If awards are given out as a guide to consumers, then with Port they are always going to have an odd place; there isn’t much point in awarding them for fully mature VP which is only available at a very high cost or on the secondary market. However, for LBVs, especially unfiltered ones, which are generally consumed quite young I am surprised that more aren’t awarded. Does anyone have any idea as to why this is? Are the shippers not entering their Ports? Do the main competition bodies not accept fortified wines? (Or is Port simply a bad drink and we’re just deluded?
).The other thing I don’t quite understand is why certain Ports win awards. Indeed, the reason for this thread was that I poked my nose into the Oddbins “Fine Wine† branch at Holborn today and was surprised to see the Dow’s 2001 LBV with what (to me at least) was a new gold-coloured label. Apparently, this was commemorating its winning a gold medal from the Wine Spectator. Although I quite like this Port: I’ve drunk half-a-dozen bottles or so of it over the last year; I generally regard it as a inoffensive wine that was reasonable value when it cost between £5 and £8 a bottle. Even just comparing it to other 2001 LBVs, I certainly wouldn’t regard it a gold-medal-class.
Perhaps it’s just me, but looking at the Symington 2007 Awards List, my distribution of medals would probably be quite different, and I wonder if anyone else would agree?
-Jacob
but what seemed particularly inditing about this affair was that 
(I’d forgotten we had that graphic!) doesn’t seem to be checking that the wine-list submitted is actually the one being offered by the restaurant. It would be quite easy to imagine a place submitting an “enhanced† list, which contained a number of highly-rated wines, to 
