This is an important year for Decanter magazine: we’re celebrating 50 years of publication. For just over half of that time, magazine panel tastings were our primary format for judging wines. They’re closely focused and the highest scores are hard-earned, being debated between three expert judges – and (of course) they continue to thrive in the magazine and on decanter.com, too.
Decanter’s scrutiny of wine, though, took a gigantic step forward with the launch of the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) from 2004 onwards. It’s hard, now, to imagine the magazine without the competition.
What changed in 2004? Our arms were flung wide open at that point. The competition has no tasting theme other than the search for excellence. It has no geographical circumscription: any wine is welcome to compete, no matter how modest, how improbable or how off-piste its origins. Our expert tasting teams arrive from the four corners of the planet; our roster of medal winners is no less global. Our competition, the largest in the world, tracks and surveys that vast field of endeavour. This is wine at its most non-elitist.
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Thrill of the unexpected
The 2025 edition of DWWA also celebrates the 10th year of our Best in Show selection. Formerly, each year’s pantheon was defined by regional Trophies. Best in Show, though, is inspired by the same quest as our competition itself: the search for excellence beyond boundaries and borders. Surprises are almost guaranteed.
One headline this year is the appearance, in our Best in Show selection, of two fine red blends from China. Another headline: Greece won no fewer than four Best in Show placings (a fragrant Malagousia; characterful classics from Santorini and Goumenissa; and a deeply historical sweet wine from the Peloponnese). We expected neither; we’re thrilled to have found both.
What, too, would Decanter’s 1975 founders have made of the fact that, 50 years on, we’re acclaiming Bronze medal-winning wines from Denmark and Poland; Silver-winning wines from Azerbaijan, Belgium, India, Indonesia and Uzbekistan; and Gold-winning wines from Armenia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Mexico and Ukraine? Jaws would surely have dropped.
Since 2023, too, we’ve selected a set of Value Golds (priced at under £15 per bottle at the time of judging) – and this year we found not 20 but 30 of these. Despite inflation, the climate crisis and duty hikes, value still exists.
Other highlights? Argentina doubled its tally of top medals, achieving seven Platinum and 37 Gold this year; Romania more than doubled its Gold medal tally from three last year to eight; while our first ever Best in Show sparkling wine in magnum went to the UK, with a wine from for magnums from Champagne, the Loire and Hungary). Orange wines won no fewer than 85 medals, including one in Best in Show.
Congratulations, too, to the two individual producers who have managed to achieve Best in Show places for two years running: Clos du Val in Napa’s Stags Leap District, and Michel Tissot in the Jura’s Château-Chalon.
The final ascent
A quick word, finally, about our prize hierarchy and our scoring system. Medals are our primary accolade, as they have been from day one. We complement those medal awards with scores, and our scores relate to the cohort of wines entered in our competition (16,971 wines this year).
Gold medals (just 4.36% of all the wines tasted in 2025) receive scores of 95 or 96 points, while Platinum medals (0.81% of 2025 entries) are given a score of 97 points. Best in Show wines (0.3% of 2025 entries) are selected from our Platinum cohort.
Why, you might ask, no scores this year of 98, 99 or 100 points? Nothing is stopping our judging teams from acclaiming perfection or near-perfection – we’ve moved beyond 97pts in the past and we are always open to this possibility. It is, though, rare – for two reasons.
The higher the score, the more subjective (or individual) the decision – yet our loftiest medals are only awarded after multiple layers of scrutiny by many palates. There is rarely unanimity about perfection. Another reason is that the very highest scores seem likely to privilege some regions over others, whereas the ethos of the DWWA competition is to offer a level playing field and equal applause for all forms of wine excellence. We will, though, keep looking… and our arms will remain as open as they always have been since that first DWWA in 2004.
