In July 2019, a competition of the "50 most extraordinary places for wine" was held in London (England) for the first time. The association International Wine Challenge was the sponsor. The main aim of the annual event is to promote wine tourism. The judging was based on the "overall experience", i.e. not only the top wines of the wineries, but also the view or landscape environment, accessibility, architecture and (if available), hotels, restaurants and event management such as vineyard tours, horse-drawn carriage tours through vineyards, organisation of weddings and celebrations, programmes for sports enthusiasts and exhibitions.
The international jury was made up of around 500 experts. For the evaluation, the wine world was divided into 16 regions. For each of these regions, the main Academy Chair nominated 36 jury members for his region. A mix of wine lovers, sommeliers, representatives of the wine trade and experts from the travel industry was considered. These then nominated their seven personal favourites. Up to three wineries could come from their own region, four had to be outside.
The winners were selected from over 1,500 nominated wineries. Awards were given to the top 50 as well as to the winners of the continents (Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America, South America). Among them were famous names such as Antinori, Château Margaux, Château Mouton-Rothschild, Marqués de Riscal, Mondavi, Opus One, Penfolds and Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin as well as more unknown wineries.
The winner of the competition was the Zuccardi Valle de Uco winery (Mendoza, Argentina) shown in the picture above right. The places 2 to 5 were occupied by Bodega Garzón (Uruguay), López de Heredia (Spain), Quinta do Crasto (Portugal) and Catena Zapata (Argentina). Among the top 50 were also three wineries from Germany(Schloss Johannisberg 21, Dr. Loosen 10, Schloss Vollrads 33) and three wineries from Austria(Domäne Wachau 19, Schloss Gobelsburg 30, Tement 15). See the list of all 50 wineries on the website of World's Best Vineyards and also under the keyword world's best wineries.
