With last month’s Taste of the Critics Challenge in San Diego, I have completed a full cycle of public tastings of medal-winning wines from all three "Challenge" wine competitions under my direction. Besides Critics Challenge, the other two are the Winemaker Challenge and Sommelier Challenge.
As you might surmise, each is judged exclusively either by wine critics, sommeliers or winemakers. All three groups are highly skilled at wine evaluation, of course, so the wines that earn a medal are invariably quite good, although personal preference would likely dictate which winning wines a consumer might favor.
Given the overall quality of the wines presented at the public tastings, the mood of the assembled consumers is typically upbeat, with one notable exception. Many a wine enthusiast can get a little cranky when he/she falls in love with a medal-winning wine only to discover no one knows where the wine might be available for purchase.
Wine-Searcher has a solution for this nagging problem, and it is undoubtedly one of the most effective shopping tools ever concocted for wine.
Wine-Searcher has been around for some time and has long been a functional search engine for wine enthusiasts who know what they want. Type in a wine and the vintage and click search, and Wine-Searcher retrieves information from retail wine-sales outlets around the globe, including pricing and contact information.
For those who value the third-party endorsement that is conveyed through a wine-competition medal, there is a link to a Wine Awards page. Click the link, and the consumer is presented with a number of wine competition options.
If a wine lover wants to look for wines from the Critics Challenge, for example, he/she simply needs to click on the Critics Challenge link. That brings up a page briefly describing the wine competition, followed by several pages listing the winning wines.
To find a place where a winning wine might be purchased, simply click on the wine. That brings up an impressive list of retail locations and pricing from around the world. The beauty of this if a person lives in a state that allows wine shipments from out-of-state is that hard-to-find wines can be accessed in a way never before possible.
It’s an especially valuable tool for anyone who lives in a rural location or smaller city where wine selection is somewhat limited.
For those who live in states that don’t permit shipping, there’s still a huge upside because Wine-Searcher will disclose the closest location where the wine in question can be purchased the old-fashioned way.
There is a benefit for the winning wineries, as well.
The objective for any winery that enters a wine competition is to earn an accolade that will boost sales. Because the Wine-Searcher shopping tool broadens every consumer’s reach and gives winning wines greater exposure, it can’t help but increase a winning winery’s presence and propel sales.
As for myself, I am no longer at a loss when someone asks the inevitable question about a specific wine’s availability. These days, I’ve got a pretty good answer.
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