Some good-value wines but the relatively low ratio of entries to medals suggests a lot of bandwagon-jumping, too

Plenty of medals again for Chile, although the judges were most impressed stylistically with Australia and South Africa

Food Match Awards

Still no Golds for Viognier, though certainly lighter, fresher, more food-friendly wines than in previous years

Over 1,500 wines can be boiled down to this: the hallowed Sommelier Wine Awards Gold List for 2011...

Entries of this much-favoured grape may well have been more or less evenly split between Australia and New Zealand, but this year the latter definitely came out on top

Riesling is making itself at home in more and more countries, but where is it performing best? Clinton Cawood joins an eager sommelier panel for a top-notch tasting that pits Old World against New World and some acknowledged masters against hungry, young upstarts

With screwcaps to the fore, the quality of the whites (particularly) and the reds here was amazing for the price. Rosé was another matter entirely

The New World’s emerging white wine categories have been patchy in previous SWAs. But this year, there were some genuinely impressive – and cheap – wines

A smallish but dynamic section, our sommeliers found some really good, food-friendly wines here at prices that make them all well worth a look

Lots of wine, plenty of freshness, but not, for the most part, enough ambition. New World Sauvignon Blanc is a category that is rather treading water at the moment

Plenty of decent bottles and very few dogs meant that our tasters were positive about New World Chardonnay, though genuine excitement was in short supply

In the second of our three-part series on the basics of food and wine-matching, Hakkasan’s wine buyer Christine Parkinson tells us how to go about pairing wines with meat