Preselection of wines for the Russian Wines Competition 2020©
THE PRESELECTION OF MOST OF THE WINES TOOK PLACE BEFORE 26 JUNE 2020
The selection of wines to be shortlisted is entirely the responsibility of the competition’s organiser – Leonid Fadeev.
The main criteria for selecting wines to enter the competition:
- To include as many wines produced from different grape varieties as possible, mandatorily including Russian indigenous grape varieties.
- To engage as many Russian wine producers as possible.
- To include as many wines made by Russian producers as possible in the following categories: sparkling wines made by the tank method, sparkling wines made by the traditional method, still white wines and still red wines.
- To cover wines from all price categories.
- To include the maximum possible number of Russian wines currently commercially available.
Principles underlying preselection:
At the preselection stage, wines are bought from specialised wine merchants or manufacturer’s brand stores.
Wines undergo a comparative tasting according to the principle of homogeneity and/or similarity of varietal composition of grapes and/or place of origin of wines. Different vintages are taken into account.
Wines are selected for each tasting session by independent personnel according to criteria set by the organiser, brought to the required temperature, opened and served blind. Participants do not have any information on the wine producer, place of origin, varietal composition, vintage, alcohol level, production technology and the price category of samples until the session is over.
Tastings are off-limits to visitors. A maximum of five minutes is spent tasting each sample. The results of tastings are registered.
To ensure no psychological pressure can be put on the organiser, wines are not tasted in wineries before the competition is held.
Only wines with special federal marking, manufacturer’s brand label and back label specifying the producer and ethanol content in the alcoholic product will be approved to take part in the competition.
Establishing the place of origin of the grapes from which the wines participating in the competition are made is not one of the goals or objectives of the competition.
The preliminary tastings will result in a list of 200 wines participating in the second independent international wine competition, the Russian Wines Competition©.
The decision to list participants is made by Leonid Fadeev, the competition’s organiser, on the basis of the data on every tasted wine made by a particular producer. These wines are assessed on a 100-point scale (OIV) and fall into three categories:
- Wines receiving 88 points and above (good and top quality wines)
- Wines receiving 80 – 87 points (acceptable wines)
- Wines receiving less than 80 points (faulty and low quality wines)
Furthermore, a cross section is made and wines for the competition are selected proportionally from each category based on the quota for a particular producer. This approach is applied so that both a producer in particular and Russian winemaking as a whole are represented objectively in the competition. Quotas for producers in the competition are set depending on the range of wines they produce.
However, a number of wines will enter the competition without preselection. These wines belong to the conditional category "expensive Russian wines."
To ensure judging objectivity, the list of wines participating will only be disclosed together with the results of the competition.
However, the list of producers whose wines are participating in the competition, will be published before the competition.
The following people are participating in the preselection:
- Leonid Fadeev (Stage 2 MW Student, WSET/IWSC “The Future 50 Awards” winner, Weinakademiker, DipWSET, WorldSom Magister Sommelier, organiser of the competition);
- Kirill Bardakov (professional winemaker).