Decanter has brought in a new top medal classification for its World Wine Awards: Vibranium.
Speaking as this year’s results go live, organiser, Miles Toomenny-Entries said that the change was made necessary by the ‘sheer awesomeness’ of the wines now entering the competition.
‘Our best wines are simply out of this world,’ he told Fake Booze. ‘So we felt our medals ought to reflect that.’
Amazing energy
Vibranium is a fictional element from the Marvel comics and films, famed for its ability to absorb, store and release vast amounts of energy.
Decanter too is famed for absorbing vast amounts of energy, though there are no recorded examples of it ever releasing any.
According to Toomenny-Entries, being the only competition with Vibranium medals ‘proves that our wines, our judges and our competition are better than everyone else.’
Triples all round
However, other competitions are already considering creating more prestigious top classifications of their own.
The San Francisco Chronicallybad Wine Competition is looking to add to its existing Gold and Double Gold classifications by introducing a Triple Gold next year.
‘If two Golds are good, then three must be better, right?’ said SFCWC organiser, Noah Losers.
The competition, he said, ‘wouldn’t rule out’ adding Quadruple and Quintuple Golds in the future.
Carats and shticks
The Concours Mondiale de Bruxelles competition currently has only Silver, Gold and Grand Gold medals, but organiser Luca Tower-Profitt said that weight of entries meant that they too were looking at extra medals.
Fake Booze’s suggestion of doing what normal people do and introducing a Bronze, however, was rejected.
‘We do not have any Bronze level wines in our competition,’ said Tower-Profitt. ‘You must remember that most of our entries are French, so the majority of them are inherently worthy of top medals.’
The Concours Mondiale is, instead, looking to split its Grand Gold medals into 24-Carat and 48-Carat Gold classifications next year.
Soaring standards
Critics have said the plethora of additional top categories is dumbing down medals. But competitions expert Mehda Linflation disagrees.
‘Twenty years ago there were just no wines that deserved a Double Gold or a Platinum medal, whereas now there are,’ she told Fake Booze. ‘Standards today are so much higher than they used to be in the days before social media.
‘Whatever your palate might be telling you.’
A vinous utopia
Decanter is considering bringing all its new vibranium medal winners together into one hidden vinous utopia, Winekanda,
‘We thought it would be nice to gather them all in one place, free from the prying eyes of the rest of the world,’ said Toomenny-Entries.
‘But then we realised we can achieve much the same thing far more cheaply by just putting them in the magazine.’
Read about how Marginslasher Supermarket’s No Shame sparkling wine outscored Taittinger Comtes in the EMETIC competition here; and click here to read about how Australians have introduced an innovative Taste Track and Trace system to stop the spread of bad judging.
