The Royal Melbourne Wine Show is one of Australia’s largest and most prestigious wine Shows and the annual awards are recognised by the wine producers as an important competition in which to benchmark their produce. As a testament to this, more than 490 Australian wineries have sent in their offering of whites and reds amounting to more than 3,845 entries.

The RMWS continues to lead the Australian wine show system in many areas including the introduction of split judging panels in 2005; its associate judging program; top international judges; the use of Riedel Overture glasses in judging; a comprehensive auditing program; and on-going collaboration with the Wine Show Committee of the Australian Society of Viticulture and Oenology to enhance the Show judging system in Australia.

Maintaining its commitment to the development and varietal trends in the wine industry, the Royal Melbourne Wine Show has introduced two new classes of white wine and a single vineyard class to the award categories in 2007.

With the growing popularity of the white varieties, Viognier and Verdelho, the RMWS has introduced two new classes so that they can be assessed amongst their peers, thereby providing improved feedback to the wine producer and also the consumer.

The new Single Vineyard Trophy has been introduced to acknowledge wine makers who are producing handcrafted wines. This exciting new class hopes to see wines express the virtues of their site and show the vagaries of the vintage. They are wines that can test the winemaker’s skills and are often the wines of small winemakers.