Winning a medal or an award at the Sommeliers Choice Awards can indeed acts as a powerful marketing tool and selling point for wine brands. It provides a point of differentiation from other brands and can help to increase visibility and credibility in the market.

Some of the top trade benefits that brands will get from the 2023 wine competition are listed here:

1) Get in front of top wine directors, sommeliers, master sommeliers, and restaurant group buyers. As the competition brings in trade-only buyers, brands get a chance to showcase their portfolio of brands to these hard-to-find buyers. Judges also see the brand packages to rate the packaging score which unveils the brand after they are done with bling tasting scoring. Brand recognition in front of America’s top restaurant wine buyers is key here.

2) Getting trade material branded with the SCA logo. Sommeliers Choice Awards gives professional tasting notes that wine brands can use for merchandising. These tasting notes come in a pdf format and are ready to be printed and simply cut into 4 talkers. They have been designed for US retail merchandising.

3) Get certificates that you can send to your distributor's sales rep’s that they can also show when pitching to sommeliers around the USA. Each certificate has a QR code that verifies and takes the reader to find more information about the brand.

4) Winning brands get ongoing support all year around from Sommeliers Choice Awards and Beverage Trade Network’s  ecosystem which includes the Beverage Trade Network portal,  Sommelier Business and consumer guides like Los Angeles Drinks Guide, San Francisco Drinks Guide, Chicago Drinks Guide, and New York Drinks Guide.

A clear direct value proposition is given to winners on BTN’s media asset. For example Stock, this wine social media push and articles are written for the top 100 winners on Sommelier Business.

5) The growth of the Sommeliers Choice Awards is solid proof of how the awards are being perceived by on-premise buyers. More and more sommeliers are being invited from all over the US to participate making this wine competition a truly national competition. Now in its 6th year, the 2023 Sommeliers Choice Awards is planning to judge 2000 wines and will gather 80 judges.

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6) Score breakdown: The competition gives a detailed score breakdown on each criterion which is solid feedback for the brands that Importers can show to the suppliers. One of the metrics in that is value score, you can use this as constructive feedback from trade on how they think the wine is priced.

7) Professional taste notes. Each judge writes a professional tasting note which is then curated by an expert into one unified tasting note.

8) Asking for more information and samples. The 2023 Sommeliers Choice Awards has also added a new feature for judges where they can request more information from the brands they like. Suppliers' data will be sent to the trade judges and it is up to them to contact the supplier.

9)The Top 100 brands are marketed and showcased all year around under Top 100 on-premise branding that is marketed and promoted to sommeliers of the USA as well.

10) Re-judging on the final day for special categories. 2023 Sommeliers Choice Awards will now be having one additional day where all the top winners from each panel will again be re-judged for the special category titles.

11) Brands are able to demonstrate to their importers, potential importers, retailers, and state distributors how they are supporting the brands to grow in the US market. If there is any competition that focuses on the on-premise trade of the USA and brings in only trade buyers and Master Sommeliers as judges, it is SCA that brings solid credibility among the trade for that brand.

12) Special category winners will also get a story published at no extra cost at some of the BTN media assets and will be offered an opportunity to get involved with Beverage Trade Network’s trade shows like International Bulk Wine and Spirits Show in San Francisco and USA Trade Tasting in Chicago.