Villa Maria scoops gold awards across a wide range of wine varieties

Villa Maria Estate has scooped 16 gold medals (12 pure gold and four gold) at the Air New Zealand Wine Awards 2011, with recognition across a broad range of wine varieties from the popular Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay through to lesser known varieties like Viognier.

Villa Maria Chardonnay continues to shine and picked up six medals of the total 10 awarded for the variety, whilst golds were also bestowed on the very first Villa Maria Reserve Grenache and the recently released 2011 vintage of the high performing Villa Maria Reserve Noble Botrytis Riesling.

The span of gold medals were across nine wine styles, being Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Verdelho, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, and dessert wine.

Villa Maria Founder and Managing Director Sir George Fistonich commented about the competition results, “Wine competitions are an excellent place for our wines to be benchmarked against the industry and success across a broad range is good news for us.

The Air New Zealand Wine Awards does a good job of recognising sustainability something which Villa Maria is also passionate about. We’re pleased that from the 2010 vintage onward, any wines entered must be recognised as 100 per cent sustainable and Villa Maria are certainly ahead of the curve when it comes to this requirement.”

This year’s competition saw 1489 wines entered from ten of the country’s key wine growing regions. Trophy and elite gold announcements will be made at the official awards evening on Saturday 12 November.