VinItaly and Veronafiere's Organic and Biodynamic Competition "Wine Without Walls" Offers New Trophies

Robert Kershaw MW is the panel chair for Wines without Walls

The 2019 edition of Wine Without Walls... will be held in Verona on April 3rd 2019 featuring natural, organic, and biodynamic wines from all over the world. Overseeing it are biodynamic wine writer Monty Waldin (also General Chairman of 5StarWines) and the coordination of Master of Wine Richard Kershaw, the new Wine Without Walls Panel Chairman.

5StarWines book features a dedicated Wine Without Walls section

In 2016, Veronafiere and Vinitaly established the Wine Without Walls section of the international tasting 5StarWines, to promote and give recognition to producers whose work focuses entirely on natural, organic and biodynamic, and low sulfite wines.

The Wine Without Walls selection takes place in Verona, Italy, contemporaneously to the 5StarWines blind tasting organized from April 3rd to 5th 2019 right before the world’s most renowned Italian wine fair, Vinitaly. The third edition of Wine Without Walls this year will introduce a revised assessment method and two brand new trophies, both features aiming at giving added value to wineries enrolling in the selection...

Wine Without Walls 2019 will showcase the natural, biodynamic, and low sulfite wines coming from every corner of the world. These wines will be tasted by high-profile international judges that will evaluate them following an improved assessment method.

Wine Without Walls will open its doors to companies producing wines with sulfite levels below 80 mg/lt. By doing that, the organizers are aiming at making the event more accessible and appealing to a larger number of producers.

Monty Waldin, General Chairman of 5StarWines and Scientific Director of Wine Without Walls commented on the new sulfites limit.

“This year, we decided to raise slightly the permitted limit of total sulfites for the entries. Our rationale behind this change was to make Wine Without Walls slightly more inclusive but without going so far as to include in the tasting absolutely every single organic, natural or Biodynamic wine ever made....Our wish is that Wine Without Walls remains inclusive, credible, rigorous, and transparent, whilst also recognising that this field of winemaking is as dynamic, challenging, rewarding and chameleon-like as the wines themselves.”

Another fundamental revamp of the selection will be the numerical score that individual natural wines will be awarded. From now on, the dedicated Wine Without Walls jury will rate biodynamic and organic wines using the same numerical assessment method used for the 5StarWines grand tasting.

The panel of judges will assign scores to each wine presented, and the elements subject to examination include the visual, olfactory, and gustatory components of the wine. Thereafter, an average score will be tallied; this final score will be out of 100.

Wines scoring 90 points out of 100 will be included in the 5StarWines – the Book guide, a promotional tool designed to help wineries gain recognition and increased market share. The improved numerical centesimal assessment makes the final score more tangible and immediate to grasp to an international public and is designed to better help wineries in the promotion of their products.

The selection process will also be enhanced by the assignment of various Wine Without Walls trophies. For the first time, along with a final score and a personalized commendation within the 5StarWines – the Book, participants will also run for the “Best Winery” and “Best Wine Without Walls Wine” trophies.

The “Best Wine Without Walls Winery” trophy will be awarded to the producer who gets the best averaged out results. The final results are those that wineries obtain averaging the scores from at least 3 of their wines that procured awards in at least 2 different categories.

The trophy for the “Best Wine Without Walls Wine”, however, will be instead assigned to the wine that scored the highest score during the Wine Without Walls selection.

Confirmed Wine Without Walls judges this year include: Gill Gordon Smith (Vinitaly International Academy Italian Wine Expert and CEO at Fall from Grace), Regine Lee (Head of Customer Support at Liberty Wines), and Richard Barnes (Founder and Editor at Grape Collective). During the last edition, 24 organic and biodynamic wines made it through the final selection.

Richard Kershaw (center) MW, the 2019 Panel Chairman, Wine Without Wall

At the end of the event, the panel agreed that the wines far exceeded their expectations in terms of quality, complexity, and, most importantly, value. With a combination of old and new strategies, Veronafiere and Vinitaly wishes to see the number and the quality of participants grow exponentially.

To apply, click here.

About: The grand Vinitaly 2019 will be held from April 7th to the 10th. Every year, Vinitaly counts more than 4,000 exhibitors on a 100,000+ square meter area and 130,000 visitors from over 140 different countries with more than 30,000 top international buyers. The premier event to Vinitaly, OperaWine “Finest Italian Wines: 100 Great Producers,” which will be held on the 6th of April, one day prior to Vinitaly will unite international wine professionals in the heart of Verona, offering them the unique opportunity to discover and taste the wines of the 100 Best Italian Producers, as selected by Wine Spectator. Since 1998 Vinitaly International travels to several countries such as Russia, China, USA and Hong Kong thanks to its strategic arm abroad, Vinitaly International. In February 2014 Vinitaly International launched an educational project, the Vinitaly International Academy (VIA) with the aim of divulging and broadcasting the excellence and diversity of Italian wine around the globe. VIA this year launched the seventh edition of its Certification Course and today counts 157 Italian Wine Ambassadors and 13 Italian Wine Experts.