Taking place annually in France, the Feminalise World Wine Competition has this unique feature, that it is judge only by women, wine professionals and wine connoisseurs from 23 different countries!
For the 11th edition this year in 2017, I was there in Beaune to witness and document this spectacular event.
Check out the social media videos and read my post below to learn more and share the experience:
Find the Odd One Out ?❓?@Feminalise #Wine Competition#feminalise pic.twitter.com/GE5AR49SDS
— Julien Miquel #Wine (@JMiquelWine) April 6, 2017
If you haven’t got time to read through this post, check out this 3-minute video that will give you a good grasp on what Feminalise is all about, or keep reading below:
Then, here are the 3 key points about the event I found most impressive:
1 – So Many Women & Wines:
At Feminalise this year, more than 400 women were gathered to judge over 4500 wines in one day!
There are two 2-hour tasting sessions, on in the morning, the second in the afternoon. If you’ve followed, you would have understood that 2000+ wines are tasted at each session.
Each female judge tastes and reviews about 20 wines during each 2-hour session.
Afternoon Tasting Session @Feminalise
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Another 2000+ #wine to be judged in 2h
Crazy???
Check out earlier posts 4 the Full Day Story pic.twitter.com/16q06hMGCG— Julien Miquel #Wine (@JMiquelWine) April 6, 2017
A ballet of waiters pour every wine one after the other to all 400+ judges. Samples are methodically numbered, and strictly covered in colored socks to ensure the tastings are done 100% blind.
2 – No Talking
Each individual wine that enters the competition is tasted by at least 3 different women (often 4 in fact) seated at tables placed far apart from each other in the tasting room.
This way, unlike in most wine competitions, no chatting or exchanging comments about the wines is allowed to happen.
No ‘dominant’ or vocal judge can therefore influence its pears.
It’s each judge with her own palate, her own judgement, and her on taste to be translated into a scoring and commenting on a sheet of paper.
In fact, it is striking to witness how seriously the panels of tasters seem to take this job.
3 – A very structured approach
Organization at the event is impressive to see, and paramount to allow to accurately select the best wines to receive awards.
This rigorous approach is based on the following key judging elements:
- Female tasters are selected from the wine industry on the basis of their abilities to taste and evaluate wines.
Feminalise receives many hundreds of applications from women from around the world to participate in the event. Only the ones with proven records in or near the industry can make it there.
- All wines are blind-tasted, served by the glass, at the right temperature by qualified servers.
The 4500+ wines to be judged at the competition are brought in to the tasting site with refrigerated trucks. They are split into categories: red, white, rosés, and sparklings, each of which is kept at the appropriate serving temperature to ensure the judges and wines are presented with the optimal conditions for evaluating the wines.
- Each wine is evaluated following a tasting sheet with 39 control points.
- In case a flaw if found in a wine (cork taint or else), a different bottle of the same wine is served, again at right temperature to the judges to control whether it was a fault in the bottle or with the wine itself.
- All samples are strictly numbered and identified, and organizers pay attention to the tasting order of entries so the tasting runs smoothly.
On top of this rigorous organization, being a French wine competition, by law the organizers cannot award more than 1/3 of the wines that entered.
While this may sound unfair to some good wines that get submitted to judging, it actually guarantees only the very best wines in the show receive a bronze, silver, or gold medals.
From experience, other competitions in other countries give away awards to much more than 33% of samples to please entrants and sell more.
Hope you enjoyed sharing the journey, let me know in the comments section below.
Cheers 🙂
Julien Miquel
Please let me know your thoughts