ive had numerous years as a manager of a bottle shop, and the idea of medals for wines is a weird one for customers. the customer who knows wines, and knows what they want, take no notice of the medals. the wine snob buys the most expensive bottle they can afford. the mum and dad wine buyers will buy the same wine constantly, and will only branch out after a recommendation from someone they know, or after trying the wine at a friends house etc. the "experimental drinker" (one who tries new wineries and blends) usually buy by word of mouth, or recommendations from friends/liquor store employee.
In my experience there are only 2 types of people that pay attention to medals on a wine bottle.
1. the person who fancies themselves as a collector/aficionado, but they are really small potatoes in the scheme of things. they will get the top 100 wines list out of the news paper each year, buy some of them they like the look of, and either keep them or drink them at dinner parties and brag about the wine
2. the non drinker - when these people buy a bottle of wine as a present or thank you gift etc, they usually either know what the recipient likes already, or they go for something that has a good name/label/wrapping or medals on it, as medals mean the wine must be good right?
most people who buy wine know very little about it, and even less about the details of the medal on the bottle. also given the many different medals bottles get bedazzled with from many different sources, quite a few people see them as a pile of baloney, and simply a marketing tool - along the lines of claims such as "best selling cheese in uzbekistan" or "number 1 cereal in Angola".
Expand
(20min delay)