Every year, panels of experts gather at The WineHunter’s Merano WineFestival to decide which Italian wines are the best. But a few months before that, they blind-taste and score thousands of bottles over the course of a few days to find the most outstanding vino Italy has to offer. As a result, it’s become an important ceremony for everyone in the industry – as well as for wine lovers everywhere.
So far, 2020 has been a tough year for everyone. It’s no different in the wine industry. So many events, like Verona’s Vinitaly and London’s IMBIBE, have been suspended until 2021 or cancelled altogether. So it’s fantastic that The WineHunter team managed to rally the troops and keep the 2020 awards going (the festival’s official website: https://meranowinefestival.com/).
How does The WineHunter award work?
There are eight expert panels with at least three members each. They blind-taste forty wines in each round of tasting. Every bottle is opened at least two hours beforehand, to let the wine breathe and open up.
The experts are told a few key details about each wine. They’re told where it’s from, which grapes it’s made from, how it’s made and the vintage – but the producer is kept secret. The wines that score really high are then tasted by the Central Committee of Merano. It consists of Helmuth Köcher (the founder of The WineHunter) and two other senior experts.
After tasting the wine, the expert panels assign scores out of 100 based on the way the wine looks, the way it smells and the way it tastes. The best wines – those that score more than 90 points – are awarded diplomas of excellence:
– Rosso (Red): 90 to 92.99 points
– Gold: 93 to 95.99 points
– Platinum: 96 to 100 points.
Which of the best Italian wines picked by The WineHunter can I try?
The team at Independent Wine were really happy to see this year’s Merano results. It turns out that we already stock eleven of this year’s best Italian wines. The motto of The WineHunter festival is “excellence is an attitude”, and we feel that very much applies to our work too.
We work really hard to choose the best Italian wines for our customers. We visit hundreds of small wineries in the furthest corners of Italy, taste hundreds of wines, and only pick the ones we think are fantastic. We’re proud to see that many of the wines we have in stock were also loved by the expert judges at Merano!
The award-winning wines listed below are all currently resting in our warehouse in Edinburgh, and are available for next day delivery to anywhere in the Mainland UK.
So if you want to taste the wines that came out above thousands of others, now’s your chance. Feel free to leave a review afterwards and let us know if you agree with the experts of Merano. With so many rich and concentrated flavours in each glass, we’re confident you will.