Weird & Wonderful: Furmint, Madeira, Austrian Riesling and Amontillado Sherry impress at thisyear’s International Wine Challenge Awards

The International Wine Challenge (IWC) Awards 2019, announced in London last night (July 9),celebrated some of the less well-known styles of wine.
Winemakers and experts from some of the most famous wineries and regions across the planet wereon hand to fete the success of Furmint, Madeira and sherry, amongst others.
Of the five overall wine winners (sweet, fortified, sparkling, red and white), three of them are rare andquirky wines:
Tenuta Di Capezzana Vinsanto Riserva 2011 which won the Alois Kracher Trophy for Champion Sweet
Wine 2019 is an exceptional dessert wine made using traditional methods where the grapes arecarefully selected and dried on mats for several months before being fermented and then aged for five
years in wooden casks giving a rich, complex and intense wine with notes of candied orange peel anddried apricots.
The winner of the Manuel Lozano Trophy for Champion Fortified Wine 2019 was Justino's Madeira
Terrantez 1978 produced from grapes grown on volcanic soils on tiny terraces called ‘poios’. TheMadeira impressed judges with a complex nose with walnut and hazelnut aromas and dried fruit on thepalate and a beautifully long and concentrated finish.
The winner of the IWC Champion White Wine 2019 was a ‘lean, delicate and precise’ Austrian Rieslingfrom Weingut Birgit Eichinger. The winning wine, ‘Riesling Ried Zöbinger Gaisberg Erste Lage Kamptal
2017,’ was a powerful wine with great tension and balance with zesty lemon, honeyed apples, pear skin
and white pepper and was dubbed by the judges as being ‘full of subtle pleasure.’
The winner of the ‘IWC Champion of Champions 2019’, awarded to the most outstanding wine of its
style from the line-up of Champions, was not a Grand Cru or a vintage sparkling, but one of the world’s
rarest Sherries, Tio Pepe Cuatro Palmas Amontillado by González Byass, an extremely rare 40-year-old
Sherry drawn in tiny quantities from six casks known as ‘Museo Solera’. Deep in colour, intense on thenose with a rich and nutty taste it is bone dry and yet richly textured with tremendous length. Thejudges heralded it as “a stunning sherry.”
Hungary’s flagship grape was the focus of the IWC Consumer Campaign of the Year, with Wines of
Hungary’s Furmint February, putting the spotlight on the grape behind Tokaj, the “wine of kings andthe king of wines”.
Chris Ashton, Director at the IWC, commented: “Consumers are increasingly looking for unusual wines
and rare finds. A key objective of the IWC is to help guide consumers by indicating what the best example
of a given style is – which is particularly useful for lesser known styles.”This year’s winners were announced on 9th July and the full list of those awarded can be seen here, andthe Merchant Awards results here.
NOTES TO EDITORS:The International Wine ChallengeIn its 36th year, the International Wine Challenge is accepted as the world’s most rigorous, impartial andinfluential wine competition. The IWC assesses every wine ‘blind’ and judges each for its faithfulness to style,region and vintage. Each medal-winning wine is tasted on at least three separate occasions by a minimum of 12
different judges including Masters of Wine. Awards include medals (Gold, Silver, Bronze) and Commendedawards.
The IWC is committed to helping consumers discover great wine, and the medals displayed on winning bottles
and in winning shops offer a trusted guarantee of quality.
For more information on the IWC, please contact the IWC team at Phipps
iwc@thisisphipps.com : +44 (0)20 7759 7400 : 17 Exeter Street, London, WC2E 7DU, UK