• Drink Why are wine bottles 750 milliliters? The curious story behind this measure

Can we trust the prizes won by the wines? This is what the Belgian program On n'est pas des pigeons (literally "we are not pigeons", which can be translated as "we are not fools") wanted to find out with a very simple experiment: to enter the worst wine they could find in an international competition, and against all odds, it won.

According to Eric Boschman, sommelier and great wine specialist in Belgium, "there are Anglo-Saxon competitions that are destined to make money ... Registration is very expensive, transportation is very expensive, to get joke medals."

The sommelier decided to organize a tasting to find the worst wine he could, and designated as 'winner' a mixture of different European wines sold for € 2.50 in a local supermarket.

The labels were later replaced by a prettier one with the color of the program and the wine was renamed 'Le Château Colombier' and, mocking detail, a dove as a logo.

The program team chose the Gilbert et Gaillard international competition. To register, you did not need anything more than to pay about € 50 and provide the results of a laboratory analysis of the wine, so that its graduation and sugar level are known, among other things.

Gold Medal

The bottle of less than three euros received the most coveted prize.

The jury described it as follows: "Soft, nervous and rich mouth with young net effluvia that promises a beautiful complexity. Very interesting."

Because of this, the program had to pay 60 euros to buy 1000 stickers representing the medal to stick on the bottles. A real deal.

How did this wine win the contest?

In some competitions, everyone can register to be a juror, even if they know nothing about wines. And so Samy Hosni, journalist of the program, became a taster for an international competition in the French city of Mâcon. At his table, there was not even a professional.

The problem is that medals often influence the commercial future of a wine: thanks to a prize, they increase their sales by up to 15%.

So, beware of the awards and medals received for a wine, it is better to trust your own palate.

However, the RTBF program does not hesitate to cite the Brussels International Competition as a reliable reference when choosing an award-winning wine.

  • Feeding

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more