The 2024 Adelaide Hills Wine Show hosted its annual award ceremony last Friday, celebrating the region’s best and successful wines and wineries.
The show saw 605 wines judged, with The Best Wine of Show trophy awarded to Vella Wines 2020 Harvest Widow Chardonnay, which also won Best White Wine of Show, Best Single Vineyard Wine, and Best Chardonnay trophies.
Founder of Vella Wines, Mark Vella celebrated the win across the winery’s social media.
“Our first trophy win is the result of years of learning lessons, sometimes the hard way, building strong relationships and backing our team behind the scenes. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to everyone that has played a part in our journey, we are truly humbled,” said Vella.
President of the Adelaide Wine Hills Region, Alex Trescowthick congratulated this year’s winners of the show’s most prestigious categories.
“It highlights the bespoke nature of our wine region which is rooted in the families that live here, grow grapes, and make wines here. These are Hills’ wines made by Hills’ families, who have proudly staked their name to their quality. Congratulations to the Vella and Wick families,” Trescowthick said.
Wicks Estate 2023 Shiraz took home the award for Best Red Wine of Show as well as Best Shiraz trophy.
Sarah Crowe, Head Judge of this year’s award from Yarra Yering in Victoria stated that this year decision for the Best Wine of Show award was once again a battle between Shiraz and Chardonnay.
“Chardonnay is such a strong varietal from the Hills, and this wine had already fought very hard to come out on top over many outstanding Chardonnays. The judges were impressed by the freshness and complexity of the white wine of show. The Shiraz was super vibrant and fresh as well, but the white has an extra few years of bottle age over the red, so we already know it has the ability to age, and it does not look like fading anytime soon,” Crowe said.
Other awards included Best Sparkling of Show going to Deviation Road’s 2017 Beltana Blanc de Blancs, who also won Best Producer over 100 tonnes.
“The sparkling wines were a high point and selecting which gold medal wines would go through to trophy judging was not an easy task, including excellent museum sparkling wines being considered for the museum trophy,” said Crowe.
2024 TROPHY WINNERS:
- Best Wine of Show
- Vella Wines 2020 Harvest Widow Chardonnay
- Best White Wine of Show
- Vella Wines 2020 Harvest Widow Chardonnay
- Best Red Wine of Show
- Wicks Estate 2023 Shiraz
- Best Sparkling Wine of Show
- Deviation Road 2017 Beltana Blanc de Blancs
- Best Producer of Show 100t
- Deviation Road
Across the 11 varietal classes of the award show, 10 different producers took home the trophies, recognising the region’s versatility. The ‘Best of Show’ results are below, and full details on all the winning wines are available through the Adelaide Hills Wine Show website.