The Asia International Beverage Competition is part of a group of competitions including New York, Berlin and Melbourne which feature trade-only judges who score by category and by the actual price.
Open to beer, wine and spirits products from all over the world, this year’s Asia competition takes place in Hong Kong on August 26, and the organisers are offering free shipping to any beer and wine products from Australia to Hong Kong, who choose to enter these prestigious awards.
The awards were founded by Adam Levy, the man behind the well-known and popular Melbourne International Beverage Competitions: the Melbourne International Wine Competition, Melbourne International Spirits Competitions and Melbourne International Beer Competition.
Levy told TheShout: “We are a global international competition and we have built a strong reputation having been running nine years in New York as well as five years in Berlin and Melbourne. I think producers in Australia will be aware of our Melbourne competitions.
“This is my second year for Asia, but it is the same philosophy of being trade buyers only, judging the liquid by its category and by its price. We call this the ‘real world’ because people buy based on price, so why not judge based on price?
“The so-called experts that can judge some competitions ultimately have no idea what a consumer wants; but that is why we are using trade buyers because they are in tune with consumers.”
The blind tasting based on category and price makes this competition a great option for both established and new brands particularly as the liquids are judged by genuine trade buyers from all over Asia.
Levy said that when he started the competition, the entries were grouped in price brackets but the feedback he got from judges was that there can be a number of factors that make a huge difference between a $10 and a $20 bottle of wine. Therefore the judges wanted to know what the exact price was because those differences can be too big, especially for products at the lower-priced end of the market.
He told TheShout: “The whole idea is to get in tune with how you buy your liquor. You walk into a bottle shop and you are heading out to meet with a friend. Now, this is a good friend and you want to spend $40 on a bottle of wine and so you would walk in and ask the person working there, ‘what do you recommend?’
“It’s not about what is the best bottle that they have in their store, it’s about what is the best wine for the price.”
Australian wines and beers who enter the competition will also benefit from free shipping from Australia to Hong Kong, as Levy explained: “My whole goal in life is to remove speed bumps, so you just ship it to our warehouse in Melbourne and we’ll do a consolidated freight shipment from Melbourne to Hong Kong for beer and wine.”
For full details on entering the competition head to the website: