The results of the 7th edition of the Muscats du Monde® international wine competition, has been just announced. Over the course of two days, international experts tasted more than 200 Muscats wines from all over the world. The 2007 awards list from Muscat du Monde® is an opportunity to discover the incomparable palette of aromas that Muscat wines can display. Strict quality standards and optimal tasting conditions enabled the international judges to award 69 medals that are recognised as a reliable criterion for selection.

The 7th international confrontation of the world’s best Muscats wines, Muscats du Monde®, organised by Forum Œnologie, was held from 20 to 21 of July  2007 in the Languedos-Roussillon region in the city of Frontignan-la-Peyrade (France).

Since seven years, its international wine competition recognised the world’s best Muscats wines, awarding reliable and thus representative medals. Muscats du Monde® is founded on a single conviction: distinctive marks of quality are the key to the differentiation and thus to the promotion of medal-winning wines in a highly competitive and often confusing marketplace. Medalwinning wineries can use their medals in marketing their wines.

Muscats du Monde® 2007 brought together more than 200 wines from 23 countries, making this competition into one of the world’s top events for Muscats wines. Since its creation, this competition has been a wonderful occasion to taste traditional Muscat wine (vin doux naturel) and to follow the development of a wide variety of new wines, highlighting the complexity and aromatic richness of Muscat varieties.

Muscats du Monde^® has carved out a place of its own amongst wine competitions, thanks to its international flavour and its rigorous methods. During the two days of tasting under optimal conditions, the international expert judges awarded 69 medals in accordance with international wine competition regulations and in strict compliance with Quality Assurance requirements.

Muscats du Monde® has progressively distinguished itself from other international competitions thanks to quality standards that are much stricter than the norm and by remaining faithful to its founding principles: diversity, quality and high standards.

Medals distribution Gold Medals 25 Silver Medals 44 Bronze Medals 0

Awarded Medals count by countries

Top 10 Best Muscats du Monde® 2007
Gold medals
Country	Product	Winery
France	Muscat de Beaumes de Venise - Carte Or - 2006	Vignerons de Beaumes de Venise - Balma Venitia
Switzerland	Muscat de Clavoz - Aoc Valais - 2006	Cave de la brunière
France	Muscat de St Jean de Minervois - Domaine de Montahuc - 2005	Scea Poudou et Chozas Vignerons
France	Muscat de Beaumes de Venise - Cacher le Pessah - Production Moïse Taïeb - 2006	Vignerons de Beaumes de Venise - Balma Venitia
Lebanon	Miel du Clos - Liqueur de Vin - 2005	Clos St Thomas
Greece	Stalactite - Muscat of Kefallonian - 2005	Domaine Foivos sa
France	Muscat de Rivesaltes - Château les Pins - 1993	Cave des vignerons de Baixas - Dom Brial
South Africa	Rietvallei 1908 Muscadel - 2003	Rietvallei Wine Estate
Italy	Templum - Moscato di Terracina Amabile - Lazio IGT - 2006	Cantina Sant'Andrea
Italy	Moscato d'Asti Docg - Riveto	Dante Rivetti Az. Agr.

• Geographical diversity: with 23 countries Muscats du Monde® is the strongest Muscats wine concentration ever realized. It is thus the most significant and legitimate qualitative confrontation for the distinction of best Muscats of the world.
  
  
• All of the Muscat-producing regions in France were well-represented: Alsace, Corsica, Languedoc-Roussillon and the Rhône Valley. Other well-represented countries included Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, and even such faraway countries as South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. The participation of countries such as Macedonia, Romania, Tunisia, Slovenia and Czech Republic was also notable.
  
  
• The country winning the most medals
  The good place of France is noted with 10 Gold medals and 19 Silver medals. Four French wines made the Top Ten. Languedoc-Roussillon and Rhône Valley took home a number of prestigious medals. In Europe, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Lebanon distinguished themselves with several medals. Outside Europe, South Africa and Australia all stood out.
  
  
  
• Diversity of Sensorial Expression
  Each of the wines that distinguished themselves at Muscat du monde® did so because of their own intrinsic quality, not in comparison with the other wines. This event is therefore a unique opportunity to bring together and discover a wide variety of Muscats wines in all their forms: dry, sweet, still, sparkling, with and with pink to dark red shades. According to the expert judges, this extraordinarily rich group of wines demonstrated a level of sensory complexity rarely encountered with other wines.
  
  Several marks of quality Gold and Silver were awarded to botrytised, late harvest and special selection. A wide variety of dry, off-dry, sweet, still, sparkling, young, age-worthy wines received favourable notice.
  
  Several gold medals were awarded to dry wines, which were characterised by an elegant acid balance and by floral, muscat aromas. The sparkling wines were noted for their elegance and lightness (low alcohol). For the sweet wines (vins doux naturels and vins de liqueur), the expert judges had a wide choice of high-quality wines from which to pick the best.
  
  
• Technical Enrichment:
  For the 2007 competition, Brazil was the guest of honour. During a technical presentation, Dr. Mauro Celso Zanus, agricultural engineer, researcher at EMBRAPA and tasting director for the Brazilian Association of Oenologists, presented the Brazilian sparkling Muscats.
  
  Use of a new professional tasting instrument thanks to applied research for the evaluation of sparkling Muscats wines. This INAO-type tasting glass that contains a precise number of nucleation sites has been tested by the judges at Effervescents du Monde®. Named Fleur d’Effervescence®, this glass is meant to optimise the tasting of sparkling wines: to calibrate their degree of effervescence, to control the formation of bubbles and to enable ideal expression of the foam amongst other factors.
  
  
• Conviviality and sociability. The expert judges at Muscats du Monde® and numerous guests from the Muscat Festival organised by the town of Frontignan-la-peyrade gathered for a night at the movies amidst the vines at Mas Rouge. The best films from Œnovidéo 2007, the international festival of documentary films about grapes and wine, were shown on this occasion.

Muscats du Monde® is organised by the Association Forum Œnologie with participation from the Revue des Œnologues and in partnership with:

• The city of Frontignan-la-Peyrade
• The Services Actions Qualité company for competition-related computing services.

An organisation with highly reputed partners :
	City of Frontignan la Peyrade
	School for Culinary Arts and The Hotel Business - Center for the evaluation of the Muscats du Monde expert juror’knowledge Ecully near Lyon - France
	La Revue des Œnologues - International technical Magazine about Wine and Vine - Technical and Communication partner.
	TNT Express - Official partner for international deliveries.
	SAQ - Services Actions Qualité - Expert Translation Services for the Wine and Grape Industries - Technical partner.