Vivino's 2018 Wine Style Awards Reveal the Year's Best Wines as Determined by Community Ratings from 26 Million

NEW YORK, Nov. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The world's favorite wines have been revealed today, as Vivino publishes its 2018 Wine Style Awards, the only awards within the industry wholly decided by the public. Over 26 million wine lovers from around the world have chosen the 1,490 winning wines, that span 149 wine style categories, by rating them on Vivino over the past 12 months. The full winners can be viewed here: www.vivino.com/awards. 

Vivino founder and CEO, Heini Zachariassen, commented:

"The Vivino Wine Style Awards showcase the democratization of the wine world, by putting the power into the people's hands. The award-winning wines we're celebrating today have been selected by everyone - from wine experts to wine novices - proving that if you drink wine then you deserve to have a say on it.

"Through our 26-million strong community, we're not only able to deduce which are the best wines in the world, but also a host of other interesting wine trends which can help producers and the greater industry to better understand consumer behavior and demand. We are very very proud of these awards and our ability to honor producers, large and small, on behalf of the wine drinking public."

Overall Standouts
France has the most categories on the 2018 list, with a whopping 39 different styles represented. Uruguay and Brazil have the fewest with just Uruguayan Tannat and Brazilian Merlot represented, respectively.

The highest rated wine out of all winners goes to Chateau d'Yquem for its coveted 1976 Bordeaux Sauternes, with an average rating of 4.92. Viña Cobos, owned by winemaker Paul Hobbs, earned the number one spot across all winning red wines with its 4.89 rated Cabernet Sauvignon-Malbec blend, Viña Cobos Volturno 2010.

Keeping on the Argentine trend, Argentina's Bodega Catena Zapata is the only producer that won in every single style of its country and racked up the most winners with 15 total winning wines. Alejandro Vigil is the winemaker for both Catena and El Enemigo, which also won two awards - earning Vigil 17 wins in total. 

While Bodega Catena Zapata garnered the most wins across all wine styles, Jacques Selosse is the producer with the most wines appearing in a single wine style category with seven wines present in Non-vintage French Champagne.

Trends that Sparkle
This year was the first time that the French Crémant category made the list of eligible styles, joining other sparkling categories: Champagne, Spanish Cava, California Sparkling and Prosecco. Top wines in this style include: Vive-la-Joie Brut from Les Caves Bailly Lapierre; Crémant de Bourgogne Brut from Pierre Laber and Crémant d'Alsace Rosé.

Vivino's brand ambassador and partner sommelier, Joel Caruso, commented:

"While Champagne is synonymous with sparkling wine, many tend to overlook the often better value of Crémant, which is a title given to French sparkling wine outside of the Champagne region. With almost every region in the country featuring its own style of Crémant, there is a broad option of flavors and profiles. The Loire Valley, famous for Sauvignon and Chenin Blanc makes Crémant de Loire from the Chenin Blanc grape ranging from bone dry to dessert sweet. This diversity and value is why Crémant tends to be one secret weapon of wine professionals."

"When it comes to Spain's Cava, Brut Nature is clearly the preferred style of the top-scoring Cava wines. There has been a zero sugar trend movement happening across bubbles so we anticipate interest to continue to increase."

Acclaim for Spanish Sherry
The growing trend for fortified wines was also confirmed in the results, with the Spanish Sherry style showing for the first time this year. Reflecting the growing trend for using fortified wines in cocktail mixes, Vivino expects popularity of this style to continue to increase in 2018.

Top Spanish Sherries in the awards tended to be very old and include Palo Cortado Tradicion Vors 30 Years and Amontillado Tradicion Vors 30 Years by Bodegas Tradicion; and Matusalem from Gonzalez-Byass.

Portugal Takes Center Stage
Wine lovers are pouring more Portuguese wines, with nine wine styles from the country on this year's awards list, up from just five last year.  Northern Portugal Red, Northern Portugal White, Southern Portugal Red and Southern Portugal White enter the awards for the first time, in a year in which Wines of Portugal has committed more marketing efforts on a global scale. The increase in exportation as well as higher quality dry red wines from the North are helping support the trend and Portuguese Douro Red is continuing to do incredibly well.

The Port category has five Tawny Ports and five ruby ports - a perfect split. And considering the difference in volumes produced - much less tawny -  this is a big achievement for Tawny.

Comeback Kings
From a popularity standpoint, the following categories were among the most scanned in 2017: Non-Vintage French Champagne, Californian Cabernet Sauvignon, Argentinian Malbec, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Italian Chianti, Chilean Carménère, Portuguese Vinho Verde White and Spanish Rioja Red. 

Twist endings
Uruguayan Tannat saw some of the highest averages of ratings with nothing in the top ten falling under a 4.2.

Only one of Bordeaux's First Growths appears in the top 25 wines on the list, which comes from Château Lafite Rothschild. Champagne only shows up once in the top 25 at 15.

When it comes to Italy, five of the top 25 wines are Italian: three of which are Amarone, followed by one Brunello and one Super Tuscan - Bolgheri's Massetto. Overall, surprising to see a lack of Barolo at the top of the best.

The Vivino 2018 Wine Style Awards recognizes 1,490 individual wines across 149 different wine styles. For more information about the full winners list or trend queries, please email [email protected].

To be eligible in the Vivino 2018 Wine Style Awards, wines needed to have at least 50 ratings submitted from Vivino's users over the past consecutive 12 months. Featured categories were selected that had a minimum of 35 qualifying wines. The full list of award winners can be explored at www.vivino.com/awards, where visitors can learn about their favorite styles with informative insights and introductions provided by acclaimed wine writer and author of the Wine Bible, Karen MacNeil.

About Vivino
Vivino is the world's largest online wine marketplace, powered by a community of 26 million wine drinkers who use the Vivino app to scan and rate more than 500,000 wines every single day. Through Vivino.com and the Vivino app, users discover and purchase wine based on their individual scanning, rating and purchase behavior and community recommendations, making wine discovery fun, accessible, and easy to understand for wine drinkers of every level. With the Vivino app, users take a photo of any wine label or restaurant wine list with their mobile device and Vivino's proprietary image recognition technology delivers ratings, reviews and average pricing for every bottle instantly. Founded by Heini Zachariassen and Theis Søndergaard in 2010, Vivino is available for download on Android and Apple devices. For more information, visit www.vivino.com.

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SOURCE Vivino

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