The Bragato Wine Awards are in many ways unique, even more so this year with the stipulation that all wines were to be produced from single vineyards.The judging for the Bragato Awards occurs in August each year, meaning that this is one of the very first competitions to assess the new vintage releases. Excellent, then, to see the new 2017 vintage with four gold medals. There are no volume requirements for this show, meaning that it attracts the smaller producers who, while they don't generate the amounts required for some of the larger shows, have something undeniably special to offer with their boutique-style attention to detail. One can argue that a wine is only as good as the fruit that went into it.

Importantly, then, the Bragato Wine Awards also award the results to the growers, i.e. those talented people who grew the grapes that went into the winning wines. This, then, is a significant show for the NZ wine industry, celebrating not only the skills of our finest winemakers, but also the people who grow our grapes, the provenance of the various locales and the special nature of our single vineyards.