In 2024 the Canberra International Riesling Challenge is modifying its points based awards system to align with the traditional Gold Silver and Bronze Awards and offering a dual awards system to entrants
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In addition a new secondary label has been introduced to be used with the Points Award Label- each wine will receive a secondary award label which will show the exact number of points awarded to the wine by the Challenge judges.
Entrants electing to use the secondary label will be requested to use it alongside the Primary label
Commencing in 2021 the Canberra International Riesling Challenge introduced a points based awards system more aligned to the systems used by wine critics and intended to improve the marketing opportunities for entrants.The 2021 Challenge system had four levels and used a range within the 100 points scale to show the wine quality.
While Gold Silver and Bronze wines are quality awards, and the wine quality system predates the Olympics by many decades, the use of Gold, Silver and Bronze by the Olympic movement means that many people think that Gold, Silver and Bronze medals mean first, second and third quality rather than their wine show meanings of Exceptional, Outstanding and Good quality.
Following the 2023 Challenge the Challenge has reduced the number of levels to three and aligned the points to the Gold/Silver/Bronze levels to allow easy transfer between the systems. The introduction of the secondary label is intended to emphasise the points system and is more in keeping with the system in use by wine critics.
Entrants will be able to ise either system but will be requested to only use the secondary label in conjunction with the Challenge Awards labels rather than the Medal system.
