Statistics Show Wine Medals Are Meaningless

This abstract from a paper in the Journal of Wine Economics says it all.

An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions
Robert T. Hodgson
Journal of Wine Economics, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1-9

Abstract

An analysis of over 4000 wines entered in 13 U.S. wine competitions shows little concordance among the venues in awarding Gold medals. Of the 2,440 wines entered in more than three competitions, 47 percent received Gold medals, but 84 percent of these same wines also received no award in another competition. Thus, many wines that are viewed as extraordinarily good at some competitions are viewed as below average at others. An analysis of the number of Gold medals received in multiple competitions indicates that the probability of winning a Gold medal at one competition is stochastically independent of the probability of receiving a Gold at another competition, indicating that winning a Gold medal is greatly influenced by chance alone.