On Saturday, October 12, Château Dauzac in Margaux France hosted the 12th World Wine Tasting Championship sponsored by French wine magazine, La Revue du Vin de France. Italy made a surprising win by a huge margin of  28 points over Switzerland and Taiwan who tied for second place with 140 points. Japan came close with 138 points.

Looking for the 2025 results? Look here.

A record breaking total of 39 teams traveled from around the world to compete. Team USA came in at #21 in a tie with Hong Kong with 97 points. Last year in 2023 Team USA came in at 9, 10, or 25 depending on the source. I suspect it’s the 25 placement that was in error; read all about last year’s contest here. There’s a lot of moving parts in these contests! Scroll down to see the list of teams and their scores.

For those unfamiliar with this competition (which I competed in for Team USA in 2019), teams taste 12 wines with scoring is based on the following criteria:

• grape (up to 10 points depending on the proportion of the grape variety)
• country of origin (5 points)
• appellation (5 points)
• vintage (3 points)
• producer (3 points)

Not easy at all for an individual or team; Italy’s Andréa Podazza says “We were lucky.” Indeed they were as the list of 12 wines included two from Italy, but they also put in the work by tasting together for almost ten years– and making a few good guesses I bet. 

This was quite the upset as the French team has three championship titles and there were FOUR French wines in the competition yet they ended up in 28th place with only 91 points. When I competed in 2019, France won with 112 points, and Italy was at the bottom with 17.  As you can tell by comparing the winner with 112 points in 2019 and the winner in 2024 with 168 pints, some years the wines are more challenging to determine than other years. 

So what were the wines in 2024? And how do you think you’d do tasting them?

I actually think I’d do pretty good identifying the these wines– the grapes certainly, and many of the countries. I taste a lot of wine with Sue, I go to a lot of industry tastings, and in the past two years I’ve been on three press trips to Italy spending eight weeks total there including a week in Soave, last November I was in Portugal on a press trip, and I almost went to Spain to visit Vega Sicilia Valbuena, one of the wines in the competition, traveling from Italy… but realized I needed to get back home after three weeks away. So maybe I’d get 120 points out of 300? With a good team and coach, we could possibly break the top 10. Like the Italian team pointed out, you need to do a lot of tasting together, and have good communication to do well. The Italian coach is the same one this year as in 2019 when we competed.

In general, these are pretty classic wines– hence the high scores. Last year the highest score was 108 by Romania; to me that’s indicative of the challenging nature of the wines in the competition. What’s most surprising to me about this year’s wines is that there’s two rieslings, two wines from Italy including a Soave two years in a row, two from Spain, four from France, and none from the US! That’s eight of twelve from the EU. Hmmm. So now do you think you’d do? 

The Wines

Vin N°1

Xarel-lo (65%), Macabeu (35%)        
Espagne              
Appellation : Corpinnat
Producteur : Can Descregut
2018

Vin N°2

Riesling
France
Région : Alsace
Appellation : Alsace Grand Cru Altenberg de Bergheim
Producteur : Gustave Lorentz
 2019

Vin N°3

Sauvignon blanc (90%), Sémillon (10%)        
New Zealand           
Appellation : Marlborough
Producteur : Seresin Estate
2022

Vin N°4

Garganega   
 Italie
Appellation : Soave
Producteur : Gini – La Frosca
 2020

Vin N°5

Riesling (late harvest)           
Germany
Appellation : Moselle
Producteur : Markus Molitor
2018

Vin N°6

Gamay        
France   
Appellation : Brouilly
Producteur : Château de la Chaize
2022

Vin N°7

Malbec        
Argentine          
Appellation : Mendoza
Producteur : Bodega Rolland
2019

Vin N°8

Tempranillo (97%), Merlot (3%)       
Spain 
Appellation : Ribera del Duero
Producteur : Vega Sicilia Valbuena
2019

Vin N°9

Cabernet-Sauvignon (65 %), Syrah (35%)      
Lebanon     
Appellation : Vallée de Bekaa
Producteur : Château Kefraya
2019

Vin N°10

Nebbiolo     
Italie      
Appellation : Barolo
Producteur : Giacomo Borgogno
2020

Vin N°11

Mourvèdre (95%), Grenache (5%)    
France   
Appellation : Bandol
Producteur : Domaine de La Bégude
2006

Vin N°12

Savagnin      
France   
Appellation : Côtes du Jura
Producteur : Domaine Sainte-Marie
2011

Who were the competitors this year? Scrolling through the list, I was surprised by the names in the La Revue website’s article for Team USA.

And then I realized they were the same names as the names of the Brazil Team, several of which have competed for Brazil in years past! I went to the official event website where they list each country’s team which you can see by clicking on the team flag– no list for the Team USA there either. There is a list of team members on the Team USA website which you can check out here and learn more about the 2024 team.

Congratulations to all the teams, their members, and their coaches for a job well done! It’s quite an accomplishment to get to France to compete! Cheers!

The Winners 

1               Italie (168 points)

–       Clémence Barraud

–       Luis Alberto Villarreal

–       Andrea Podazza

–       Miguel Anel Lopez 

–       Coach : Pierre-Yves Challier

2               Suisse (140 points)

–       François Vuille

–       Sylvie Camandona

–       Rodrigo Banto

–       Christian Gfeller

–       Coach : Isabelle Avenarius

3               Taïwan (140 points)

–       Chia-Hsiang Chang

–       Long-Ching Wu

–       I-Hsin Lee

–       Yen-Ting Lu

–       Coach : Tsung-Hsing Hsieh

4          Japon (136 points)

–        Taizo ohkurano

–        Masaki KATAYAMA

–        Takenobu yokoyama

–        Mika bleackley

–        Coach : hide ishizuka

4               Lativia (136 points)

–       Janis Kalkis

–       Madara Greize-Kapzema

–       Aigars Lukstins

6          Finlande (131 points)

–        Alexey Schramko

–        Samu Viljanen

–        Juuli Lille

–        Epi Piitulainen

7          Mexico (130 points)

8          Roumanie (125 points)

9          Belgique (123 points)

10        Chine (120 points)

11        Allemagne (120 points)

12        Espagne (114 points)

13        Luxembourg (114 points)

14        Autriche (112 points)

15        Danemark (112 points)

16        Moldavie (107 points)

17        Biélorussie (103 points)

18        Monaco (103 points)

19        Portugal (99 points)

20        Hong Kong (97 points)

21        USA (97 points)

–        Bruno Vianna

–        Diego Dequi

–        Mário Lescano Jr.

–        Mauricio Ceccon

–        Coach : Luiz Batistello

22        Pologne (96 points)

23        Pays-Bas (95 points)

24        Kazakhstan (94 points)

25        Suède (94 points)

26        Afrique du Sud (93 points)

27        Canada (92 points)

28        France  (91 points)

29        Malte (89 points)

30        Kenya (87 points)

31        Grande-Bretagne (86 points)

32        Brésil (85 points)

–        Bruno Vianna

–        Diego Dequi

–        Mário Lescano Jr.

–        Mauricio Ceccon

–        Coach : Luiz Batistello

33        Hongrie (85 points)

34        Irlande (85 points)

35        Inde (81 points)

36        Singapore (69 points)

37        Malaisie (54 points)

38        Turquie (47 points)

39        Albanie (33 points)

Oh and if you’re wondering why I’m not competing on the team this year? I feel a little like Mike Pence if you know what I mean…

• 2023 Championship
• 2022 Championship er

NOTE: updated earlier error where I switched the points of US (91) with France (97).