According to a Belgian TV program, a bottle of wine which cost €2.50 and was bought at a local shop, won an international competition.
The Belgian program included wine in the competition as a test of the jury's performance in this type of competition.
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In Europe, there are numerous competitions and wine tastings. In many cases these events are purely for profit. According to marketing, wines that won a gold medal in a competition sell 15% to 20% more.
In addition, there are fees associated with these competitions, both for entry and for each medal placed in a bottle.
The television program “On n’est pas des pigeons” (We are not pigeons) entered the international competition Gilbert et Gaillard with what he called the “worst supermarket wine,” and producers were shocked to learn it won an award. maximum.
The TV show recruited Eric Boschman, who was crowned Belgium's greatest sommelier in 1988, and held a wine tasting at a local grocery store.
On site, Boschman searched for the worst wine he could find. €2.50 was paid for each bottle.
The show's producers replaced the label on the bottle with a more attractive model that included a dove (an homage to the show's name) and even the show's colors.
They even made up a story about the wine, saying that it was made from grapes grown in the Côtes de Sambre and Meuse regions of Wallonia.
In the end, the prank was a success. The wine was evaluated as having a “soft, nervous palate (a quality of fresh wine), rich, with clean and young aromas that promise a pleasant complexity”, according to the jury's evaluation.
According to the show, the experiment was conducted because many of these events use volunteer judges rather than professional judges.
It was revealed that one of their editors had already volunteered for such a competition and found that their judging panel lacked a single genuine expert.
With this, they warned buyers that not all wine medals are created equal. While some tournaments are simply operated as businesses, others are run with greater professionalism.
