The mountain of contest medals won by Chinese wine brands grew a little taller this month as the results of Concours Mondial de Bruxelles (CMB) 2021 were announced. Chinese labels took home 163 awards, including 79 at the level of “gold medal†or higher.
This year’s CMB had been planned for Ningxia in May but was moved to Luxembourg due to complications from the COVID-19 crisis. That announcement, made in January, added that CMB would be postponed for Ningxia until 2022. CMB was held in the Haidian district of Beijing in 2018.
CMB reports that some 10,000 wines from 46 countries were judged from June 17 to 27 this year, with France taking the most awards at 672, followed by Spain at 507 and Italy at 389.
Not surprisingly, Ningxia led the way for medals by Chinese entrants. Take a tour of the region and you will find a wall filled with awards at most wineries. Some no doubt hope more sales soon accompany all that affirmation.
Anyway, two Chinese wines were ranked among the “revelations” in the contest.
Cailonglin Icewine 2017, a Vidal from Liaoning in northwest China, won in the “sweet revelation” category. This stuff is indeed tasty though quite pricey–we had a bottle during our Maovember charity wine dinner in Beijing.
The other was the “China revelationâ€, a Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 from Huadong in Qingdao. That’s a blast from the past: before the current wave of domestic wineries put China firmly on the world wine map, Huadong showed the potential back in the 1980s. The label includes an image of winery founder Michael Parry, who died in 1991 but is still very much remembered by the team there.
See all results from CMB 2021 here.
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