Illinois State Fair Wine Competition Accepting Entries

It is that time of year again!! Entries for the Illinois State Fair Wine Competition begin on May 11, so it’s time to get your entry forms filled out, and wines ready to ship. The Deadline for entries is June 11, with the competition will be held again at Lincoln Land Community College June 17-19. As always, giving your wines plenty of time to rest after shipping will help reduce shock, and likely lead to better scores at the competition.

The IGGVA is always open to suggestions on ways to improve the competition, so we’ve added a few new things this year, thanks in large part to the input of industry members.

First, we’ve reorganized the Sparkling Wine category, which will hopefully minimize confusion when attempting to find the right category for your wine, and lead to fewer issues sorting flights at the competition. There are also new categories for Fortified Fruit wines, and Flavored table, fortified, and sparkling wines. Lastly, due to the rising popularity of Hard Cider, we have added a category for that as well.

Additionally, we’re bringing back the packaging competition! An IGGVA committee has been working for some time on this development, and I think they have come up with a packaging competition that will be fair, and help promote the critical influence of packaging upon sales, especially at retail outlets and restaurants. We’re going to have a great mix of judges for this, specifically bringing in some marketing and sales specialists, in addition to retailers and wine makers from other states. We’ve tried to make this as affordable as possible, so please give it a shot this year! As with the wine competition, judges’ feedback will be provided to the entrants.

Lastly, we’ve attached a flyer to post in your tasting rooms, specifically targeted at amateur winemakers. The amateur competition helps us keep our commercial entry fees low, so please post this in your tasting room, and encourage any amateurs out there in your neck of the woods to enter!

Thanks again for your continued support of the competition! It should be another great year for Illinois Wine! Forms can be found at: http://www.illinoiswine.com/competitions.html

Bradley Beam