The 2017 World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly awards judging days took place at the main sponsors location of Marriott County Hall Hotel Westminster – 36 of the world’s top Champagne and Sparkling Wine judges flew in from across the world to judge the wines received from 21 of the main sparkling wine regions globally.


From Master of Wines to authors of sparkling wine books, wine merchants to sommeliers, the variation of judges from around the world that attended the judging days helped to deliver some fine results for this year’s entries that were received from across the globe. USA, Slovenia, Spain, France and more fabulous countries were left behind in order to spend some unique hours judging some amazing fizz examples in London from the most popular sparkling wine regions to those yet to be discovered – Michael Edwards, author of ‘The Finest Wines of Champagne’ and also ‘The Champagne Companion: The Authoritative Connoisseur’s Guide’, was the honorary judge. Our Champagne and Sparkling Wine Awards are not done behind closed doors and our blind tasting format of judging has two stages to both give winning wines an award from highly commended to gold to also assigning them to appropriate categories that are easier to understand by consumers – The top wines from the judging process of each category went on to win trophies with the overall best scoring wine achieving the status of ‘The World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly’.

“The Champagne and sparkling wine entries we receive are judged by some of the best wine professionals from across the globe in a relaxed and inviting atmosphere where discussions can take place in order to score the wines for medals, place them into relevant categories and select the relevant trophy winners. A vigorous judging process takes place where each wine is tasted by a group of international experienced wine judges, but also put through three scoring systems in order to stand out as a trophy winning wine. Importantly, nothing is behind closed doors and it is a totally blind tasting that none of the organisers including myself partakes in.” Christopher Walkey, Founder of Glass of Bubbly.

“Good to see a novel and different approach.” Neil Sommerfelt MW

A totally unique judging process was set up by Glass of Bubbly with the help of Tatiana Mann, creative director, to reward wines not only by gold, silver and bronze badges, but also by placing them into consumer friendly categories. By the end of the judging process and after careful scoring calculations, 11 trophy winning wines were discovered along with the coveted prize of The World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly for 2017.

“We had two marvellous panels judging on the second day, morning and afternoon.  In particular, the mix of nationalities, ages and men and women seemed to work quite well. Well done, team Glass of Bubbly!” Patricia Stefanowicz MW

As part of The World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly Awards 2017 there was also a black tie awards dinner at Marriott County Hall Hotel Westminster that took place with over 130 guests with a unique sparkling wine reception, three course dinner and the awards ceremony: