Decanter Awards 2016: tastings, sommeliers and live tweeting

16 hundreds wines and 244 judges for this year’s edition of the Decanter World Wine Awards

April 29th marked the end of the week dedicated to the tasting of the 16 hundreds wines competing to win the prestigious Decanter World Wine Awards, assigned by the famous magazine. The competition is among the largest and most influent of the wine industry and this year saw the participation of great experts from all over the world. The 244 judges, 69 of whom were “Master of Wine”, the eminent title that includes them among the greatest international specialists on wine, worked for five days in small groups, according to their area of specialty and their provenience, to select the best products to award and recommend.

Dynamic days for the tasters’ palates but not for Twitter conversations: the Decanter Awards may not be an event open to the public, such as the ProWein or the Vinitaly, but the activity on social networks is still almost insignificant if we consider the number of producers and wineries involved from all over the world. SocialMeter Analysis, monitoring the hashtag #dwwa, #dwwa2016 and the official account @decanterawards, registered only 1116 tweets and 413 active users between April 19^th and May 4^th.

Nevertheless, both the geo localization of the active users and the most mentioned wines in the tweets that were taken into account confirmed the international prominence of the event. The majority of Twitter profiles was, in fact, composed of Americans, Spanish, Dutch and Italians, whereas the top mentioned wines included Port, Sauvignon Blanc, Barolo, Madeira and Bordeaux. The top three users that produced the highest number of tweets were the official account @decanterawards and two personal profiles, the sommelier @gerardbassetobe and the Decanter Awards Manager @paulmedder. Again, the most mentioned accounts were @decanterawards and @gerardbassetobe, followed by the magazine’s profile @decanter.

The only thing left to do now is wait June 6^th, when the results will be officially announced on Decanter.com!