The Winners of the Decanter World Wine Awards will be announced on June 17th. Savour Magazine takes a look behind the scenes of the awards, which feature more than 18,000 wines from around the world
Some go to Graceland, some go to Skywalker Ranch, some even go to Elland Road. There are many places of pilgrimage around the world for the faithful.
So it was that followers of Bacchus and Dionysus were drawn to London in early May for the Decanter World Wine Awards. Held annually in London, and now in their 23rd year, the Awards are the largest and most influential wine awards in the world.
Often referred to as the Olympics of wine, the impact of winning a Decanter award can be both immediate and significant. It is not uncommon for producers to sell out of an award-winning wine within days of the results.
It has been said that The Punters consume a more than average quantity of wine but the numbers at the Awards are simply staggering. Initial judging (for Bronze, Silver & Gold) takes place over four days, followed by another four days to award Platinum and Best in Show.
All in all, more than 18,000 wines from more than 60 countries are blind tasted by more than 250 of the world’s foremost Masters of Wine and Master Sommeliers, each of whom is carefully selected for their specific expertise.
Those 250 judges sit in five rooms, split into groups, each with a Regional Chair and Co-Chairs overseeing the room. Wines are grouped by region and style, but each set of wines is tasted blind with pouring bottles covered by bags.
Not only are they grouped by region and style, but they are also grouped into three price bands – up to £14.99, £15-£49.99 and £50 and over, with similar, but higher, brackets for Champagne and sparkling wine. Grouping by value is essential as it ensures that wines are fairly judged against their peers.
Each judge awards points out of 100 with and those scoring 85, 90 or 95 being awarded Bronze, Silver or Gold and those that don’t receive an award get feedback from the judges to help them improve their wines for next year.
All of the Gold wines then go through to the next stage of judging. Such is the scale of the Awards that, by the end of day two, nearly 6,500 wines had been sampled and more than 400 Gold Awards are handed out.
All the Gold wines then go into the next round of judging, where they are sampled again to confirm the original scores. Those that have Gold status confirmed are then sampled again, and some can be promoted to Platinum. But that’s not all, all the Platinum wines are then sampled again by the five Co-Chairs to award the “Best in Show”, the highest of all accolades.
The glass bin at The Punters’ house gets emptied every couple of weeks so imagine how big the recycle bin at the DWWA is! It turns out, not that big. That’s because they have a glass crusher so every bottle gets recycled. Every year, the Decanter World Wine Awards also reuse over 1,000 cardboard boxes and have swapped plastic bags (bottle coverings) for reusable cotton.
More than 15,000 corks are donated for mulch production, and more than 10,000L of leftover wine is processed through “anaerobic digestion” to be converted into clean energy. No surprise then that DWWA were finalists in two separate categories at the 2025 Green Awards UK.
When we were at the Awards, we were lucky enough to spend some time with Greg Lambrecht, founder of Coravin, manufacturers of the world’s leading “by the glass” wine systems. Each is designed to keep any bottle of wine, still or sparkling, consistently fresh from the first to the last glass.
Admittedly, this concept was new to The Punters, whose “keep fresh” system consists of just finishing the bottle, but for the hospitality sector, where wines by the glass are common, a Coravin system is ideal for a by-the-glass wine list.
You don’t have to take our word for it. Since launching its first device in 2013, Coravin has sold over 2,000,000 units and can be found in more than 80 countries worldwide. A mind-bending statistic is that, worldwide, a glass of wine is poured, using a Coravin, every second of every day.
We took part in a blind tasting, along with around 100 of the judges. Each of us received three glasses of white, three of red and three of sparkling. We were told that each trio would have either one glass from a fresh bottle and two from a bottle opened a month ago and kept fresh by the Coravin system, or two fresh and one opened. It is fair to say that even the world’s foremost wine judges were unable to agree on which was which.
Now whilst this would be useful for those who want to keep a bottle of wine at home for special occasions, the real impact is on hospitality. The ability to keep a bottle of wine fresh for up to three years allows restaurants and bars to offer far more by-the-glass wines than ever before, and wine by the glass can be more profitable than by the bottle. A perfect example of the effectiveness of Coravin is Gordon Ramsay at The Savoy Grill, who, since starting to use Coravin, has seen by-the-glass revenue go up 60% and wine wastage go down by 90%.
Find out More information about Coravin.
The full Awards results will be out on 17th June 2026 via decanter.com
