ and were a particular triumph for their No Shame series of own-label wines.
Selling for £6.99 – though typically on 30% discount for 11 months of the year – the wines regularly outscored wines that were far more prestigious, expensive and, frankly, better.
‘Our No Shame Soave, Bordeaux and Champagne all got Golds,’ said Mormon, ‘whereas in the same categories Pieropan, Lafite and Taittinger Comtes could only manage two Silvers and a Bronze. That tells you everything you need to know about the quality.
‘Of the judges, at least.’
Surfeit of MWs
This year EMETIC received almost 18,000 entries, and gave out a record 16,860 medals.
Some critics have said a wine would need to be borderline toxic not to win a medal in the competition, though chairman Ivana Backhander said that ‘wouldn’t necessarily’ be a bar to success.
‘We have 1,270 Masters of Wine judging for us,’ she told Fake Booze. ‘That’s anyone who’s ever passed the exam, living or dead plus a few hundred more who are happy to lie about their qualifications in exchange for free wine and a low day rate.’
Tasting panels, she said, were told to ‘judge their flights fairly and rigorously until we fairly and rigorously get the medal count that we want.’
After a couple of days without food and water, she said that even the most stubborn judging teams ‘usually see sense in the end’.
Whore on terroir
EMETIC has added a few Trophy categories this year, including Best Cornershop Forgery and Most Cynical Celebrity Launch.
The new Best-of-Brexit category was hotly contested, with the Kubla Khan award for best emerging red going to the Omar Khayyam Winery’s Bin Laden 19 Hostages Shiraz.
‘These guys are serious terroirists,’ said Backhander. ‘They completely blew away the competition.’
Star wine
Marginslasher’s star performer was the No Shame Natural Organic Zero Intervention Low Sulphur Biodynamic Clean Vegan Orange Pinot Grigio from a ‘family run industrial estate’ outside Warsaw.
The wine picked up a Triple Gold as well as trophies for Best Big Volume Natural Wine, and Most Buzz Words on a Label.
‘With its telltale whiff of durian and unique taste of compost wrapped in melancholy, it really is a wine to die for,’ said Mormon.
‘And believe me, many already have.’
Click here to read about the battle between wine competitions over whose dads are the hardest
