Concours Mondial de Bruxelles coming to SA?

Tuesday, 6 December, 2016
Concours Mondial de Bruxelles
The Concours Mondial de Bruxelles has been operating successfully for 23 years, and every year the competition is run and judged in a different part of the wine world, with the 2016 edition done in Plovdiv in Bulgaria and 2017 in Spain.

South Africa has been fairly slow in entering the competition, but did really well with 108 medals achieved out of only 260 wines entered this year. Congratulations to Lourensford who won Grande Gold for their Limited Release barrel fermented Chardonnay. There certainly is speculation that they are looking to bring the competition to South Africa, so watch this space - I predict they will be running the competition here in about 2019 or 2020.

The organisers are hugely impressed by the quality of South African wine as well as the stately Estates who have as much appeal as the old French Chateaux, and according to Dr Stefan Schepers, we undervalue or wines, so we have a great opportunity waiting for us to shift the industry.  Well done to all the South African judges who have participated over the years, including Neil Pendock, Edo Heyns, Michael Fridjhon, Fiona McDonald, Christian Eedes, Thys Louw, John Fraser, Dr Winnie Bowman, Michael Olivier, Pieter de Waal (Hermit on the Hill),  and James Pietersen. There is a massive international panel of 320 judges so good to see South Africa being fairly well represented over the years.