With over 16,500 entries in 2019, the Decanter World Wine Awards is indisputably the largest wine competition in the world and is an event that Sensible Wine Services is proud to be a key partner of.

During the preparation phase of the competition, Sensible Wine Services dedicated a team to work closely with the Decanter Awards team in unpacking and rigorously checking and sorting the wines by country and region. The entries were then categorised and physically sorted into the tasting flights for the judging process. At the same time, the bottles are placed into blind tasting bags and any identifying features are concealed. Each stage of the checking and categorisation process is conducted with tremendous attention to detail to maintain the integrity of the competition.

Sensible Wine Services organised delivery to the Excel Centre, where the judging took place, of all the competition wines and specialist wine tasting equipment including hundreds of spittoons, and tens of thousands of Riedel Riesling Grand Cru glasses. During the judging process teams from Sensible Wine Services ensured that each of the wines were opened and delivered to the appropriate tasting studio in a timely fashion, serviced the tasting studios to ensure that there were empty spittoons and clean glasses as required and disposed of all the rubbish, ensuring that all waste was recycled where possible.

Everything we did was carried out with a high degree of professionalism and accuracy, whilst maintaining a fun and enjoyable work environment for our employees and the Decanter team.