About American Gold Medal Wines

My goal has always been to find the best, to find those things that stand apart. I don’t like average. However, finding the “best” of anything can be difficult. Wine is no exception. It does not matter whether one spends $15 or $50 on a bottle, at any given price point there will always be few wines that rise above the others. The trick is finding them.

Trying to determine which wines within a given budget are best is incredibly difficult as so many excellent wines are produced each year. For an individual, sampling all wines would be virtually impossible. Even if one were able to identify the “best wines” this year, odds are that they would be surpassed by another mix of wines next year. So it would be “back to the drawingboard”. Given that this country is producing a wide variety of high quality wine, and that the top ranked wines vary from year to year, having a means to efficiently identify the best wines in any given year is essential.

Identifying the best American wines is the goal of American Gold Medal Wines. To do this we turn to the most demanding, the most challenging forum we know to evaluate wine: the commercial wine competition.

Commercial Wine Competitions

Commercial wine competitions are the key to success when it comes to identifying top quality American wine. Every year both large and small vineyards enter their wines into competitions across the country. While there are hundreds of local, state and regional wine competitions held every year, we have identified what we deem to be the most important and influential judgings. It is in this forum that panels of informed wine professionals -- typically vineyard owners, wine buyers, wine store owners, wine writers, and other people who make their living from the trade -- as well as educated consumers, sample and rank wines. Wines are evaluated, scores for each wine are tallied, and then gold, silver, and bronze medals are awarded according to predetermined criteria. Most importantly, every wine is placed on an equal footing, and awards are based on the impression of many judges, not just one.

American Gold Medal Wines then takes it a step further. We have aggregated all of the gold medal winners together in one place to present you with the results in a clear, concise and easy to use format. Winning wines are arranged by type of grape and then by price within its variety. Additionally, we have given these winning vintners a forum to provide you with greater insight on their gold medal wines.

Because many small producers enter their wines, these competitions also highlight the many great small vineyards that exist throughout the country. While these wines may be difficult to find in stores, they can be ordered directly from the vineyard.

Interstate Shipments Grow

The courts are moving to overturn arcane state laws that prohibited the shipment of wine to consumers. State laws are changing, making it legal to receive wines directly from producers. This is incredibly exciting for wine lovers, as we are now able to move beyond the limits of local distribution. But what good is the ability to buy wine directly from a vineyard or a well-stocked store in another state if you don’t know anything about the quality of the wine you are buying.

American Gold Medal Wines answers your questions about quality. Gold medals are not awarded to average wines. If the judges feel that no wine in a category merits gold, then silver or perhaps bronze will be the highest award presented in that category. So if you have ever wondered, “is this wine any good?” if it has won a gold medal, you can be certain that it’s great.

Our web site not only lists all of the gold medal winners, but it also allows you to efficiently search through them. Additionally, it provides direct links to a number of these wineries.

By using this guide and the web site, you will encounter some of the best wines this country has to offer. While foreign producers win gold medals in US competitions, as do foreign vineyards owned by US producers, our goal is to independently highlight those wines produced domestically by domestic producers. This publication serves both the consumer and producer. While commercial competitions have been conducted for years, award winners have had few practical venues to promote their hard earned medals. Similarly, consumers have had no convenient means to identify and access winning producers. American Gold Medal Wines unites consumers seeking exceptional wines with producers who have distinguished themselves.

The wines and vineyards that do appear in the guide all got here the same way, they were judged by a panel of independent experts to be the best wine in their category. We hope that you find this information valuable and are able to use it to expand your enjoyment.