If you are a thinking wine drinker, you are most probably no stranger to the John Platter wine guide or the Veritas wine awards. 

Over the years they have created an air of legitimacy and quality for the wines deemed fit to wear their respective bling. 

That said, over time they have been enthusiastically joined by numerous other awards and competitions; all professing to award only the highest of achievers. But instead of making the quest for good wine easier, the opposite has happened. 

Simply because not all gold in the world of wine is created equally. Some of them award from a well-made bronze all the way up the podium to a superb double gold, others award only gold and nothing if the wine falls short of the qualities desired.

Internationals like Tim Atkin and Wine Spectator use the 100-point system where anything below 90 points isn't worth mentioning, but from 94 and upwards everyone takes notice and beyond 96 points wines can almost instantly turn a profit once purchased. 

I can't imagine my boys coming home with a 90 test score and me calling them average, but wine is judged differently - presumed perfect, a 100 - until it is proven otherwise, chipping away points where the correct aromatics, taste and colour are found lacking. 

A hypothetical 50-point wine would indeed be a truly awful thing, but that same score would be reason for celebration if you're a university student. Some competitions split wines into their respective regions so they effectively only compete with similar styles, an approach that holds its own merit. Some taste blind but others don't, and sometimes historical performance comes into consideration. 

Tasting panels can vary from one individual to dozens of tasters from varying backgrounds. It could be argued that the bigger the panel, the higher the probability of a reasonably objective outcome, but when it comes to wine, how objective can we really be? 

Wine is to be drunk and enjoyed - and the last time I checked joy wasn't something obtained objectively. 

When faced with almost identically well-made wines but in different styles, who would not favour the style they enjoyed drinking for the win? 

If you are to have any benefit from all the awards and competition results out there, you have to make a conscious effort to consider the results of the given competition against your own judgement of the wine and if they align consistently with your palate, it's a competition result you can trust for future guidance. This as a result will make the purchase of expensive wine less daunting and the enjoyment thereof more certain. 

Entering wine competitions costs money and sometimes quite a bit of free wine for the tastings. Some wines are made in limited quantities and don't justify this expense, while other winemakers simply feel their wines aren't understood as intended and leave the judgment to you, the wine drinker, because nothing says five-star louder than a sellout vintage.

Conrad de Wet sells wine for a living. This came about as a convenient consequence of constantly tasting his way towards the next great wine discovery, and then thinking and talking about it until no mystery regarding its greatness remains. He opens a bottle of wine with the same enthusiasm as a pre-schooler opens a birthday present. 082 683 4193 / dewet.wine@gmail.com / instagram: winebynature