Back in July WineAlign (to which I subscribe, and have for years) posted the results of the National Wine Awards of Canada. Each day they posted the bottles of one or more varieties which had been awarded Bronze, Silver, Gold (usually), and Platinum (rarely). A bunch of textual information leaking out daily is a hard way to spot any trends, so I did what anyone who loves both wine and spreadsheets would: I loaded it all into Google Sheets.
First, a few notes on how I handled the data:
- The ‘score’ metric I refer to below is my calculation and not WineAlign’s. For each wine I assigned a score of 1 for a bronze, 2 for a silver, 3 for a gold, and 5 for a platinum.
- I excluded mead, cider, and fruit wine.
- They don’t publish how many of each wine type are submitted, just how many win awards, so I can’t determine any kind of efficiency metric per winery or region.
What I noticed:
No surprise: BC and Ontario dominate. BC wines were awarded 432 times, Ontario 423, confirming their position as the premier wine provinces in the country. But Nova Scotia won 15 and Quebec won 13, including in some vinifera categories, which is promising. Plenty of wineries in emerging regions (especially in BC) won awards too, not just the couple biggest in each province.
The same grapes tend to do well nationwide. BC’s top types were Pinot Noir, Red Blends, Chardonnay, Syrah/Shiraz, and Riesling. Ontario’s tops were Chardonnay, Sparkling, Red Blends, Riesling, and Pinot Noir. Sparkling was actually the 6th-most-awarded BC wine too, so apart from Syrah doing well in BC (natch) the most-awarded wines were just about the same. Quebec and Nova Scotia each had Chards and Rieslings awarded as well.
The benches show their strength. For the two largest regions (Niagara, Okanagan) where appellation was sometimes listed on the wine, a few stood out. In BC, the Naramata Bench had nearly 3x the number of winners as Okanagan Falls, the next closest. Meanwhile, in Niagara, the Beamsville Bench had the most awards.
Inniskillin? Inniskillin! When I calculated the total (not average) score by winery, the highest score went to…Inniskillin. I kind of love this; in my two years working at Arterra I told whoever would listen that Inniskillin was our secret weapon, considering most people only know them for icewine. Granted, most of their wines were awarded silver or bronze, but they produced Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, and Cab Franc which garnered gold, plus a Platinum icewine, so…go check them out.
OK, fine, Mission Hill. Mission Hill had the highest average score among their awarded wines, according to my calculation…which, again, is mine; I don’t know how WineAlign did it. But there must have been something similar in our calculations, since they awarded Mission Hill Winery of the Year.
Platinums. Thirty wines were awarded platinum, across 24 wineries. Six wineries had two platinum wines each: 1 Mill Road, Laughing Stock, Meyer, Mission Hill, SpearHead, and Trius. Seven different kinds of wine were awarded platinum; I will say, I’m shocked that not one Ontario Pinot or Chard was awarded platinum.
- Cab Franc: BC 3, ON 3
- Red Blends: BC 2, ON 4
- Pinot Noir: BC 5, ON 0
- Chardonnay: BC 4, ON 0
- Riesling: BC 1, ON 3
- Syrah: BC 3, ON 0
- Icewine: BC 0, ON 2
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 