Awards and medals adorn many wine bottles at vineyard and winery tasting rooms. Texas also offers medals, however the grand awards are really grand! Bright ribbons and medals are proudly displayed on bottle necks, in framed pictures or on walls. After visiting our first few wineries, I asked a winemaker about all the awards and what they meant. He equated many of the ribbons to participating in a science fair when one was in third grade. Everyone gets a ribbon just for participating. Okay, so that brought all of these thousands of ribbons into perspective.

However, there are a number of wine competitions around the world where winning means a whole lot more than “participation.” The top awards frequently are a special engraved product that can be proudly displayed by the winning winery. These awards are very nice and mean a lot to the winery.

In Texas, they do things in a big way. At the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo International Wine Competition there are several unusual awards. Awards range from an inscribed medal to a saddle. That’s right – a saddle. We’re not talking about a tiny saddle for display on a shelf. This saddle is the real thing. Awards also include buckles and chaps. A winery owner placed the value of the saddle at about three to four thousand dollars.

Wineries who participate in this event and win the saddle, provide wine in large over sized bottles to the Champion Wine Auction. The proceeds from the wine auction are for helping Texas youth. Often these auctions raise tens of thousands of dollars. Kudos to the Texas wine industry!

Cheers! Kathy