Events Alessandro Torcoli

WOW! 2022, the triumph of the south

WOW! 2022, the triumph of the south

We can now present the winners of WOW! The Italian Wine Competition at the end of this long series of solitary tastings, but from next year (pandemic permitting) we will go back to a jury made up of the best Italian tasters. Our 2022 wine competition closes with over a thousand samples entered and sees the south triumphant. A special new award for the golds under 10 euros, where Piedmont comes out on top.

The journey that began in March has just come to an end, and we can announce the winners of the WOW! medals. It has been a long journey, maybe too long, and we apologize for this, but the fault lies with the writer. In fact, based on decisions made during the difficult years (2020 and 2021), we kept to a “single judge”: in short, I personally tasted over 1000 wines, though no longer with the suspension of all other activities, but during a year of recovery with lots of travelling around and external events. Basically, I wasn’t able to taste wines every day. In the end, we hope we’ve done a good job, assessing with due attention, without overdoing the groups of wines (never more than 30 wines a day). We’d like to take this opportunity to announce that next year we will be going back to the traditional competition with more judges and various sessions, all high-profile palates.

Best wines under 10 euros

Let’s get back to 2022 and the results. First of all, we’d like to point out the introduction of a new WOW! Award for the best value-for-money wines, i.e., gold medals below 10 euros: the region boasting the highest number (7) is, a little surprisingly, Piedmont, naturally with lesser-known appellations than Barolo or Barbaresco, but worthy of serious consideration nonetheless.

Veneto, the most-awarded region

In general, looking at the distribution of the WOW! medals, the winning region was the Veneto (147), followed by Tuscany (113), Piedmont (89, 7 of which “best value for money”) and Sicily (87). Obviously, these are relative figures, as the result is proportional to the number of samples entered, but they are a sign of activity. Speaking of which: we saw an increased participation of regions such as Umbria or the small region of Molise, which does us honour.

Best in class: the south and the islands were a surprise

We have also awarded the “Best in Class” category this year, the best wines for their wine type: and here we would like to highlight the triumph of southern Italy. Apart from the two awards for the Veneto, for two sparkling wines (Charmat Method, obviously a Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG, and Traditional Method, a great Lessini Durello), the south and the islands achieved the highest levels in all other wine types.

Samples from every appellation

Lastly, it’s a joy to review the “Ambassadors of the territory”, the best wines in the appellations where we were able to taste a good number of samples. The result is a dream Italian wine list.

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