Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina
Caesars Palace
International Wine & Spirit Competition
Website: https://www.iwsc.net
Overview: Throughout the year, the experts at the Beverage Testing Institute (BTI) will invite select members of the trade to join them as panelists in blind tastings of specific categories of spirits.
Background: The IWSC was founded in 1969 and is the premier competition of its kind in the world. Its aim is to promote the quality and excellence of the world’s best wines, spirits and liqueurs.
Procedure: Beverages endure a rigorous two-stage judging process of blind tasting and detailed technical (chemical and microbiological) analysis that takes place at The Competition’s headquarters
Categories: The beverages are scored on a 100 point scale and allotted the corresponding award. Awards range from Bronze to Trophy along with Outstanding Awards for the Gold & Silver categories
PR Impact: Winners are featured in the International Magazine, Drinks Business and promoted internationally through private corporate and consumer tastings.
Participants/Example winners: Brands seeking international attention. Past winners include brands like El Dorado Rum 15 YO, Revka Vodka, & Moet Grand Vintage
Requirements: South America, Australia & New Zealand Wines
Entry Deadline: Monday, October 29, 2012
Entry Fee: $200 per entry
Samples: 4 (750ml) bottles
Marketing Material / Artwork: FREE ‘marketing toolkit’ for all medal winners including high resolution artwork of medals, logos for point of sale, template press releases and other unique bottle promotion designs.
Open to Public: Yes
International Wine & Spirit Competition
Website: https://www.iwsc.net
Overview: Throughout the year, the experts at the Beverage Testing Institute (BTI) will invite select members of the trade to join them as panelists in blind tastings of specific categories of spirits.
Background: The IWSC was founded in 1969 and is the premier competition of its kind in the world. Its aim is to promote the quality and excellence of the world’s best wines, spirits and liqueurs.
Procedure: Beverages endure a rigorous two-stage judging process of blind tasting and detailed technical (chemical and microbiological) analysis that takes place at The Competition’s headquarters
Categories: The beverages are scored on a 100 point scale and allotted the corresponding award. Awards range from Bronze to Trophy along with Outstanding Awards for the Gold & Silver categories
PR Impact: Winners are featured in the International Magazine, Drinks Business and promoted internationally through private corporate and consumer tastings.
Participants/Example winners: Brands seeking international attention. Past winners include brands like El Dorado Rum 15 YO, Revka Vodka, & Moet Grand Vintage
Requirements: South America, Australia & New Zealand Wines
Entry Deadline: Monday, October 29, 2012
Entry Fee: $200 per entry
Samples: 4 (750ml) bottles
Marketing Material / Artwork: FREE ‘marketing toolkit’ for all medal winners including high resolution artwork of medals, logos for point of sale, template press releases and other unique bottle promotion designs.
Open to Public: Yes
New York World Wine & Spirits Competition
Website: https://www.nyworldwineandspiritscompetition.com/
Overview: MicroLiquor Spirit Awards is a global spirits competition for small brands. It provides professional and confidential feedback on product quality, packaging and design, and overall value.
Background: Micro Liquor’s goal is to bring awareness to small liquor brands that are owned by entrepreneurial and innovative individuals and companies.
Procedure: Products will be judged on quality of spirit, brand packaging, design and overall value.Each brand will receive confidential written feedback from MicroLiquor & Flowdesign.
Categories: Awards range from Bronze to Triple Gold Medals (highest award) in each spirit category.
Participants/Example winners: Wine and Spirit Brands of larger and smaller players.Past winners include brands like Don Q, Cupcake Vodka & English Harbor Rum.
Requirements: Any commercial wine (produced by professional winery) or spirit
Entry Deadline: 6/11/2012
Entry Fee: $400 per spirit; $100 per wine
Samples: 2 (750ml) bottles
Marketing Material / Artwork: Medal artwork is available in digital form
Open to Public: Yes
Vinitaly – Verona, Italy 7-10 April 2013
Website: https://www.vinitaly.it/EN
Overview: VinItaly is an International Wine and Spirits exhibition with 4,255 exhibitors and 140,655 visitors (48,544 international visitors, 2,496 journalists – 2012 data). Four days of events, meetings and workshops encouraging cooperation between cellars and trade operators. International Wine competition and International Packaging competition are held at VinItaly.
Entrance Fee: Visitors – Daily tickets: € 50 – Online € 45
Repeat Entry ticket – 4 Entries (1 entrance/day): € 90 – Online € 80
Exhibitors: Wine and Spirits producers from all over the world.
Visitors: Large Scale Distribution, wholesalers, Import-export, food retailers, bars, restaurants, hotels, catering, wine stores, wine bars, sommeliers, wine technicians, wine technology producers, olive oil and wine producers, trade press, authorities, institutions. Open to the general public.
Entrance deadline: For Exhibitors 30th September 2012 (applications received after will go to a waiting list)
Other Details: Exhibitors catalos is already available online
https://www.vinitaly.it/ExhibitorsCatalogue
Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America – April 28-30, 2013 Orlando, FL
Overview: Annual event held by the national trade organization representing the wholesale tier of the wine and spirits industry. It is dedicated to advancing the interests and independence of wholesale distributors and/or brokers of wine and/or spirits. 3,200 attendees in 2012
Competitions: No additional fee for exhibitors
Wine Tasting Competition (Best White, Best Red, Best Dessert Wine, and/or Sparkling Wine)
Spirits Tasting Competition (Best White Spirit, Best Brown Spirit, Best Dessert Spirits, and/or Cordial)
Call for Cocktails: Mixology Competition
Exhibitors: Global wine wholesalers, producers of wines, wine supply agents, wine importers and exporters, wine or spirit brand developers, off license managers, etc.
Visitors: Wine importers and exporters, sommeliers, mixologists, suppliers, retailers, governing bodies of other companies, merchants, shipping companies, government officials, other range of alcoholic beaverage industry, and multiple other people. Closed to the public.
Exhibitors Fees (2012): 10×10 Booth – $2,600, 20×20 booth $10,500
More info
Visitors Fees and Rules: If you are not a WSWA member and you are not exhibiting the registration fee will be $900-$1,300 per person (depending on the registration date and hotel choice).
Deadline to register: January 5, 2013 Early Bird,
On-site after March 6th
Sponsorship Opportunities: $1,500-$100,000. Sponsors will be recognized during events and provided with list of participants.
Note: All information is based on 2012 Las Vegas Convention. 2013 information was not released yet.
Ultimate Beverage Challenge
Website: https://www.ultimate-beverage.com/
Overview: Ultimate Beverage Challenge’s primary goal is to generate a new platinum standard of trustworthiness, integrity, reliability, and, most important, meaningful and relevant results to international beverage competitions in order to recognize the highest degree of product quality.
Procedure: Panels of highly qualified experts blind taste/evaluate flights of distilled spirits by classifications within major spirits categories, employing a custom-created, multistage format. Judges record their findings on a worksheet on which they score each product on the 100-point scale. The products from each category that score 90 or more undergo another level of evaluation by UBC.
Categories: Products whose aggregate scores are from 95-100 are cited with “Category Benchmark/Ultimate Recommendation”; 90-94 will be cited with the designation “Excellent/Highly Recommended” 85-89 will be cited as “Very Good/Strongly Recommended”;80-84 will be cited as “Good/Recommended”.
Requirements: Any commercial spirit that complies with the classification codes
Entry Deadline: February 22, 2013 for Spirits. May 17, 2013 for Wine
Marketing Material / Artwork: Every medal winner will receive FREE marketing resources such as, downloadable logos & medals. US Customs documentation support for non-importers. Purchase of winner’s spirits directly from UBC web-site
Open to Public: No
VinExpo 2013 – June 16-20, 2013 Bordeaux
Website: https://www.vinexpo.com/en/
Overview: Every two years Vinexpo hosts trade professionals from all the wine and spirits producing regions in the world. Each exhibitor uses his/her allotted space to display products before a very select audience of visitors consisting solely of wine and spirits professionals from more than 140 countries. 48,000 visitors from 148 countries, 1,245 journalists, 2,000 press references in 54 countries.
“Tastings by Vinexpo” reserved for exhibitors only.
Exhibitor’s fees: Wine and spirits producers
Exhibitor registration fee EURO 640
Exhibitor participation fee EURO 740
Stand Hire from EURO 280/sq. m.
Visitor’s fees: Restricted to trade professionals only. VinExpo access batch has to be requested online (available starting March 2013)
Details: Exhibitors list is available online
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