SA heads IWSC Beautiful South results

The International Wine & Spirit Competition has revealed its medal winners from South Africa and South America to tie in with the Beautiful South tasting in London this week.

South Africa performed particularly well this year with a total of 632 medals, including seven Gold Outstanding awards, the competition’s top accolade, and 29 Gold. There were strong individual performances from KWV, which picked up 22 medals for its wines, and Nederburg, which won three of the country’s Gold Outstanding medals.

Chile took home 375 medals in this year’s competition, including a Gold Outstanding gong for the Casas del Bosque Syrah Pequeñas Producciones 2012. The country’s Aconcagua region also performed well, with four of its white wines winning Silver Outstanding medals.

There were 234 medals for Argentina in 2014, with the country’s Mendoza Malbecs showing particularly well to win four Gold medals.

The IWSC also released the results for Brazil, which picked up 19 medals. Of the country’s five Silver medals, four went to sparkling wines.

The results highlighted the strength of many UK supermarket own label offerings, with Tesco winning 11 medals, Sainsbury’s taking home eight and one medal apiece for Aldi and Lidl.

Commenting on this year’s results from these countries, IWSC general manager Ewan Lacey noted: “IWSC hosted showcases in South Africa and South America earlier this year, and the level of wines discovered were outstanding.” In particular, he observed: “it was interesting to see that we found that 2013 vintages were the strongest in this year’s competition.”

For full details of this year’s IWSC results so far and for more information about the Competition visit www.iwsc.net.